ABSTRACT
According to International Monetary Fund estimates, China’s gross domestic product has grown at an average rate of 9.91% per annum from 1978 to 2012. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Economic Outlook in April 2013 forecasts that China will surpass the US in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) adjusted for purchasing power parity by 2017. Gross domestic product projections in the next decade have sharpened this focus. In this context thinking about China has been largely of two types, both that more or less understand China in the context of neoliberalism. The first of these is the more business- or business studies-orientated literature, for example, of Will Hutton (2008) or Yasheng Huang (2005, 2008). This literature seems to argue that if China does not adapt the rule of law, of clear and distinct property and contract law, in line with Western institutions, that its economy will stall. The second set of voices are more clearly from the political left – from more academic books in sociology, cultural and urban studies, such as Mike Davis (2006) in Planet of the Slums, David Harvey (2005) in his Brief History of Neoliberalism and Aihwa Ong (2006). These voices argue that the Chinese economy and city – and Davis and Harvey are urbanists – is indeed neoliberal. For them, however, this is not the solution, but, indeed, the problem. They argue that China does not diverge widely from the Anglo–American model that from 2008 has brought the world economy to its knees. It is understandable that these analysts should think this because in fact China’s not-even-close to precedented 34-year long-wave of growth coincided with the end of the Cultural Revolution, the decline of Maoism and the rise of Deng Xiaoping. The rise of Deng in 1978 neatly coincided with the emergence of the Western neoliberalism of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan after their successful elections in 1979 and 1980, respectively. In the West, the rise of Thatcher and Reagan heralded the demise of social democracy, of some 30 years of social democratic hegemony – in China the demise of a Communist form of socialism.
