美国精英过去如何误判，现在在如何对付中共鸭霸的彷徨失措，在此一览无遗 Was Milton Friedman Wrong About China? It’s bigness, not capitalism, that lets Beijing get away with so many abuses. By William McGurn June 28, 2021 6:10 pm ET https://finance.yahoo.com/video/wsj-opinion-milton-friedman-wrong-233418560.html Main Street: If Joe Biden intends to outcompete Beijing, surely Milton Friedman still offers a more compelling model than simply copying the government-directed approach of Xi Jinping. Images: AP/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION “I predict that China will move increasingly toward political freedom if it continues its successful move to economic freedom.” So spoke Milton Friedman in 2003. It seemed a good idea at the time, especially after the transformations of the dictatorships in Taiwan and South Korea into messy but functioning democracies. But as Joe Biden is now finding out, Chinese President Xi Jinping operates from a very different premise: that the West has had its day, and Beijing’s blend of Communist Party rule and state capitalism is the ticket to Make China Great Again. He appears to be getting away with it. Under Mr. Xi, Beijing has carried out genocide against China’s Uyghur minority, threatened Taiwan with invasion, shut down a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, covered up the origins of Covid-19, and so on. Even so, China’s economy continues to boom—it grew more than 18% in the first quarter from a year earlier—and Friedman now looks to have gotten it colossally wrong about capitalism and freedom. Or did he? Economist Milton Friedman, 1976. PHOTO: BETTMANN ARCHIVE In reality Friedman was never as deterministic as sometimes portrayed. While he did maintain that a free society couldn’t exist without a free economy, he emphasized that the opposite didn’t hold: A free economy could exist without political freedom. Today some would argue that global capitalism isn’t the Chinese Communist Party’s enemy but its ally. There’s some truth to this. Certainly without the prosperity delivered by global trade and investment, Beijing wouldn’t be in a position to modernize its military, or to use its investments and foreign aid to expand its influence overseas. But Mr. Xi’s relative immunity from foreign pressure has less to do with any unique genius of what some call its “market Leninism” than something much more prosaic: the country’s 1.4 billion population. Size has always been China’s lure. In the 1930s, a Shanghai-based American businessman named Carl Crow wrote a book called “400 Million Customers” noting the vast riches that might be had if you could sell each Chinese an apple a day. Half a century later, when the population had more than doubled and China began opening up, the details changed, but the dream was the same: Imagine selling every Chinese a Coke! This bigness is Mr. Xi’s trump card. Any normal-size nation, even a relatively large one such as Vietnam or Japan, simply lacks the leverage over investors and other countries to get away with what China does routinely. Nor is Mr. Xi shy about using this leverage. Look at Australia. In April 2020, Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for a genuine World Health Organization investigation into the origins of Covid-19. It came on the heels of other decisions that irked Beijing, such as Canberra’s decision to ban Huawei on security grounds from participating in its 5G rollout and criticism of Beijing over its treatment of the Uyghurs. China’s response? An all-out war on Australian exports. Australian wines were particularly hard hit, as China imposed tariffs of up to 220% set to last for five years. Australian beef, barley, lobster, timber and coal have also been hit, which is particularly hard for an export-oriented economy such as Australia’s. That’s why most foreigners doing business in China are so quick to run up the white flag when Beijing shows displeasure. John Cena, professional wrestler and star of the new “Fast & Furious” movie, recently issued a groveling apology after referring to Taiwan as a “country” during an interview. Hollywood appreciates that China now offers a larger box office than the U.S. All that said, the story of capitalism in China is far from over. No one knows how lasting Mr. Xi’s actions will prove, or the real costs of China’s many inefficiencies. After all, there was a day, not so long ago, when the received wisdom held that America was doomed to lose its global dominance to another brand of Asian state-directed insider capitalism—Japan Inc. Meanwhile, China faces significant constraints, including a rapidly aging society and a grossly skewed male-to-female sex ratio, both consequences of its disastrous population policies. China doesn’t even have a convertible currency. And the wrecking ball Mr. Xi is taking to Hong Kong doesn’t exactly inspire confidence about Beijing’s appreciation for international financial centers. Plainly China-style capitalism is on President Biden’s mind. When he announced his American Jobs Plan back in March, the president sold this huge increase in the federal role in the economy as a way “to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years.” Milton Friedman may once have been a tad too optimistic about prospects for freedom in China. But if Joe Biden seriously intends for the U.S. to outcompete China, surely the Friedman prescription for a freer, more nimble U.S. private sector would serve him better than a paler version of Xi Jinping’s government-directed growth. Write to [email protected].
Was Milton Friedman Wrong About China? It’s bigness, not capitalism, that lets Beijing get away with so many abuses.
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/wsj-opinion-milton-friedman-wrong-233418560.html
Main Street: If Joe Biden intends to outcompete Beijing, surely Milton Friedman still offers a more compelling model than simply copying the government-directed approach of Xi Jinping. Images: AP/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
“I predict that China will move increasingly toward political freedom if it continues its successful move to economic freedom.”
So spoke Milton Friedman in 2003. It seemed a good idea at the time, especially after the transformations of the dictatorships in Taiwan and South Korea into messy but functioning democracies. But as Joe Biden is now finding out, Chinese President Xi Jinping operates from a very different premise: that the West has had its day, and Beijing’s blend of Communist Party rule and state capitalism is the ticket to Make China Great Again.
He appears to be getting away with it. Under Mr. Xi, Beijing has carried out genocide against China’s Uyghur minority, threatened Taiwan with invasion, shut down a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, covered up the origins of Covid-19, and so on. Even so, China’s economy continues to boom—it grew more than 18% in the first quarter from a year earlier—and Friedman now looks to have gotten it colossally wrong about capitalism and freedom. Or did he?
In reality Friedman was never as deterministic as sometimes portrayed. While he did maintain that a free society couldn’t exist without a free economy, he emphasized that the opposite didn’t hold: A free economy could exist without political freedom.
Today some would argue that global capitalism isn’t the Chinese Communist Party’s enemy but its ally. There’s some truth to this. Certainly without the prosperity delivered by global trade and investment, Beijing wouldn’t be in a position to modernize its military, or to use its investments and foreign aid to expand its influence overseas. But Mr. Xi’s relative immunity from foreign pressure has less to do with any unique genius of what some call its “market Leninism” than something much more prosaic: the country’s 1.4 billion population.
Size has always been China’s lure. In the 1930s, a Shanghai-based American businessman named Carl Crow wrote a book called “400 Million Customers” noting the vast riches that might be had if you could sell each Chinese an apple a day. Half a century later, when the population had more than doubled and China began opening up, the details changed, but the dream was the same: Imagine selling every Chinese a Coke!
This bigness is Mr. Xi’s trump card. Any normal-size nation, even a relatively large one such as Vietnam or Japan, simply lacks the leverage over investors and other countries to get away with what China does routinely.
Nor is Mr. Xi shy about using this leverage. Look at Australia. In April 2020, Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for a genuine World Health Organization investigation into the origins of Covid-19. It came on the heels of other decisions that irked Beijing, such as Canberra’s decision to ban Huawei on security grounds from participating in its 5G rollout and criticism of Beijing over its treatment of the Uyghurs.
China’s response? An all-out war on Australian exports. Australian wines were particularly hard hit, as China imposed tariffs of up to 220% set to last for five years. Australian beef, barley, lobster, timber and coal have also been hit, which is particularly hard for an export-oriented economy such as Australia’s.
That’s why most foreigners doing business in China are so quick to run up the white flag when Beijing shows displeasure. John Cena, professional wrestler and star of the new “Fast & Furious” movie, recently issued a groveling apology after referring to Taiwan as a “country” during an interview. Hollywood appreciates that China now offers a larger box office than the U.S.
All that said, the story of capitalism in China is far from over. No one knows how lasting Mr. Xi’s actions will prove, or the real costs of China’s many inefficiencies. After all, there was a day, not so long ago, when the received wisdom held that America was doomed to lose its global dominance to another brand of Asian state-directed insider capitalism—Japan Inc.
Meanwhile, China faces significant constraints, including a rapidly aging society and a grossly skewed male-to-female sex ratio, both consequences of its disastrous population policies. China doesn’t even have a convertible currency. And the wrecking ball Mr. Xi is taking to Hong Kong doesn’t exactly inspire confidence about Beijing’s appreciation for international financial centers.
Plainly China-style capitalism is on President Biden’s mind. When he announced his American Jobs Plan back in March, the president sold this huge increase in the federal role in the economy as a way “to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years.” Milton Friedman may once have been a tad too optimistic about prospects for freedom in China. But if Joe Biden seriously intends for the U.S. to outcompete China, surely the Friedman prescription for a freer, more nimble U.S. private sector would serve him better than a paler version of Xi Jinping’s government-directed growth.
Write to [email protected].