A short history of Chinese corruption

By William H. Overholt, here is one wee bit:

Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao reversed much of this. With the population weary of market-oriented reforms, having seen over 50 million SOE jobs evaporate, market reforms ceased or receded. To cope with the global financial crisis, they poured money into the only institutions that could create rapid increases of production: big SOEs. The government and party bureaucracies nearly doubled. SOEs revived their pre-eminence. The 1990s campaign to increase competition dissipated. Senior military officers reverted to managing lucrative side businesses. Some top leaders and their families began making huge fortunes. The scale of graft became astronomic.

That is one way of thinking about why one should be worried about the economy of China.  That is via Bill Bishop.  The longer version of the piece, starting on p.22 here is interesting throughout.

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