{"id":4680,"date":"2010-01-19T15:45:36","date_gmt":"2010-01-19T20:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=4680"},"modified":"2010-01-19T15:45:36","modified_gmt":"2010-01-19T20:45:36","slug":"the-limits-of-chinas-economic-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=4680","title":{"rendered":"The Limits of China’s Economic Model"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Gross in Slate sees Google’s decision to stop acquiescing to the Chinese government<\/a> as a portent of troubles for the nation – as a sign of a problem that will undermine China’s global economic position going forward, pointing out that the political decision to censor and even alter history as it was, has consequences:<\/p>\n

Yes, Shanghai feels a lot like New York. But don’t presume that just because Americans and Chinese share a consuming culture that they also share a political one. As I stood in Tiananmen Square on a chilly November day, I turned to my guide. “That was really something, what happened here 20 years ago,” I said. “Yes,” he responded in his near-fluent English. “Those terrorists really killed a lot of soldiers.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gross sees the strength of China’s model:<\/p>\n

For the last 30 years, China has been testing a new, inverted model: breakneck economic development while retaining strict limits on personal liberty.\u00a0The Communist Party has wrenched the nation into the 21st<\/sup> century. The hardware is certainly impressive\u2014the maglev trains, shiny new airports, and modern skyscrapers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But he believes that manufacturing can only go so far – agreeing to some degree with David Brooks who describes the economic innovations of the future as being the result of a “protocol economy<\/a>.” Gross explains:<\/p>\n

And that’s the rub. Any type of political system can produce excellent hardware. The Soviet Union, which ruled Russia when Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born there in 1973, managed to produce nuclear weapons and satellites. Likewise, China has built truly impressive hardware: some 67 bridges now spanning the Yangtze River, a superfast supercomputer assembled entirely from parts made in China, high-speed trains. But in the 21st<\/sup> century, a country needs great software in order to thrive. It has to have a culture that facilitates the flow of information, not just goods.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Gross in Slate sees Google’s decision to stop acquiescing to the Chinese government as a portent of troubles for the nation – as a sign of a problem that will undermine China’s global economic position going forward, pointing out that the political decision to censor and even alter history as it was, has consequences: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1311,458,7],"tags":[1509,433,409,76,1932],"class_list":["post-4680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-the-opinionsphere","category-the-web","tag-daniel-gross","tag-david-brooks","tag-google","tag-slate","tag-tiananmen-square"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-1du","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4680"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4682,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680\/revisions\/4682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}