as for blasting Greenspan, the time to blast him was 1996, and NOBODY blasted him, he was Greenspan The Great.
"If China is really the new model of growth someone will have to explain how you can have innovation and entreprenuership without liberty." The REAL growth in China is not in the heart of China, it is the newly semi-free market , semi-democratic provinces that china is using as an experiment for slowly abandoning communism. Those places have had double digit growth for over a decade. In the mainland of china, they abandoned full employment practices and now have double digit unemployment. The unemployed are being encouraged to move to the semi-free provinces where there are jobs created.
How much of that growth is based on wage arbitrage in which China shops its artificially respressed labor costs to companies willing to relocate? I've talked with s few people sent to China by their companies. Everything is based on access: putting the nephew of some semi-big shot on your payroll etc... Is real entrepreneurship and innovation occurring in a place like that? When you pull back the carefully orchestrated lies, why wouldn't you end up with the economic equivalent of the SARS self-deception?
I enjoy Rogers small investor advocacy schtick almost as much as I enjoy Warren Buffett pretending to be everyman. (I don't invest in high tech because these new fangled tech things are too hard to understand. Then he turns around and buys Level 3.)
Liberties in China have expanded dramatically over the past thirty years and the momentum continues. Moreover, those who are familiar w/ the devastating social upheaval that China has been prone to over the last two centuries accepts that some degree of authoritarian control may be a necessary evil in the short-term. The Chinese are among the most entrepreneurial in the world. In the early stages of building a free economy based on low cost production, you don't need a whole lot of innovation. As a local manufacturer based in China, your customers will very likely teach you how to produce their products for them. The innovation part comes later ... plenty of growth in the meantime.
Yes, there is definitely real entreprenuership - and a tremendous amount of money being made - you would be surprised just how "capitalist" it really is. China is undergoing great change - it is so clear that you if you visited the place every months you would visibly notice the change. Although admittedly most of the growth is in the East. You are correct about everything based on access - but is that any different from the US? In fact it is the US investment banks out here that seem to do their best to try and employ relatives of the large mainland firms.
70% of the worlds construction cranes are now working in China, mostly in Shanghai. The country's on a serious roll.
I agree with Banjo , I recently returned from China and was amazed at what they call "marketing socialism" that we know as capitalism. This is not the China of even 10 years ago. Shanghai was amazing, the most modern city I ever saw and the bit about construction cranes seems true, and they are also considered the "unofficial" bird of Shanghai. DS