Here's some unconventional wisdom, J.P. The way I see it, the
free market bargain falls apart -- stops being rational -- if the
Chinese are able to liberalize their markets strongly enough to
fully participate in the international market without liberalizing their politics. The best way to do
this, in my analysis, is to delink social
policy from political policy.
How? China can grow progressively more 'permissive' when it
comes to 'personal freedoms' by transfering
the goods of that permissiveness away from the incentive structure
of a liberal political system and into the incentive structure of a
liberal economic system. If they succeed -- and I strongly suggest
that they've started to already -- the Chinese will change the
rational calculus that goes into the market theory of
liberalization. Why trade with partners that will remain political
opponents indefinitely? Why invest trust and risk into a trade
regime they dominate? China will also be able to take away the use
of markets as an American pressure point on domestic political
liberty (democratization, Tibet, human rights).
None of this augurs particularly well for the US, but it all
hinges on the ability of China to become what I've called elsewhere
a pink police state -- a politically
despotic regime that grants its subjects broader and deeper access
to pleasure-related economic and social goods in exchange for
letting its absolute rule go absolutely unchallenged.
topics:
Trade
About the Author
James Poulos is a doctoral student at Georgetown and the former Political Editor of Culture11. His writing has been published by The American Conservative, The National Interest, The New Atlantis, Partnership for a Secure America, and The Weekly Standard. In addition to AmSpecBlog, he has blogged at The American Scene, Doublethink, and Postmodern Conservative, which he founded. With degrees in political science and law from Duke and USC, he is currently at work on a dissertation about life after Napoleon. In his spare time he anti-blogs at Pish Tosh.
