Since when does a supposed “capitalist” nation, which China now claims — wink, wink — to be, adopt five-year plans?
China’s Communist Party leadership, concluding its annual planning session, has approved a new economic blueprint intended to address the country’s yawning wealth gap and reduce “outstanding contradictions” that have led to outbreaks of social unrest.The president and Communist Party chief, Hu Jintao, put his oratorical stamp on China’s forthcoming five-year economic plan, his first since becoming the party’s leader in 2002. The work report describing the plan, read verbatim on the main evening newscast today, was filled with Mr. Hu’s slogans, such as building a “harmonious society” through “scientific development.”
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China’s market-oriented economy has partly outgrown the traditional five-year planning documents that used to control nearly all allocations of money, resources and talent. But the planning process is still closely watched because it reflects the priorities of the leadership, which controls the financial system and most strategic industries, like steel and energy.
So the government runs everything that matters. Remind me again how that’s “capitalism”?
As for those “outstanding contradictions” that are preventing the rise of a “harmonious society,” perhaps totalitarian five-year plans can’t solve those problems because they actually are the problem. History would suggest as much.
This latest variation on the Communist theme is the eleventh five-year plan the Chinese dictators have taken since rising to power. Explain to me again how China has “changed”?
