From “When China Rules the World” by Martin Jacques:
“…the Chinese state has always enjoyed a pivotal role in the economy and been universally accepted as the guardian and embodiment of society… the top 150 state-owned firms, far from being lame ducks, have instead become enormously profitable, the aggregate total of their profits $150 billion in 2007. ..The Chinese government has…exposed them to the fiercest competition both amongst themselves and with foreign firms.
“The leading state enterprises get help and assistance from their state benefactor but also have sufficient independence to be managed like private companies and can raise capital in the same way they do. …most of China’s best performing companies are to be found in the state sector.
“The emergent Chinese model bears witness to a new kind of capitalism where the state is hyperactive and omnipresent in a range of different ways and forms: in providing assistance out private firms, in a galaxy of state-owned enterprises, in managing the process by which the renminbi slowly evolves towards fully convertible status and, above all, in being the architect of economic strategy which has driven China’s economic transformation.”
While the right wing castigated President Barack Obama’s administration for rescuing General Motors, Chrysler and Citibank, the Chinese demonstrated what can be accomplished through a participation of government ownership with the goal of furthering the interests of society rather than that of predatory Wall Street financiers.
