Evergrande illusions
At the height of the 2008 financial crisis I was invited to an off-the-record media lunch with a famous investor. I was taken aback when one of the world’s most successful capitalists announced that the crisis showed the Chinese had a superior economic model. China has tried something different from traditional capitalism, with its reliance on the ‘hidden hand’ of the free market. Since the first economic reforms in 1978, the heavy hand of the state has grown and modernized the economy with staggering results. If you believe the data, eight hundred million Chinese people no longer live in poverty and China has averaged 10 percent growth a year since reforms began.
