In recent years, China’s “great transformation” into the world’s largest economy (based on purchasing power parity) has become enmeshed in a deepening confrontation with the US and the wider West. This dynamic reflects an outdated Cold War mindset on both sides that is utterly unsuited to today’s global challenges.
HONG KONG – In his 1944 classic The Road to Serfdom, the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek warned that central planning and public ownership would inevitably lead to hardship, oppression, and even tyranny, while free markets would naturally maximize general welfare. The same year, in The Great Transformation, the American-Hungarian economic historian Karl Polanyi offered a very different picture, arguing that market forces and society are locked in a kind of struggle: capitalists exploit society through free markets, and society pushes back through regulation and politics.
HONG KONG – In his 1944 classic The Road to Serfdom, the Austrian economist and philosopher Friedrich August von Hayek warned that central planning and public ownership would inevitably lead to hardship, oppression, and even tyranny, while free markets would naturally maximize general welfare. The same year, in The Great Transformation, the American-Hungarian economic historian Karl Polanyi offered a very different picture, arguing that market forces and society are locked in a kind of struggle: capitalists exploit society through free markets, and society pushes back through regulation and politics.