The China Model: one country, six authors

Abstract

The rapid economic development of the People's Republic of China has not only been spectacular since 1978 but also suggests that there is a specific China Model of the relationship between the state, society and the market. In particular, this model would seem to have particular application to the less developed economies of the world. Certainly the emergence of a Beijing Consensus to replace the democratic capitalist Washington Consensus of the 1990s would seem to suggest the purchase that China's rise has brought in many parts of the world. An examination of six prominent different accounts of China's growing economic and political importance suggests that there are distinct limits to the conceptualisation of China's development in terms of a model, though there may be lessons about the interaction of public and private to be learnt more widely.

Notes

*Minglu Chen and David S. G. Goodman are both in the Department of Government and International Relations and the China Studies Centre, the University of Sydney. This article is based on the Keynote Address delivered to the Conference of the Consejo de Estudios Latinoamericanos de Asia y de Oceanía [Council for Latin American Studies in Asia and Oceania] at the University of Guadalajara, 22 November 2010. The authors can be reached by email at [email protected] or [email protected].

^1. The Beijing Consensus was developed as an idea first in a booklet by Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Beijing Consensus (London: The Foreign Policy Centre, May 2004).

^2. Stephen C. Angle, ‘Decent democratic centralism’, Political Theory 33(4), (August 2005), pp. 518–546.

^3. See the statements in The China Quarterly's Chronicle and Documentation, March 1979.

^4. See, for example: David Pierson, ‘In China real estate fever is rising’, Los Angeles Times, (26 April 2010).

^5. See, for example: ‘Stealing the airlines' business’, The Economist, (12 February 2010); and ‘High-speed rail on fast track to nowhere’, South China Morning Post, (6 July 2010).

^6. Ramo, The Beijing Consensus, p. 60.

^7. The 2007 statistics on income are from: ‘China's GDP grows annual average of 9.67% from 1978 to 2006’, Xinhua [New China News Agency], (6 May 2007). US$1 = 6.7 Chinese yuan. A Gini coefficient of 0.40 is usually regarded as a presentiment of social tension.

^8. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), ch. 4.

^9. Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century (London: Verso, 2007).

^10. Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (London: Allen Lane, 2009), p. 12.

^11. Suisheng Zhao, ‘The China Model: can it replace the Western model of modernization?’, Journal of Contemporary China 19(65), (June 2010), p. 424.

^12. Stefan Halper, The Beijing Consensus: How China's Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century (New York: Basic Books, 2010), pp. 11 and 209.

^13. Barry Naughton, ‘China's distinctive system: can it be a model for others?’, Journal of Contemporary China 19(65), (June 2010), p. 451.

^14. Jacques, When China Rules the World, p. 12.

^15. Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing, p. 321.

^16. Ramo, The Beijing Consensus, p. 31.

^17. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations (London: Penguin, 1995), p. 187.

^19. Ramo, The Beijing Consensus, p. 60.

^18. Ramo, The Beijing Consensus.

^20. See, for example: Cai Tuo, Quanqiuhua yu zhengzhide zhuanxing [Globalization and Political Transformation] (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2007).

^21. Ramo, The Beijing Consensus, p. 11.

^22. SASAC, Provisional Methods for Assessing Performance of Responsible Managers of Central Enterprises, (30 December 2006), available at: http://www.sasac.gov.cn/gzjg/yjkh/200701310039.htm.

^23. Jane Duckett and Beatriz Carrillo, eds, China's Changing Welfare Mix (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).

^24. Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing.

^25. Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing, p. 8.

^26. Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing, p. 356.

^28. Jacques, When China Rules the World, pp. 12–13.

^27. Jacques, When China Rules the World.

^29. See, for example: Joseph Levenson, ‘The province, the nation and the world: the problem of Chinese identity’, in Albert Feuerwerker, Rhoads Murphey and Mary C. Wright, eds, Approaches to Modern Chinese History (University of California Press, 1967), pp. 268–288.

^30. Jacques, When China Rules the World, p. 227.

^31. Jacques, When China Rules the World, p. 425.

^32. Jacques, When China Rules the World, p. 427.

^34. Halper, The Beijing Consensus, p. 11.

^33. Halper, The Beijing Consensus.

^35. Halper, The Beijing Consensus, pp. 209–210.

^36. Halper, The Beijing Consensus, p. 209.

^37. Halper, The Beijing Consensus, p. 208.

^38. Suisheng Zhao, ‘The China Model’, pp. 419–436.

^39. Suisheng Zhao, ‘The China Model’, p. 422.

^41. Suisheng Zhao, ‘The China Model’, p. 424.

^40. Robert Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Meredith Woo-Cummings, The Developmental State (New York: Cornell University Press, 1999).

^42. David S. G. Goodman, ‘The Chinese political order after Mao: “socialist democracy” and the exercise of state power’, Political Studies 33(2), (June 1985), pp. 218–235.

^43. Suisheng Zhao, ‘The China Model’, p. 431.

^44. Naughton, ‘China's distinctive system’, pp. 437–460.

^45. Naughton, ‘China's distinctive system’, p. 439.

^46. Arthur Kroeber, ‘Rising China and the liberal West’, China Economic Quarterly, (March 2008); Dieter Ernst and Barry Naughton, ‘China's emerging industrial economy: insights from the IT industry’, in Christopher A. McNally, ed., China's Emergent Political Economy: Capitalism in the Dragon's Lair (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 39–50.

^47. Naughton, ‘China's distinctive system’, p. 442.

^48. Naughton, ‘China's distinctive system’, p. 445.

^49. Naughton, ‘China's distinctive system’, p. 445.

^50. Naughton, ‘China's distinctive system’, p. 451.

^51. Naughton, ‘China's distinctive system’, p. 457.

^52. Angus Maddison, Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run 960–2030 AD (Paris: OECD Publishing, Development Centre Studies, 2007).

^53. C. W. Kenneth Keng, ‘China's future economic regionalization’, Journal of Contemporary China 10(29), (November 2001), pp. 587–611.

^54. David S. G. Goodman, ed., China's Campaign to ‘Open Up the West’: National, Provincial and Local Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

^55. In 2003 the PRC produced about 15.1% of world GDP with 20.5% of world population. This contrasts with the USA that produced 20.6% of world GDP from 4.6% of world population; and Europe that produced 21.1% of world GDP from 8.2% of world population. Source: Maddison, Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run 960–2030 AD.

^56. G. Montinola, Y. Qian and B. R. Weingast, ‘Federalism, Chinese style—the political basis for economic success in China’, World Politics 48, (October 1995), p. 50.

^57. Ezra F. Vogel, One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong under Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

^58. Feng Chongyi and David S. G. Goodman, China's Hainan Province: Economic Development and Investment Environment (University of Western Australia Press, 1995).

^59. Bruce J. Dickson, Wealth into Power: The Communist Party's Embrace of China's Private Sector (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 238.

^60. Cary Huang, ‘Domestic consumption now top mainland growth driver’, South China Morning Post, (16 January 2010); Capital Economics, China Economics Update, (27 May 2010); Jonathan Anderson, ‘Is China export-led ?’, UBS Investment Research Asian Focus, (27 September 2007).

^61. David S. G. Goodman, ‘Why China has no new middle class: cadres, managers and entrepreneurs’, in David S. G. Goodman, ed., The New Rich in China: Future Rulers, Present Lives (London: Routledge, 2008), p. 29.

^62. Pierre F. Landry, Decentralized Authoritarianism in China: The Communist Party's Control of Local Elites in the Post-Mao Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 3.

^63. Dickson, Wealth into Power, pp. 40–41.

^64. Goodman, ed., The New Rich in China.

^65. See, for example, the views of the Brazilian Ambassador to the PRC, Luiz Augusto de Castro Neves, ‘Zhongguo de chuqi: Baxi (huo Lading Meizhou) guanjiao’ [‘China's rise seen from a Brazilian (and perhaps a Latin American) perspective’], Lading Meizhou Yanjiu [Journal of Latin American Studies] 29(2), (April 2007), p. 9.

^66. Beatriz Carrillo, Minglu Chen and David S. G. Goodman, ‘Beyond asymmetry: cooperation, conflict and globalisation in Mexico–China relations’, The Pacific Review 24(4), (September 2011), pp. 421–438.