One hundred years of Communism

 

This is page 3 in today's SCMP. More "appalling waxworks"

24 years ago today, the "appalling old waxworks", China's leadership, welcomed Hong Kong into the bosom of the Motherland. We were here. John was about to enter the world in six weeks. The night before had poured down. The Queen's ship, Britannia, in its last voyage, steamed out of the harbour, Prince Charles, last Governor Chris Patten, et.al. on board, Charles scribbling that famous observation in a letter home.

The Communist party is patting itself on the back, aided by the acolytes and fellow travellers and grifters everywhere. They say it's down to the Communist Party that China has crushed poverty and made it the second largest economy in the world. 

I was in Beijing in 1976, when China was still on the lock-hold of the Communist party in it's original and classic mode. It was only when it pulled out of the economy that it took off. That was down to Deng Xiaoping, but also to someone who is almost forgotten: Zhao Ziyang. I can remember clearly when he introduced what he called the "Responsibility system" in agriculture, which amounted to letting the peasants decide themselves what, where and when to plant and where, when and what to raise. That led to immediate gains, with the lessons learnt spread to the rest of the economy over the coming years. But that was a "lesson" that only a communist party needed to "learn". For the existing market economies, there was then, and is now, no mystery. Leave economic decisions up the market and you get magic. 

Today China is successful to the exact extent to which it has allowed private business to operate and prosper. Where it has not -- in the 30% of the economy run as State Owned Enterprises -- inefficiency, corruption and lassitude reign. The private sector props them up via taxes to Beijing.

So, the celebrations -- understandable and inevitable as they are - are just so much faffery and fairy floss, looking fine but evanescent.