USA vs. China Ways (5.1)

Will China’s Market Momentum Last?

A few years ago, I went to the Wharton School in Philadelphia to attend a China economy forum. The CEO of a US venture capital investment firm came up to the stage and claimed that by his observation, “the Chinese market now is more open and pro-capitalism than the US market.”

While most of the audience down the stage felt thrilled by such a claim, I didn’t feel too much on it. For China affairs, many outsiders tend to go by what the Chinese call “ look at flowers in the fog”.

If China is so free a market, then why the US government and Europe Union to date still refuse to officially acknowledge China as a “market economy”? Do they have bias against China or they know better on something that others don’t know?

It’s actually no top secret. If one takes an overview of China’s economy and trade policies, economic structure and ratio between the state enterprises and private enterprises, and the role the government plays in the economy, then it’s not that hard to tell China indeed is not a market economy yet.

I think that US firm CEO speaking at the Wharton School forum might get misled by some special characteristics of the Chinese market. Like things in many other fields, economy in China can go extreme too. The Chinese has a saying for such a pattern: When the…