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Go Home If Only American Leaders Could Emulate Chinese Communists...

JONATHAN CHAIT AUGUST 16, 2010

If Only American Leaders Could Emulate Chinese Communists...

BY ISAAC CHOTINER

[Guest post by Isaac Chotiner]

From J.D. Foster at National Review:

Oh, what a little freedom can do. Government figures released over the weekend confirm that China now has the second-largest economy in the world...[G]iven the direction the U.S. is heading, there’s a more immediate, more important issue: what China learned — and the U.S. apparently forgot — about the power of freedom.

While China has been economic freedom’s new, albeit imperfect laboratory, personal economic freedom in the United States is being slowly strangled by the state. More spending, more regulations, more rules, and, soon, the Obama tax hikes all contribute to a loss of individual freedoms and, collectively, to an economy bearing a much closer resemblance to floundering Japan than rising China.

Where economic freedom expands, growth follows. Where economic freedom is stifled, economies stagnate. Sadly, China’s former leaders understood this better than do its current leaders, or America’s.

It is remarkable that in our increasingly illiberal and freedom-less society, a brave dissident like J.D. Foster was nevertheless able to post such wisdom for the suffering masses.

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22 comments

I was under the impression China got wealthier by doing very cheaply what Americans used to do but lost, thanks to economic freedom. BUt China is a model of running efficient Olympic games

- NR027810

August 16, 2010 at 1:26pm

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There aren't very many mosques in China, either. Nor adoption by gay couples.

- miceelf

August 16, 2010 at 1:27pm

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Yes, Isaac, it's a miracle that J.D. Foster hasn't been arrested, carted off to Langley, Virginia, and tortured at CIA headquarters. We can only dream of Chinese freedom.

- liberal reformer

August 16, 2010 at 1:28pm

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Chinese do enjoy freedoms we don't, like being free to drink polluted water, free to breathe toxic air, free to feed their children poisoned milk and baby formula. They enjoy the freedom from having the ability to gripe about the government's heavy hand and they definitely are liberated from the freedom of bearing arms and threatening government officials by being armed at town hall meetings. Are these the freedoms Foster wishes for? Let's give those freedoms a shot here in America and then we can all discuss.

- tnmats

August 16, 2010 at 1:59pm

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tnmats: you negative nabob of negativity ... complain, complain, complain ... why won't you look at the Golden Age of American capitalism under McKinley and you will see how your complaints are just so much hooey. Besides, what you call "democratic" freedoms and rights, I simply call "liberalfascistcommunisthomo licence." Incidentally, it is of course NOT the Chinese Workers' Party, or the Political Bureau of the Communist Party that runs China. And China is, naturally, a perfect stomping ground for all religions, especially evangelical Christians. So of course we should emulate them.

- icarusr

August 16, 2010 at 2:05pm

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Let us not forget that China is still far, far, far more Socialistic in their enterprises then the US. There are countless SOE's in China (State owned enterprises) which receive funding and backing by the Central government. Mr. Foster is obviously an idiot.

- blackton

August 16, 2010 at 2:07pm

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By the way, are we sure this is not a cleverly disguised (heavily disguised) satire? I mean, I know NRO writers are braindead, when they have not been rectolobotomized, and that this sort of tripe is par for the course, but honest - this is going a bit too far down the looney tunes path. Even as satire, it would be heavy-handed and too-obvious-to-be-funny ... as it is, it demonstrates a level of cognitive horsemanure consumption that is remarkable.

- icarusr

August 16, 2010 at 2:07pm

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As it happens, I'm on my way to China right now. Once behind the Great Firewall, I won't be able to read tnr.com unless I can get through to my VPN. They have so much freedom over there, the government has to regulate the expression of ideas just to keep everyone from being confused by the limitless freedom they enjoy. In other words, J. D. Foster is being a moron, and I'd suggest a long visit to China to let him think about his words in greater depth. Do right-wingers do satire, Icarus? A comparison of Doonesbury and Mallard Fillmore suggests that they don't, even when they try.

- JEFF FREY

August 16, 2010 at 4:01pm

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"Let me ask you a question, who do you think has more freedom -- the married man in America or the single man in communist China? I gotta go for the single guy in communist China. It’s no contest. I mean, I’m a married guy in America: I can leave the country but I can’t leave my house. They can’t leave the country, but they can leave the house. I’ll go for that, I like that better." -- Larry David

- W_Bombay

August 16, 2010 at 4:31pm

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The quality of writing and thinking on the American right is really shocking. Especially compared to the British right and it's what, dare I say it, even contributed to the debate. Notably Red Tory thinking on social equality and Phillip Bond in particular http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2009/02/red-tory-blond-liberal. I was going to point out the blindingly obvious but Blackton beat me to it. Has anyone read this? http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/collapse "Ivy League professor, New York Times columnist, and Nobel laureate (the holy trinity of the liberal establishment)" "Its Leninist discipline has collapsed." This is high school writing.

- IggyPop

August 16, 2010 at 4:36pm

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What are the "Obama tax hikes?" Do you mean the tax rates that Bush pushed, and the Congress approved, back in 2001? Did they mean what they said when they did that?

- awalters

August 16, 2010 at 4:39pm

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awalters, you've got me, since Obama has actually cut taxes for more Americans than did Dubya. He's also signed into law the most significant expansion of federal firearms possession rights in recent history. The Obama administration is arresting and deporting more outlaw migrants than any previous administration, whether measured in absolute numbers or as a percentage of all outlaw migrants. Add to that the accelerated pace of capturing and especially killing terrorists, and Obama should be the right's wet dream: He cuts taxes, protects guns, deports illegals, and kills terrorists. What, exactly, is their problem?

- rhubarbs

August 16, 2010 at 4:51pm

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He's black, he's got a funny Muslim/Arab-y middle name, and he likes thinking.

- ironyroad

August 16, 2010 at 5:09pm

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Icy, it's "nattering nabob of negativity". You insulted me by not insulting me properly. Or something like that. I think?

- tnmats

August 16, 2010 at 5:30pm

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tnmats: wrote as I was preparing to get out for lunch ... my bad; I should get at least my insults right. Any way, it is not easy to quote Agnew/Saffire ... speaking of insults:"This is high school writing." A veritable insult to high schoolers. JEFF: "Do right-wingers do satire, Icarus?" A truly existential question. If one assumes that to be a true right-winger, one has to have undergone either a rectolobotomy or a massive head trauma at the age of three, then the obvious answer to your question is "no", because to do satire, you need a mildly functioning brain. And a (real) grade four education. Then again, you can take the entire right-wing/Tea Party movement as a massive per se satire, much like Mussolini, the Greek Colonels, or the Argentinean junta of 1976. Deadly to be sure, but a movement that is, in itself, a parody of itself.

- icarusr

August 16, 2010 at 5:42pm

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Irony: methinks you have reason. Especially on the "thinking" part.

- icarusr

August 16, 2010 at 5:42pm

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oy ... the gremlins are at it again ... Should finish with "per se satire, much like Mussolini, the Greek Colonels, or the Argentinean junta of 1976. Deadly to be sure, but in itself, a parody of itself."

- icarusr

August 16, 2010 at 5:45pm

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He's a black man. That's their problem.

- zardoz67

August 16, 2010 at 6:09pm

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It's pretty hard to spend much time in China, and not be impressed by the speed of rate of development, and the speed with which individual projects are executed. China will build a high speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai in roughly 24 months from launch; it will take California 20 years to do the same between San Francisco and Los Angeles. That's not because they have better engineers (although theirs are pretty much as good as ours anymore), or more access to capital. It's because there is no obstacle in China that cannot be bulldozed or bribed out of the way of a project that has official blessing. In terms of the Foster article, I would say that Chinese government and business have more freedom to manipulate their economy and regulations than do US government and business. But the Chinese people overall? In your dreams.

- IowaBeauty

August 16, 2010 at 6:32pm

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rhubarbs, the right's problem with Obama's tax cuts is that they benefit the wrong people.

- NR114746

August 16, 2010 at 9:38pm

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Hmm, as it turns out, tnr.com is no longer blocked by the Great Firewall, as it was in the past. Perhaps the "left" has been sucking up? ;-)

- JEFF FREY

August 17, 2010 at 8:11pm

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Re: Great Firewall and TNR. It seems that in the last year and a half the Great Firewall has become more blunt in some cases and more pinpointed in others. TNR and NYTimes are usually fully available, except for when you click on a link about China that uses forbidden words. This was probably done to present an image overall of making "progress" on censorship. But then there are the complete brain swipes. It's impossible to get Youtube or any Youtube video posted on a website. It makes sense, though. How can you censor images without actually looking at them? There's no way these homemade videos could get that kind of treatment. And so, they're all blocked. (Facebook and many blog-hosting sites are also blocked permanently.) As for government involvement in business in China, it's ALL based on government involvement. It seems to have been an efficient and useful model up to this point, but there's definitely a turning point coming. Virtually every industry is based upon information, technology and methods they've taken from outside the country. They're now obsessed with "innovation," but it continues to elude them. That's because, I think, they're convinced that innovation is something that can mimicked, like a process for assembling a vehicle. There's little understanding that, as John Stuart Mill argued, freedom of expression is necessary for the advancement of science, law and politics.

- wyattolson

August 17, 2010 at 9:47pm

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