The Chinese economic experiment shows that there are diminishing returns to a planned economy.
More trade with the rest of the world was supposed to have produced a more liberal China, both economically and politically. Instead, in the quarter-century since it officially joined the World Trade Organization, China has kept a pretty heavy hand in its economy — and has not, by any definition, become a liberal democracy. Meanwhile, the world’s liberal economies have become a lot less so.
In fact, there is a plausible argument that in recent years China has had more influence over US economic policy than the other way around. That’s unfortunate, not just because the Chinese economic model won’t work for the US, but because the US model was already working pretty well.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bloomberg Opinion (paywall)
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Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
