Little social progressIn the early 1990's the mechanics would have broken

Davos, last week, Chinese officials have again blamed the responsibility of the United States in the current economic crisis and rented, in contrast, their own governance model. Pushed by the West to liberalize their economies, the Beijing authorities ensure that they were correct to maintain strict control over their financial flows, to protect several sectors from foreign competition and maintain the dominance of State-owned enterprises. By advancing cautiously in the reform, they say have updated a "third way" between the market economy and a hard Communist Chinese. It is a serious mistake, says the researcher at the MIT Yasheng Huang in his latest book (1).

According to him, Beijing would, indeed, missed its transition towards capitalism and put at risk by incorrect reforms, the quality of its long-term growth. The current slowdown of the growth, the drama of companies oriented towards export and the evil being of the campaigns would be the result of these errors.

Rejecting the idea of a progressive liberalization of the country, Yasheng Huang ensures that China has, in fact, experienced its greater dynamism in the 1980s when its rural areas experienced an explosion of private entrepreneurship, an influx of bank loans and a start to the right property. Hundreds of thousands of small companies have emerged in the manufacturing or services sectors. "The growth of GDP then accompanied a rapid increase in individual income and an improvement of the distribution of wealth", he wrote.

Little social progress

In the early 1990's, the mechanics would have broken. After the purge linked to the riots in Tiananmen Square, a new generation of leaders led by Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, took power and decided to reorient the model of development of the country. The two men decided to promote urban areas, increasing the building of infrastructure, encourage large State enterprises and attract foreign multinational big dollars. At the campaign, private companies found themselves stifled by the lack of credit and resumed control of the local authorities.

If GDP continued to rise dramatically in the 1990s, its impact on the social progress has been limited, analysis Yasheng Huang. In rural areas, where live even 750 million people, thousands of hospitals and schools had to close their doors. In the cities of the East Coast, wealth is accumulated around the skyscrapers, but it did not allow the emergence of real multinational private. The giant Lenovo, Haier, Sina or Alibaba, including the country boasts the emergence on the international scene, have also managed that by bypassing China to go to register legally in Hong Kong, where they lifted the bulk of their capital. "Shanghai, which was long a cradle of industrial, is now strangely devoid of local entrepreneurs," Note the researcher.

Change governance

Stating that the strategy of the 1990s especially made grow less effective public mastodons, encouraged corruption and delayed the fight against pollution, the Economist welcomes the willingness of the President, Hu Jintao and its premier, Wen Jiabao, release new activity in the countryside and to focus on the rise in standard of living of individuals. However, it notes that this shift will struggle to be effective as long as it remains controlled by a state machine. Only a profound change in governance will generate sustainable growth, he warned.