Will China Follow the Singapore Model?
That seems to be the direction Beijing might try to take over the next ten years:
So far, all efforts have failed to contain corruption and promote economic efficiency while maintaining the privilege of Communist party members in the one-party state.
That’s the attraction of Singapore, which by deft management of what appears on the surface to be a multiparty democracy operating under the rule of law, but which in fact operates an economically vigorous and superficially graft-free one-party state.
For several years, Xi has led a team investigating the Singapore model and envisaging how it might be applied to China.
All I can say to that is, good luck.
It’s one thing to run a prosperous city-state of five million people as a sort of family business. But it’s quite another thing to try that in a country of 1.3 billion, with extreme disparities of wealth, ethnic tensions, fidgety neighbors, imperialistic ambitions, and irredentist itches in need of scratching.
Good luck indeed. Nien Cheng (Life and Death in Shanghai) said the people of China were eternally being “dragged headlong” into one experiment after another by the Communist Party, whether it was collectivization or liberalization. Now another, tighter, twist on authoritarianism? I guess the problem — as always with socialism — is that “you just have to get the right people in there.”
Yes – and you fail to mention that THEY’RE FREAKING COMMUNISTS…thanks tho.
Irredentists that the Chinese are, they will certainly want Tibet restored to its rightful owners.
No doubt.
One advantage Singapore has is that there’s no chance to mess up economic efficiency with the pseudo economics of protectionism/self-sufficiency. Any business of any significance has to have foreign customers and the only way to get them and keep them is to produce a better product at a better price. China has no such control mechanism.
Perhaps China should try giving more power to the provinces and let democracy take root at the lower level. Stop micromanaging and the folks might surprise you.
Well… China already does have Hong Kong as a semi-autonomous place under their umbrella, don’t they? If one place is similar to Singapore, it is Hong Kong.
Their best bet is to not apply it to the whole country, but create more Special Economic Zones that turn Shanghai and Guangdong Province into additional ‘Hong Kongs’. Foreigners can immigrate there, and rural Chinese can only come in in small numbers.
That is it. Create more ‘Hong Kongs’ by starting with Shanghai and Guangdong.
Hoo boy. You must have no idea what that idea would sound like to the Chinese. Can you say “foreign trading enclaves”? Betcha everybody in China can.
That might be what they move to in the end, but they’ll fight it tooth and nail.
They might try to replicate the success of SEZs like Shenzhen and Zhuhai. 25 yrs ago Shenzhen was a backwater fishing village, now it’s bigger than Hong Kong, soon to be richer too. The first few times I went there they had a border fence and checked hukuos. I was surprised when the police came on the bus and passed me by and dragged off guys from outside Guangdong trying to sneak into Shenzhen. The fence is gone and the restrictions are gone now, because they are moving development inland. I doubt they want to copy Singapore or Hong Kong, but they are taking some things that work for them and using it.
With all the anti-China rhetoric China has a vibrant private sector. Corruption is endemic and guanxi counts, but for an entrepreneur it is an exciting place. China will never be another Singapore, it is too big and diverse for that, but it is already more open than people think and if the party can hold it together in the face of the reaction to corruption, mostly at the city and county level, it will surpass the US soon.
It is hard to believe that it is easier to do business in China than in the US but it is true. Small businesses are sprouting everywhere and the middle class is growing. The further from the center the freer it is. As the Chinese say “Heaven is high and the Emperor is far away.”
It won’t be a Singapore model, it will be a Chinese model. If the party can keep control. Otherwise a hell count break loose.
Yes – and you fail to mention that THEY’RE FREAKING COMMUNISTS…thanks tho.
Iggycat, the Cold War ended 21 years ago. Where have you been.
China is not a Democracy, but it seems to care about free market principles more than the US does nowadays.
China’s corporate tax and capital gains tax rates are much lower than the US. That is the true metric.
‘Democracy’ is not the true metric because a Democracy merely results in women voting themselves more and more money (since women are naturally inclined towards redistribution since it will benefit THEM), and stripping men of more rights, until the system breaks. That is what we are going to see in the US pretty soon.
Note to Toads (Applies JUST as much to greedy men. Sorry. if you find that as insulting as I did your comment on women.)
As for China, and Singapore. I love Chinese people (NOT their government). They’re all traders at heart. Our style of gov’t (constitutional) would suit them. BUT… not going to happen. Singapore-style is second best, but it’s an improvement. Might work – hope they try it.
Kathy Kinsley
No, women are far more naturally inclined towards redistribution than men.
Why would you dispute that? It is natural. It should be no more offensive than ‘women live longer than men’ or ‘men are physically stronger than women’.
But women like big government (that includes most Republican women).
I’m not republican. I’m libertarian. But it’s not about me–or you. MEN? LOTS of men are “inclined towards redistribution” – in fact demanding it. (SEE unions.) So are women – so what – it’s not you/me – it’s us. Make a deal? I admit my sex wants all they can get for free – and you admit your sex wants exactly the same. Then we do something about both sides.
It doesn’t hurt that the entire island is also a port. I’ve been there and the water is littered with cargo ships as far as the eye can see. China doesn’t get that benefit. I also wouldn’t trust Chinese property rights as far as I could throw them.
Kathy Kingsley,
It is possible that you are a rare exception, as I don’t know you.
But ‘female libertarian’ is a contradiction in terms. Most female libertarians openly state that ‘spending that goes to women should not be cut’, which of course is the majority of all spending.
Expecting women to support small government is like expecting government employees to support small government.
Here is more about how libertarianism is contradictory to female nature :
http://glpiggy.net/2012/10/22/why-are-there-so-few-female-libertarians/
>>Most female libertarians openly state that ‘spending that goes to women should not be cut’
Oh dear me.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with a western-educated bureaucrat in the financial ministry (in Beijing) a decade and more ago – talking about the state of the Chinese banking system. He observed (the bad news) that if they graduated nothing but accountants for the next twenty years they still would not know what loans of what quality had been made by their banks. Then he held up a text by Milton Friedman and said the good news is “they don’t need to care” as long as price signals work and government intervention looks more like a random walk, a tax or simple corruption – and that the (Russian trained engineers in the CCP were at least numerate (besides being killers) so their) government knew this and appreciated this. Whereas we (the U.S.) were in deep trouble since we thought we understood economics, had models and infinite computing, and could predict the future with those models and the hubris to attempt to steer our economy (aka the fallacy of central planning that communism traditionally foster). So as long as we stayed delusional and they were fact-and-numbers based, they’d win and we’d lose. Seems he’s been more right than wrong.
And then there’s the issue of military strength. China still operates the way the U.S. used to operate in the 50s and 60s – with little distance and handshake agreements between the government, the permanent bureaucracy, the universities, the military and big business. A conversation could happen with the head of Bell Laboratories and almost overnight the SOSUS network would be invented, developed and deployed – with costs plus profit either directly billed – or covered in a few more pennies of tariff per phone call. This leads to and enables a certain type of corruption – when entities are more interested in their own welfare than pursuing a mission (see Jerry Pournelle’s “Iron Law”) but as long as patriotism and the mission dominate, corruption is more like a tax than an assurance of failure. The U.S. now has about as much distance as possible between all these players – and have even created a separate class of companies willing to bear the burden of dealing with these regulations and strictures (where a dollar is spent in the interest of saving Congress from a dime’s worth of embarrassment – where they’d rather have an audited, unchangeable process – rather than allowing those responsible (and holding accountable those responsible for) the use of their own intellect and judgment.
So China’s (military) leveraging commercial (largely-free-market – now more so than the U.S. and certainly Europe) driven success pays 10 cents for what costs a U.S. commercial company a dollar, and when acquired thru our government “perfection thru process” system costs $10. Meaning the PLA can match the U.S. Military by spending 1/10th to 1/100th what the U.S. government will. (granted, the corruption in China and political favoritism within their military will diminish this advantage – but only by factors of 2, not 10). I fear for our country and what the Congress (not the executive) has done – forgetting that their Job One (that only the federal government can do) is insuring our security – the preservation of our freedoms and assets, and ability to increase the same, around the world. Hard to imagine any of our social scientists, lawyers, various “studies” majors competing with the army of well educated in science and technology graduates emerging the dozens of Standfords China has stood up over the last decade. To the point that there’s now Chinese competition with the U.S. in attracting world-class researchers.
Good news is the U.S. technical dominance has been an exception to the rule. We use to take our physics degrees in German, and would likely still if the Germans hadn’t gone insane. What we need to maintain our leadership is not technical dominance but the world’s best and most free market, driven by a most-free people and their most-free enterprise – most as clearly better – relative to all others (with a first rate military a close second).