Is the Beijing model something Americans should emulate?

No. China develops because the government allows its citizens more freedom and less top down control. It slows down when the government limits freedom by top down economic  control. When I speak of control I mean decisions about what resources are to be allocated, what industries encouraged and what should be made. These severely limit the power of a market economy.

James Pilant

My favorite paragraph –

More recently, China has reverted to the Beijing Consensus, with its leaders picking trade fights, for example by restricting the exports of rare earth minerals. It has back-tracked on banking reforms, forcing banks to engage in state-directed lending during the global crisis. It has crawled all over such elements of the rule of law as had emerged under Deng, cracking down on dissent, and jailing dissidents without any pretense of due process of law. Not coincidentally, this period of illiberalism has been accompanied by slowing growth rates and rampant inflation, traits that have fueled social instability and that now threaten a Chinese spring that is the worst fear of the central autocracy that cowers in the nation’s capital.

“In his speech last Friday marking the Chinese Communist Party’s 90th anniversary, Hu Jintao made one point clear above all: ‘Success in China hinges on the party.’  That view is to be expected from the party secretary.  Perhaps more surprising is the extent to which outside observers have come to believe it too.  These foreigners – academics and journalists prominent among them – look to the ‘Beijing model’ or the ‘Beijing consensus’ as a desira … Read More

via Charles Rowley’s Blog