Transcript: China Chat
Komesaroff: I think you're right. It is something we've not seen before, nonetheless, it's an evolutionary process and it takes longer to develop. Environmental laws are often criticized but when you examine them, the laws themselves are quite modern and are comparable to those of any Western society. The problem comes about through their implementation. And implementation and administration of those laws are complicated in part because you've got a fiscal decentralization where administrative functions are being fed off to people in the provinces and lower levels of government whose objectives are very different to those of the central government. One of the things that people are trying to do is to compress this transition into too short a period of time.
Lu: I think the state is committed to transforming its bureaucracy and institutions into one that is able to manage the new–whatever, the hybrid economy–I think the ultimate goal is to transform itself into something called a socialist market economy–it's market economy anyway. I think in the past 20 some years, especially the last 10 years the state is actively retreating. By that I'm including, of course, the Party itself too, as from the economic and indeed, some social affairs. But the problem for China is, it's a learning process as many previous commentators said, so it's a long process and remember, we're only . . . we're talking only 20 some years, so you would compare this 20 some years with say, the semi-historical trajectory in the West. For the Western established market institution it took more than a century in some places. And so, I think for China, there is a unique problem, that is the state, or the government role has been tremendous, has been huge so that to reduce itself and transform itself from a player to referee, it's not an easy process
Sigurdson: In a way, China has not an integrated economy and one can see China as a large number of the economies, but to some extent, independently acting. And this relationship from market economy and economic economy is working out different in different parts of the country. At the same time this is an experiment for different parts of the country. I was recently traveling for four months in northeast China. You have great changes there, but it is changing in different ways than southeast China.
Simon: One of the major issues is, basic decision-making authority has moved down to the local level. Even if Beijing comes up with what they think might be good policy, the reality is that the local level seems to want to move in its own direction and sometimes that's not consistent with the major themes. We've seen some of that in areas such as intellectual property, we've seen it in terms of WTO implementation.
Utley: Following up on this point again, many questions on the subject of the political evolution in China and Professor Xue and Lu let's go back to you on this. Of course, in the Western world, the United States, we hear the Bush slogans that "the free markets and democracy have to go hand-in-hand". We see greater freedoms in China but still stark limitations on many of the basic of freedoms, certainly political. Is there a scenario that you or others in China see evolving? Does the Chinese Party as some have suggested, become something along the lines of a single dominant power akin to the PRI Party in Mexico, which dominates but is not ideological and still maintains a certain control for decades? What's the best scenario you can see on this and what's the worst?
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