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OPEdNews recently accepted a Quicklink to Naomi Klein's excellent article, "China's All-Seeing Eye". So I may as well continue this China theme with an expose of their government's lies about the growth of their economy. In "China and the Development Myth" these lies are debunked. Far from being an example of successful interventionism, China proves what the free marketeers have been saying all along. That the government can only slow growth, not help it. Of course, since some market is better than no market they're doing better than before.
This also would be a good time to point out one of Naomi Klein's errors in the article. She wrote, 'Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric.' I hope she's not suggesting that things haven't improved in China since the days of Mao & the Yan'an Rectification Movement, the Great Leap Forward, & the Cultural Revolution.
While China still has a long way to go things have improved there. Much of this improvement is due to their market reforms. As the people become more economically independent & affluent they will demand more freedom from the government. We've seen this in other countries such as Chile.
What Naomi Klein doesn't realize is that China, far from becoming a capitalist country, is actually implementing the fascist model. The government remains in control of the economy. It's the government that's behind their police state. Whether they move beyond that to capitalism remains to be seen.
