Systemic Transformation: Neoliberalism Meets the China Paradox

Abstract

Against the background of disappointments in world development, China’s sustained rapid economic growth in the era of globalization, over and above its respectable record in the previous decades, is not only phenomenal but also paradoxical. After all, China’s economic institutions and development policies have long been dismissed by the orthodox establishment of the world — represented by the Washington establishment and its associated doctrines known as the Washington Consensus — as seriously deviating from the free market economy. They have been dismissed as no more than market-distorters and crisis-makers. The fact that the authorities of the European Union, Japan, and the United States of America have sternly refused to grant their recognition of the ‘market economy’ status to China testifies to this dismissive attitude.¹