Professional Western China watchers are almost guaranteed to read the tea leaves wrong. Prisoners of a malicious script, and permitted only to see the economic world through the capitalist rulebook, their analyses are often way off the mark or simply ludicrous.
The explanation of China’s woes as being caused by “too much government” fits very well into the narrative of neo-liberalism. Western media is saturated with the works of ideologues like Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand and Frederich Von Hayek who say “greed is good” and argue that completely unregulated capitalism will lead to some kind of utopia.
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The rationale that will supposedly destroy China’s economy that I hear from economists most is the lack of a financial structure and regulation–that they don’t have a mature accounting and finance structure. I’m not sure of the truth of this, and I’d like to see those same economists turn that focus on the US where non-GAAP accounting is routinely used for corporate earnings results and such.