James Crabtree
What? No reforms?
The re-integration of China into the global economy without conflict is the most important, long-term strategic aim of the west. Underpinning it is a theory that China will, through the process of integration, gradually become a more free, more open and more liberal society. Its worrying then, argues Charles Grant in this month’s lead Opinion, that over the last couple of years China has both become more globally integrated, and much more authoritarian.
Grant, who runs the influential Centre for European Reform think tank, visited the country a few months back, and was dismayed to find various ways in which even the limited efforts of the “reformers” of the regime, including the current President and PM, were losing influence to shadowy figures in the communist party hierarchy.
The change has been driven by a mix of factors but in particular by the economic threat flowing from a global recession. Last month this authoritarian turn was seen not so much in the reaction taken by the state after the riots in Xing Xiang, but in the reaction of China’s online population seemed to feel that the state was insufficiently hardline. And, says Grant, you can now see China’s early attempts at limited social and economic reform being threatened in areas as divsere as the economic stimulus, industrial policy or internet censorship.
Mary Fitzgerald
Fred the Shred: a convenient scapegoat?
We are witnessing an unprecedented outpouring of anger at our political and financial elite, writes MG Zimeta in her web exclusive, free to read online this week. Fueled by the drip-feed of news about politicians’ embarrassing expense claims and the excessive bonuses paid to chairmen of banks bailed out by the taxpayer, our collective moral outrage has rarely seemed more intense.
But are we right in our rage? Or, in the furore about the failed morals of our political and financial institutions, are we in danger of compromising our own moral standing—and missing a valuable opportunity to fix what went wrong? What bankers and politicians most need, argues Zimeta, is not punishment but rehabilitation.
As always, weigh in with your thoughts and comments here.
Tom Chatfield
“Any great failure should force us to rethink,” begins Robert Skidelsky’s cover story for our new issue. And there can be few failures more lurid than the current crisis of the global financial system. It embodies, Skidelsky argues, a profound moral as well as a pragmatic failure—not only has an “intellectual edifice” toppled, but the world’s largely uncritical acceptance of the very idea of a system built on debt and leverage is wavering.
It is a long time since we’ve entered a new year facing such bleak global tidings. But, as Skidelsky argues, the question of what happens next is one that can yet be turned to the good of the world. As David Goodhart notes in his editorial this month, notions that until recently belonged to the fringe of global politics—that, for instance, globalisation has done little to increase wellbeing in rich countries—will now have their mainstream advocates. And discussions of “values” may well take more seriously questions of experience, loyalty and even old-fashioned moral integrity than the get-rich-quick analyses of investors and their abstract projections.
One way or another, as recession begins to bite, we will see a rebalancing of the global economy, and of the assumptions driving its participants. As Skidelsky argues, post-national finance and citizenship have already begun to look like utopian abstractions from another age. But their replacements may have more to offer the world than debt-fuelled growth seems at the moment to have done. We find ourselves, Skidelsky argues, dissatisfied with “the corruption of money.” But we may now have have an opportunity “to redress the balance between capital and impotent labour”—and regain some sense of values that will not, unlike bonds, collapse under the pressure of blind economic forces.
As ever, let us know your own thoughts and views below.
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