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There’s something fundamental that eludes me about one specific part of many China critiques, like this one in the NYT today. [thread] nytimes.com/2019/03/09/opi…
Much makes sense: abuse of human rights, environment, labor, tech transfer, currency/financial suppression are important to oppose/reform. But attacking their state ownership, subsidies, and overall macro-management doesn’t compute.
The dominant belief in capitalism is that such state-interventions in markets is misguided/inefficient. Resources will be misallocated and innovation and productivity will suffer. But the Times and others complain that we must impose rules on China to block such interventions.
This part of the critique seems ideological, motivated by antipathy to a model that’s different than our own. If anything, true belief in our model should not fear competitors with allegedly inferior models.
So, to me, this part of the US’s China critique doesn’t make sense. Either such state intervention is a serious negative for their economy and will hurt them not us, or it’s pro-growth and we should do more of it. But it’s not “cheating.” It’s an alternative model. [end]
