The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [48]
Central planning was not supposed to work. And in some sense it doesn’t, even in China. Beijing has much less knowledge and control of the rest of China than it would like and than outsiders recognize. One figure tells the story. The Chinese central government’s share of tax receipts is around 50 percent;3 the number for the U.S. federal government (a weak government by international standards) is nearly 70 percent. In other words, decentralized development is now the defining reality of economic and, increasingly, political life in China. To an extent, this loss of control is planned. The government has encouraged the blossoming of a real free market in many areas, opened the economy to foreign investment and trade, and used its membership in the World Trade Organization to force through reforms in its economy and society. Many of its successes (rising entrepreneurship) and its failures (declining health care) are the result of the lack of coordination between the center and the regions. This problem, of spiraling decentralization, will be China’s greatest challenge, and one to which we’ll return.
It is awkward to point out, but unavoidable: not having to respond to the public has often helped Beijing carry out its strategy. Other governments enviously looking on have taken note of this fact. Indian officials like to observe that their Chinese counterparts don’t have to worry about voters. “We have to do many things that are politically popular but are foolish,” said a senior member of the Indian government. “They depress our long-term economic potential. But politicians need votes in the short term. China can take the long view. And while it doesn’t do everything right, it makes many decisions that are smart and far-sighted.” This is evident in China’s current push in higher education. Recognizing that the country needs a better-trained workforce in order to move up the economic value chain, the central government committed itself to boosting scholarships and other types of aid in 2008 to $2.7 billion, up from $240 million in 2006. Officials expanded overall government spending on education, which was a measly 2.8 percent of GDP in 2006, to 4 percent in 2010, a large portion of which is devoted to a small number of globally competitive elite institutions. Such a focus would be impossible in democratic India, for example, where vast resources are spent on short-term subsidies to satisfy voters. (India’s elite educational institutions, by contrast, are under pressure to limit merit-based admissions and accept half their students on the basis of quotas and affirmative action.)
It is unusual for a nondemocratic government to have managed growth effectively for so long. Most autocratic governments quickly become insular, corrupt, and stupid—and preside over economic plunder and stagnation. The record of Marcos, Mobutu, and Mugabe is far more typical. (And lest one veers into cultural explanations, keep in mind that the record of the Chinese government under Mao was atrocious.) But in China today, the government, for all its faults, maintains a strong element of basic pragmatism and competence. “I’ve dealt with governments all over the world,” says a senior investment banker, “and the Chinese are probably the most impressive.” This view is broadly representative of business leaders who travel to China. “People have to . . . make their own value judgments against what they deem to be the greater good all the time,” Bill Gates told Fortune magazine in 2007. “I personally have found the Chinese leaders to be fairly thoughtful about these