Central Planning: China’s Miracle–and Malaise
The illusion created by the initial success of central planning is that it can continue indefinitely, when the reality is it’s unavoidably self-liquidating as the distortions unravel the entire economy.
China offers a real-time case study of the upsides and downsides of central planning, broadly defined as the central state establishing the goals, financing, incentives and regulatory structure for various sectors of the nation’s economy.
In the U.S., examples include the transformation of the American economy to wartime production in World War II, and the razing of inner city neighborhoods to build freeways in the 1960s. A swath wasn’t just bulldozed in one or two cities; it happened everywhere because the federal government established the funding and incentives.
Turning to China: those of us who were fortunate enough to visit China just before the “China miracle” took off recall the decrepit state of China’s housing stock, much of which was unchanged from the 19th century except for electrical wires strung haphazardly through dimly lit common areas.
Starting in the 1990s, China’s central government began selling land leases to ho
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
