For a very long time, they tried it “our” way. It isn’t working out so well for them any longer, so in one sense you can’t blame them for seeking answers elsewhere. It was a good run while it lasted.
The big problem is that what “it” was wasn’t ever our way. Not really. The Chinese for decades followed not a free market paradigm but an orthodox Economics one. This is no trivial difference, as the latter is far more easily accomplished in a place like China. Economists do love their Keynes, a doctrine that falls on a different part of the same spectrum as Communism.
At the 17th Communist Party Congress way back in 2007, the idea of the “harmonious society” was in trying to strike some balance between growth and living with growth. Rapacious transformation had uglied for a great many the simple basics of human life. The Chinese understandably did not want to give up the economy for it, however.
In seeking that balance, the 17th Party Congress altered slightly Chinese communism. Party officials there going back to Mao had always sought to make sure of their distinct version of political, social, and economic doctrine. Communism in China wasn’t Communism in Russia and the Soviet Union, though you’d be forgiven for mistaking the vast similarities.
For a very long time, starting in the eighties and early nineties, there was an embrace of markets as if that would define China’s ideological difference. After the massacre at Tiananmen Square, as well as the fall of Soviet Russia, a more Western embrace seemed almost easy by comparison. That included total dollarization in money as well as economy. China opened a bit, and the “dollars” flowed in.
The 18th Communist Party Congress was sort of unique in that it was situated between that form of Chinese Communism and what is shaping up to be the next one; what is old is new again. Held in late 2012, government and political officials installed Xi Jinping on the basis of the same “harmonious society.” What was at odds then was the economy, it was sputtering somewhat contrary to all mainstream predictions of full and complete recovery from the global Great “Recession.”
That particular Congress assured the world that China was still committed to growth. The world in response breathed a collective sigh of relief because without the Chinese on board the global economy would (could) not get anywhere. The Western Economic playbook of “stimulus” still guided Chinese Communism; the recovery was delayed, they reasoned, so monetary and fiscal “stimulus” would be deployed a second time (2009 the first) to cushion the deficiency as well as assure its eventual arrival.
