Why China Works?

It's really very difficult to evaluate your competitor objectively, just like what some westerners are doing to China in the global recession. However, there are still more and more different and wise voices, for example, Rana Foroohar, a senior editor in charge of all international business and economics coverage for Newsweek's overseas editions. In her recently published article Why China Works, she made a quite good summary on the Chinese 30-year rapid growth, with the distinct opinion that state control is not a hopelessly stupid choice but probably just the opposite.

Now that the United States and Europe are moving toward state control—by nationalizing the banking and car industries, and imposing heavy new regulation on the financial industry—the question has a new urgency. China, the poorest and most chaotic big economy, looks like the one best positioned to navigate what may be the worst global downturn in seven decades.

Ultimately, she even argued that China's successful use of command capitalism also carries, at most, limited lessons for the United States or Europe. It's much easier to boost growth by ordering engineers working in an autocratic system to build roads where there are none, as in parts in China, than to stimulate growth in a developed nation like the U.S. Still, the fact that an increasingly rich China still works so well is worth studying, not least because the credit crisis is provoking a wider questioning of free-market orthodoxy. 

Here's the full article. It is strongly recommended, both for westerners and Chinese. http://www.newsweek.com/id/178810