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Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists Than We Do
The end of the cold war was thought to signal the triumph of Western capitalism over Communism. In Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Make Better Capitalists than We Do, Napoleoni argues just the opposite: what we are witnessing instead is the beginning of the collapse of capitalism and the victory of "communism with a profit motive." Maonomics charts the prodigious ascent of the Chinese economic miracle and the parallel course of the West’s ongoing insistence on misconstruing China and its economy even as we acknowledge its growing influence and importance. Maonomics is a warning call whereby Western governments can avoid economic collapse by learning how to understand more clearly what the lessons of the Chinese economy really are. Based on first-hand reporting from China during frequent visits in the last several years, Maonomics lends credence to the Chinese view and translates it for Western readers. For example, the Chinese too are attached to their vision of democracy, but it is different from ours. It isn’t focused as much on voting as it is economic opportunity and the fair distribution of wealth and prosperity. Napoleoni also separates failed Leninist political ideology from true Marxist theory, showing that Marx’s writings do not reject profit so long as it is used to benefit the people. Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat is being realized in China, she argues, where giant steps forward are being made in the name of progress and the wellbeing and prosperity of the Chinese people. Looking at the Chinese economy up close, any economist would be hard pressed to say that they are not on the right track. Here Loretta Napoleoni offers a front row seat on the greatest show on earth: the peaceful economic revolution that is shifting the balance of power in the world from West to East.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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205 people want to read
About the author
Loretta Napoleoni
24 books85 followersLoretta Napoleoni is the bestselling author of Maonomics, Rogue Economics, Terror Incorporated and Insurgent Iraq. She is an expert on terrorist financing and money laundering, and advises several governments and international organizations on counter-terrorism and money laundering. As Chairman of the countering terrorism financing group for the Club de Madrid, Napoleoni brought heads of state from around the world together to create a new strategy for combating the financing of terror networks.
Napoleoni is a regular media commentator for CNN, Sky and the BBC. She is among the few economists who predicted the credit crunch and the recession, and advises several banks on strategies to counter the current ongoing crisis. She lectures regularly around the world on economics, terrorism and money laundering.
Loretta is also a columnist and writes about terrorism, money laundering and the economy for several European financial papers including El Pais, The Guardian and Le Monde. In the 1990s she was among the first journalists to interview the Red Brigades, the Italian Marxist armed group. She subsequently spent three years interviewing members of other terrorist organizations. In 2003 she interviewed followers of al Zarqawi in both Europe and in the Middle East.
Born and raised in Rome, in the mid 1970s she became an active member of the feminist movement and a political activist. She was a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics. She has a PhD in economics and a Masters of Philosophy in international relations and one in terrorism.
She began her career as an economist, working for several banks and international organizations in Europe and the US. In the early 1980s she spent 2 years in Budapest at the National Bank of Hungary working on a project for the convertibility of the florin that ten years later became the blueprint for the convertibility of the rouble. In he 1980s she worked for a UK registered Russian Bank, Moscow Narodny Bank, which acted as the foreign branch of the Bank of Foreign Trade. This position afforded her a unique insight into the Soviet economy. In 1992 she produced the final documentation for the structure of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD. She teaches a course at Judge Business Schools, Cambridge.
Napoleoni ’s books include Modern Jihad (Pluto Press, London, 2003); Terror Inc. (Penguin, London, 2004); Insurgent Iraq (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2005); Terror Incorporated (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2005); Rogue Economics (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2008); Terror and the Economy (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2010) and Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Are Better Capitalists Than We Are (Seven Stories Press 2011) . Her latest book is the best seller Islamist Phoenix (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2014). “The IS doesn’t want to destroy. They want to build the 21st century version of the Calliphate and that is what makes them so dangerous”. Her books are translated into 18 languages including Chinese and Arabic. She lives in London and in the US with her husband and their four children.
Napoleoni is currently working at a book linking the post 9/11 Western foreign policy, the kidnapping and refugee crisis. Based upon original interviews with former hostages, negotiators, member of the crisis unit, kidnap owes and refugees, the book will unveil how post 9/11 Western foreign policy is responsible for the birth of a new breed of criminal and terrorist engaged in kidnapping of Westerners and trafficking migrants. Napoleoni defines these people Merchant of Men.
Napoleoni is a regular media commentator for CNN, Sky and the BBC. She is among the few economists who predicted the credit crunch and the recession, and advises several banks on strategies to counter the current ongoing crisis. She lectures regularly around the world on economics, terrorism and money laundering.
Loretta is also a columnist and writes about terrorism, money laundering and the economy for several European financial papers including El Pais, The Guardian and Le Monde. In the 1990s she was among the first journalists to interview the Red Brigades, the Italian Marxist armed group. She subsequently spent three years interviewing members of other terrorist organizations. In 2003 she interviewed followers of al Zarqawi in both Europe and in the Middle East.
Born and raised in Rome, in the mid 1970s she became an active member of the feminist movement and a political activist. She was a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics. She has a PhD in economics and a Masters of Philosophy in international relations and one in terrorism.
She began her career as an economist, working for several banks and international organizations in Europe and the US. In the early 1980s she spent 2 years in Budapest at the National Bank of Hungary working on a project for the convertibility of the florin that ten years later became the blueprint for the convertibility of the rouble. In he 1980s she worked for a UK registered Russian Bank, Moscow Narodny Bank, which acted as the foreign branch of the Bank of Foreign Trade. This position afforded her a unique insight into the Soviet economy. In 1992 she produced the final documentation for the structure of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD. She teaches a course at Judge Business Schools, Cambridge.
Napoleoni ’s books include Modern Jihad (Pluto Press, London, 2003); Terror Inc. (Penguin, London, 2004); Insurgent Iraq (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2005); Terror Incorporated (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2005); Rogue Economics (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2008); Terror and the Economy (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2010) and Maonomics: Why Chinese Communists Are Better Capitalists Than We Are (Seven Stories Press 2011) . Her latest book is the best seller Islamist Phoenix (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2014). “The IS doesn’t want to destroy. They want to build the 21st century version of the Calliphate and that is what makes them so dangerous”. Her books are translated into 18 languages including Chinese and Arabic. She lives in London and in the US with her husband and their four children.
Napoleoni is currently working at a book linking the post 9/11 Western foreign policy, the kidnapping and refugee crisis. Based upon original interviews with former hostages, negotiators, member of the crisis unit, kidnap owes and refugees, the book will unveil how post 9/11 Western foreign policy is responsible for the birth of a new breed of criminal and terrorist engaged in kidnapping of Westerners and trafficking migrants. Napoleoni defines these people Merchant of Men.
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April 6, 2020
There is a certain kind of joy in reading a non-fiction book with which you can wholly agree, such as The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. There is another, equally potent, form of joy to be found in reading a non-fiction book with which you partially agree, and which obliges you to think carefully about where precisely the points of disagreement lie. ‘Maonomics’ is the latter kind of book. It is polemic and journalistic rather than academic in style, prone to sweeping statements although it makes profound and subtle arguments in places. I picked it up off the library shelf more or less at random, as my card was getting worryingly empty and I’m fascinated by the paradox of Communist China’s capitalist success. The author is an Italian journalist who teaches economics at the Judge Business School in Cambridge. (Given her savaging of neoliberalism and the Chicago School, I can see why she isn’t in the economics department.) The book was originally written in Italian and the translation has the odd rough edge and awkward moment. For the most part, however, I think Napoleoni’s arguments come through pretty clearly.
I was initially disconcerted by the book’s thesis as articulated in the introduction. This includes the statement that without the profit motive, the communist countries had no growth incentive. While this may have become true by the 1980s, as I understand it targets, rivalry with America, and a culture of fear did allow Russia at least to grow rapidly from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrialised one. That’s a relatively minor point, however. What I found initially hard to swallow, though, was the idea that for China ‘democracy’ is capitalism, or rather vice versa; that economic freedom constitutes democracy there. This is one of the book’s main arguments and is advanced with more subtlety in later chapters. In part it is a matter of semantics - Napoleoni claims that the historical and cultural differences between China and the West result in a fundamentally different definition of the word ‘democracy’. This I can understand, especially as the Chinese Communist Party describes reportedly describes itself as democratic all the time. What I was less convinced of was a purely economic conception of democracy, which in fact smacks of neoliberal ‘consumer choice as empowerment’ rhetoric.
I wrote masses of notes while I was reading ‘Maonomics’, but looking back over them am ashamed to say that many were pedantic nitpicks. (eg ‘Page 227 - Hull has wolves now?!’) Looking beyond these quibbles, however, the strength of the book is its use of China to throw light on the weaknesses of Western economic and democratic institutions. Napoleoni makes extensive use of comparisons and juxtapositions, some of which are more effective than others. One interesting example that hasn’t aged well in the six years since the book was published uses Iceland as a case study of a bankrupt basket case. Yet Iceland re-wrote its constitution, punished its banking establishment as criminals, rejected neoliberal dogma, and has bounced back. Meanwhile Greece limps from bailout to bailout while austerity shreds the social fabric and breeds neo-fascism. On the other hand, the comparison of statecraft lessons from Machiavelli and Confucius was well done and illustrated a powerful point: in China politicians are willing to criticise themselves and admit to mistakes. Indeed, some are punished with the death penalty for corruption. This is not the same form of accountability as the West is accustomed to, rather it is something that we really do not have.
Although ‘Maonomics’ does not romanticise the Chinese economy and recounts horrific worker abuses, these are paralleled with the exploitation of 19th century Western industrialism. On the political front, I felt that China’s repressiveness was rather de-emphasised. That was the intent, of course, however it did not always seem appropriate. Napoleoni was on stronger ground when bitterly critiquing the US and Europe for our decadence (that term is used repeatedly). An incredible irony that I hadn’t grasped before, though, is that China’s growing economic strength in the face of Western doldrums could easily be linked to relative ideological dogmatism. While the Communists have put pragmatism over ideology and China uses a flexible form of state capitalism in which policy intervenes to correct obvious economics problems, the response to the 2007/8 banking crisis in Europe and the US was characterised by a refusal to admit that markets were failing. After massive bailouts, the financial system’s obvious dysfunction and systematic disregard for risk were not addressed via policy, due to dogmatic belief in free market economics manifested by political pressure exerted by the financial establishment. As Napoleoni puts it, while discussing the notorious Chicago Boys:
I also appreciated the likening of Lehman Brothers’ collapse to a Stalinist purge, the effect of which being ‘to get a few banks out of the way and increase the power of the surviving ones’. And although the comparison between 21st century America and the fall of the Roman Empire would have seemed like hyperbole to me when the book was published, in the era of Trump I can really see it. If ever there was an avatar of corrupt decadence, it would be Trump. It certainly seems plausible that, ‘the average Chinese [...] finds it difficult to look at America and see the superpower that it was in the twentieth century; it’s easier to classify it as a nation held hostage to Wall Street and to the neoconservative ghosts of the past’. Perhaps ‘the neo-fascist ghosts of the past’ might be more appropriate for 2017, though.
Despite this deluge of critique, ‘Maonomics’ is trying to be an optimistic book, even seeking a way past Fukuyama’s End of History by setting China up as the herald of a new and better political economy. While this may not currently exist, Napoleoni argues that, ‘Since Deng’s time, the Chinese have kept themselves busy looking for it, trying out political alternatives; we don’t even look anymore.’ Indeed we scarcely do, however this begs the question of whether China’s alternatives are ways in which we want to live. The recent turn towards renewable energy is laudable, and this book lauds it. Less discussed is the truly appalling, indeed unbelievable environmental toll that industrialisation has taken on the physical environment and health of China. Can the unbreathable air, contaminated water, poisoned land, encroaching desert, biodiversity loss, and changing climate be justified? Is it possible to recover from the scale of damage that has occurred in such a short time? Is the wealth worth it?
One of the most striking things I’ve read about China came from the book Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, which asked, ‘What in China isn’t a sovereign wealth fund?’ The financial establishment of China is part of the government, thus wrangles between special interests take place within that structure. Does this better reflect the public interest, or is it simply another form for oligarchy to take? What is the public good and can enlightened bureaucrats really pinpoint it in the absence of means for the public to make themselves heard? ‘Maonomics’ claims that Western politics has become voyeuristic rather than participatory, a point also made by Ghosh in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. However, the argument that politics is genuinely participatory in China rests on that participation taking forms that, basically, we in West don’t understand and that co-exist with arbitrary state repression of dissent. This book did not give the me sufficient evidence to believe in this participation, although I would like to think that China is gently evolving towards it and away from repression. Can workers form unions? Denounce corrupt officials without fear of reprisals? Publish press articles critical of government policy? ...Can we do these things in any meaningful fashion here in the UK?
I agree with Napoleoni that the West’s condemnation of ‘human rights abuses’ in China is hypocritical, patronising, and based on extremely shaky moral authority. This doesn’t mean that said abuses should not be condemned, though, and it got me thinking about human rights. I find their discussion in the UK is often very muddled by misunderstanding of their actual existence in law. Although the media and popular culture often frame them as a conflict between individuals, actually human rights can only be enforced against the state under UK law. Say, for example, a retailer of wedding products refuses to sell them to a gay couple due to homophobia. The law does not arbitrate between the retailer’s ‘right’ to discriminate vs the gay couple’s ‘right’ to not be refused service. Human rights law concerns the state’s involvement: has the government neglected to protect the gay couple’s right to fair treatment by allowing discriminatory loopholes in commercial law?
I am not an expert and this is obviously a simplification, what I’m trying to say is that human rights are often assumed to be synonymous with individual rights. This conception is obviously rooted in the Western individualistic capitalist ethos. Personally, I believe that human rights are deeply important because they are about protecting vulnerable groups from discriminatory practises by governments. In themselves, laws cannot transform a discriminatory culture, however they can offer some protection from populist scapegoating and influence social mores. Their roots in the genocides of WWII are far too easily brushed aside these days and attacks on the principle of human rights by the right wing British political establishment are deeply worrying. Going back to China: before we talk about human rights abuses, we need to understand clearly what we mean by human rights and by their abuse. Teresa May (however long she ends up being PM) simply cannot condemn abuse of human rights abroad while declaring that she’ll sweep them aside at home. At the same time, China’s rule of law may be getting stronger, but it still has a very long way to go and certainly should not be above critique. Neither should the West.
To my mind, the validity of the book’s ideas about China, and the extent to which its political economy genuinely presents a remotely desirable, let alone superior, structure compared to that of the US and Europe depend on two main questions.
Firstly, the extent to which the governing class of China is genuinely a meritocratic professional cadre held to account or whether it is a bunch of kleptocratic oligarchs dispensing wealth and favours to their families. Much of what I’ve read about China (including Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise) has argued for the latter, which Napoleoni claims is due to Western propagandising mired in our colonialist legacy and dismissal of alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. The trouble is, without adequate information it is impossible to determine the real situation. Is China lacking in transparency because its politics are wholly corrupt, or am I blinded by Western assumptions as to its true nature and unable to locate information about this because I don’t know where to look? This book claims that there are ‘strong firewalls’ between politics and business. Is this true?
Secondly, can the suppression of dissent and significant limitations on behaviour and speech leave space for anything meriting the name ‘democracy’? Has the term, like ‘liberal’, become so debased that it means everything and nothing? Napoleoni argues that China is slowly allowing more freedom, that investigative journalism is expanding (despite the imprisonment of journalists), and that civil society thrives. Here semantics become a real problem: Napoleoni does not define ‘democracy’, but leaves the reader to do so. This opens up an interesting and important debate about the extent to which the US and European states can still call themselves democracies. However it does not convince me that China is necessarily democratic in any meaningful fashion. The fact is, the Communist government still conducts arbitrary repression. The book asks, ‘Who governs China?’ and answers that it is a broadly representative class of civil servants chosen meritocratically, who respond to the population’s concerns. Is this true either?
Following on from this, however, is a further and more profound question reflected in the original title Napoleoni wanted to use for the book, as mentioned in the acknowledgements: ‘Marx Won’. She believes, or at least claims in this book, that the Chinese Communist Party is following Marx’s analysis of the stages in the economic development of a country. To generalise, after a period of industrialisation that exploits workers yet generates wealth, the dictatorship of proletariat can rise, the workers can take control of the means of production, and, through some hazy process, the state can wither away leading to full communism. So the question is: can we believe that the Communist Party is playing the long Marxist game? Are they controlling China’s economic development in order to generate wealth that would allow for a genuinely communist state? If you think like someone who has always lived in a free market capitalist country (as I have), you can only cynically assume that this is impossible. It smacks of mad conspiracy theory to assume other than a Chinese oligarchy enriching themselves for their own sake, rather than with grandiose and long term ideological intentions. Moreover, the question fragments into many parts: if you accept that the CCP may genuinely be working towards a long-term plan, how rigid is it? Does it involve specific socio-political structures, or mere avoidance of the West’s mistakes? Will China Mountain Zhang turn out to be prophetic?
But how different might my view of all this be if I’d grown up in China? Flawed as it undoubtedly is, I can't deny that ‘Maonomics’ challenged a lot of my assumptions about China, induced a great deal of thought, and provoked me to write more than two thousand words.
I was initially disconcerted by the book’s thesis as articulated in the introduction. This includes the statement that without the profit motive, the communist countries had no growth incentive. While this may have become true by the 1980s, as I understand it targets, rivalry with America, and a culture of fear did allow Russia at least to grow rapidly from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrialised one. That’s a relatively minor point, however. What I found initially hard to swallow, though, was the idea that for China ‘democracy’ is capitalism, or rather vice versa; that economic freedom constitutes democracy there. This is one of the book’s main arguments and is advanced with more subtlety in later chapters. In part it is a matter of semantics - Napoleoni claims that the historical and cultural differences between China and the West result in a fundamentally different definition of the word ‘democracy’. This I can understand, especially as the Chinese Communist Party describes reportedly describes itself as democratic all the time. What I was less convinced of was a purely economic conception of democracy, which in fact smacks of neoliberal ‘consumer choice as empowerment’ rhetoric.
I wrote masses of notes while I was reading ‘Maonomics’, but looking back over them am ashamed to say that many were pedantic nitpicks. (eg ‘Page 227 - Hull has wolves now?!’) Looking beyond these quibbles, however, the strength of the book is its use of China to throw light on the weaknesses of Western economic and democratic institutions. Napoleoni makes extensive use of comparisons and juxtapositions, some of which are more effective than others. One interesting example that hasn’t aged well in the six years since the book was published uses Iceland as a case study of a bankrupt basket case. Yet Iceland re-wrote its constitution, punished its banking establishment as criminals, rejected neoliberal dogma, and has bounced back. Meanwhile Greece limps from bailout to bailout while austerity shreds the social fabric and breeds neo-fascism. On the other hand, the comparison of statecraft lessons from Machiavelli and Confucius was well done and illustrated a powerful point: in China politicians are willing to criticise themselves and admit to mistakes. Indeed, some are punished with the death penalty for corruption. This is not the same form of accountability as the West is accustomed to, rather it is something that we really do not have.
Although ‘Maonomics’ does not romanticise the Chinese economy and recounts horrific worker abuses, these are paralleled with the exploitation of 19th century Western industrialism. On the political front, I felt that China’s repressiveness was rather de-emphasised. That was the intent, of course, however it did not always seem appropriate. Napoleoni was on stronger ground when bitterly critiquing the US and Europe for our decadence (that term is used repeatedly). An incredible irony that I hadn’t grasped before, though, is that China’s growing economic strength in the face of Western doldrums could easily be linked to relative ideological dogmatism. While the Communists have put pragmatism over ideology and China uses a flexible form of state capitalism in which policy intervenes to correct obvious economics problems, the response to the 2007/8 banking crisis in Europe and the US was characterised by a refusal to admit that markets were failing. After massive bailouts, the financial system’s obvious dysfunction and systematic disregard for risk were not addressed via policy, due to dogmatic belief in free market economics manifested by political pressure exerted by the financial establishment. As Napoleoni puts it, while discussing the notorious Chicago Boys:
One imagined it was possible to wipe the slate clean and redesign the world. Instead, the hunt for fast and easy wealth via financial instruments has become so hysterical that we’ve stopped noticing the latest disasters these so-called free systems have been amply demonstrated to cause.
I also appreciated the likening of Lehman Brothers’ collapse to a Stalinist purge, the effect of which being ‘to get a few banks out of the way and increase the power of the surviving ones’. And although the comparison between 21st century America and the fall of the Roman Empire would have seemed like hyperbole to me when the book was published, in the era of Trump I can really see it. If ever there was an avatar of corrupt decadence, it would be Trump. It certainly seems plausible that, ‘the average Chinese [...] finds it difficult to look at America and see the superpower that it was in the twentieth century; it’s easier to classify it as a nation held hostage to Wall Street and to the neoconservative ghosts of the past’. Perhaps ‘the neo-fascist ghosts of the past’ might be more appropriate for 2017, though.
Despite this deluge of critique, ‘Maonomics’ is trying to be an optimistic book, even seeking a way past Fukuyama’s End of History by setting China up as the herald of a new and better political economy. While this may not currently exist, Napoleoni argues that, ‘Since Deng’s time, the Chinese have kept themselves busy looking for it, trying out political alternatives; we don’t even look anymore.’ Indeed we scarcely do, however this begs the question of whether China’s alternatives are ways in which we want to live. The recent turn towards renewable energy is laudable, and this book lauds it. Less discussed is the truly appalling, indeed unbelievable environmental toll that industrialisation has taken on the physical environment and health of China. Can the unbreathable air, contaminated water, poisoned land, encroaching desert, biodiversity loss, and changing climate be justified? Is it possible to recover from the scale of damage that has occurred in such a short time? Is the wealth worth it?
One of the most striking things I’ve read about China came from the book Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, which asked, ‘What in China isn’t a sovereign wealth fund?’ The financial establishment of China is part of the government, thus wrangles between special interests take place within that structure. Does this better reflect the public interest, or is it simply another form for oligarchy to take? What is the public good and can enlightened bureaucrats really pinpoint it in the absence of means for the public to make themselves heard? ‘Maonomics’ claims that Western politics has become voyeuristic rather than participatory, a point also made by Ghosh in The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. However, the argument that politics is genuinely participatory in China rests on that participation taking forms that, basically, we in West don’t understand and that co-exist with arbitrary state repression of dissent. This book did not give the me sufficient evidence to believe in this participation, although I would like to think that China is gently evolving towards it and away from repression. Can workers form unions? Denounce corrupt officials without fear of reprisals? Publish press articles critical of government policy? ...Can we do these things in any meaningful fashion here in the UK?
I agree with Napoleoni that the West’s condemnation of ‘human rights abuses’ in China is hypocritical, patronising, and based on extremely shaky moral authority. This doesn’t mean that said abuses should not be condemned, though, and it got me thinking about human rights. I find their discussion in the UK is often very muddled by misunderstanding of their actual existence in law. Although the media and popular culture often frame them as a conflict between individuals, actually human rights can only be enforced against the state under UK law. Say, for example, a retailer of wedding products refuses to sell them to a gay couple due to homophobia. The law does not arbitrate between the retailer’s ‘right’ to discriminate vs the gay couple’s ‘right’ to not be refused service. Human rights law concerns the state’s involvement: has the government neglected to protect the gay couple’s right to fair treatment by allowing discriminatory loopholes in commercial law?
I am not an expert and this is obviously a simplification, what I’m trying to say is that human rights are often assumed to be synonymous with individual rights. This conception is obviously rooted in the Western individualistic capitalist ethos. Personally, I believe that human rights are deeply important because they are about protecting vulnerable groups from discriminatory practises by governments. In themselves, laws cannot transform a discriminatory culture, however they can offer some protection from populist scapegoating and influence social mores. Their roots in the genocides of WWII are far too easily brushed aside these days and attacks on the principle of human rights by the right wing British political establishment are deeply worrying. Going back to China: before we talk about human rights abuses, we need to understand clearly what we mean by human rights and by their abuse. Teresa May (however long she ends up being PM) simply cannot condemn abuse of human rights abroad while declaring that she’ll sweep them aside at home. At the same time, China’s rule of law may be getting stronger, but it still has a very long way to go and certainly should not be above critique. Neither should the West.
To my mind, the validity of the book’s ideas about China, and the extent to which its political economy genuinely presents a remotely desirable, let alone superior, structure compared to that of the US and Europe depend on two main questions.
Firstly, the extent to which the governing class of China is genuinely a meritocratic professional cadre held to account or whether it is a bunch of kleptocratic oligarchs dispensing wealth and favours to their families. Much of what I’ve read about China (including Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise) has argued for the latter, which Napoleoni claims is due to Western propagandising mired in our colonialist legacy and dismissal of alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. The trouble is, without adequate information it is impossible to determine the real situation. Is China lacking in transparency because its politics are wholly corrupt, or am I blinded by Western assumptions as to its true nature and unable to locate information about this because I don’t know where to look? This book claims that there are ‘strong firewalls’ between politics and business. Is this true?
Secondly, can the suppression of dissent and significant limitations on behaviour and speech leave space for anything meriting the name ‘democracy’? Has the term, like ‘liberal’, become so debased that it means everything and nothing? Napoleoni argues that China is slowly allowing more freedom, that investigative journalism is expanding (despite the imprisonment of journalists), and that civil society thrives. Here semantics become a real problem: Napoleoni does not define ‘democracy’, but leaves the reader to do so. This opens up an interesting and important debate about the extent to which the US and European states can still call themselves democracies. However it does not convince me that China is necessarily democratic in any meaningful fashion. The fact is, the Communist government still conducts arbitrary repression. The book asks, ‘Who governs China?’ and answers that it is a broadly representative class of civil servants chosen meritocratically, who respond to the population’s concerns. Is this true either?
Following on from this, however, is a further and more profound question reflected in the original title Napoleoni wanted to use for the book, as mentioned in the acknowledgements: ‘Marx Won’. She believes, or at least claims in this book, that the Chinese Communist Party is following Marx’s analysis of the stages in the economic development of a country. To generalise, after a period of industrialisation that exploits workers yet generates wealth, the dictatorship of proletariat can rise, the workers can take control of the means of production, and, through some hazy process, the state can wither away leading to full communism. So the question is: can we believe that the Communist Party is playing the long Marxist game? Are they controlling China’s economic development in order to generate wealth that would allow for a genuinely communist state? If you think like someone who has always lived in a free market capitalist country (as I have), you can only cynically assume that this is impossible. It smacks of mad conspiracy theory to assume other than a Chinese oligarchy enriching themselves for their own sake, rather than with grandiose and long term ideological intentions. Moreover, the question fragments into many parts: if you accept that the CCP may genuinely be working towards a long-term plan, how rigid is it? Does it involve specific socio-political structures, or mere avoidance of the West’s mistakes? Will China Mountain Zhang turn out to be prophetic?
But how different might my view of all this be if I’d grown up in China? Flawed as it undoubtedly is, I can't deny that ‘Maonomics’ challenged a lot of my assumptions about China, induced a great deal of thought, and provoked me to write more than two thousand words.
October 26, 2012
Maonomics would be more appropriately titled “Unbreakable China; Broken English” because it focuses on the wonderful attributes of China (including why Tiananmen Square was necessary) and the many, many faults of the West (including our lack of press freedom compared to China’s). In fact the majority of the book is spent on the West’s faults, and to the extent China’s economic model is discussed, it is decidedly not Mao’s but rather Deng’s that is exalted. Maonomics has a better ring to it than Dengomics, but unfortunately the poor title choice is just one symptom of a poorly executed and unfocused work.
While Napoleoni makes many good points, and may even be basing them on sound theory, the book as a whole is unfocussed and unsatisfying. The central problem is that Napoleoni’s thesis is preconceived and then supported with disparate ideas, selectively drawn from an extremely wide range of facts and unsubstantiated opinions. The result is quite different from a thesis borne out of intimate knowledge of the data and a keen mind for synthesizing the information into cogent arguments. Maonomics is more like a very long undergraduate essay than a finely honed work drawn from a lifetime of experience and research, such as Professor Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel”.
Still, there are bright spots. The author does an excellent job of framing some the West’s problems, specifically: monothematic economic thinking; excesses in financial sector profit that are inconsistent with “all economic theories of stability”; environmental and health issues that can’t be solved by individuals, but which have been abdicated by governments (specifically the US in the second case); and in particular her analysis of the shift in power and control of political parties in the west away from the membership and toward the elite. (Her strong left leaning tendencies do drift often to hyperbole, citing for example “… markets’ incapacity to replace the state as the principle engine of society.” A sweeping but debatable statement, but gentler than the wild conspiracy theories of Naomi Klein.)
Napoleoni spends some time on Marx, and in particular the differences between Chinese and Western economic philosophies, drawing in briefly the Sharia model of finance as another valid and substantially different alternative to emphasize the point. With respect to monothematic economic thinking, she notes specifically our wholesale but mistaken discarding of Marx’s economics as a valid model, as demonstrated by Westerners’ confusion of Marx’s economic ideas with the Leninist and Stalinist governance models we fought so hard against during the Cold War.
Despite this good work, though, Napoleoni falls into the same trap she notes with respect to Marx’s economics and Russia’s now discarded political model, more than once confusing the monetarist economics of Milton Friedman and the murderous politics of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet as he tried to implement Friedman’s policies. Another contradiction occurs when she contends that emerging markets savings are used to buy bonds of IBM and other western companies, causing markets to rise falsely even in a period of falling profits (the profit claim is an error in itself), and later contends that the same savings in China are a domestic strength and that China needs to develop its own bond market. Money invested in the bond market is bad in one context and good in another; a symptom of her lack of knowledge and her methodology – trying to prove a thesis by pulling in different sources that seem to fit, rather than understanding the data and theory and developing a thesis from there.
Napoleoni’s book is also filled with hyperbole: shiny, new, vibrant Shanghai versus the decadent and tired western capitals; rising number of suicides in the west as proof of decay; examples of how the west violates human rights and China supports them; western politicians encouraging us to spend money we don’t have – a “now obsolete consumerist model”; and bodies flying out of windows in The Great Crash of 1929 (an image discounted by Galbraith in his excellent book of the same title). It is filled with inaccuracies too, from minutia that should have been caught in fact checking (misquoting Bill Clinton’s statement about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and claiming Long Term Capital Management was the first US hedge fund), to fundamental misunderstandings of where investment banks derive the majority of their profits (not from T-Bills, as she claims), how interest rates work (claiming George W. Bush lowered interest rates), and even the current inflation rate (it is not excessive now as she claims). Finally, the book is also riddled with selective morality: consumerism in the west is bad, but 135 workers burned alive in Shenzen is a catalyst for modernization and growth.
Unfortunately the author is out of her depth in this book, and the result is a poorly written and very frustrating book. Spend your time elsewhere.
While Napoleoni makes many good points, and may even be basing them on sound theory, the book as a whole is unfocussed and unsatisfying. The central problem is that Napoleoni’s thesis is preconceived and then supported with disparate ideas, selectively drawn from an extremely wide range of facts and unsubstantiated opinions. The result is quite different from a thesis borne out of intimate knowledge of the data and a keen mind for synthesizing the information into cogent arguments. Maonomics is more like a very long undergraduate essay than a finely honed work drawn from a lifetime of experience and research, such as Professor Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel”.
Still, there are bright spots. The author does an excellent job of framing some the West’s problems, specifically: monothematic economic thinking; excesses in financial sector profit that are inconsistent with “all economic theories of stability”; environmental and health issues that can’t be solved by individuals, but which have been abdicated by governments (specifically the US in the second case); and in particular her analysis of the shift in power and control of political parties in the west away from the membership and toward the elite. (Her strong left leaning tendencies do drift often to hyperbole, citing for example “… markets’ incapacity to replace the state as the principle engine of society.” A sweeping but debatable statement, but gentler than the wild conspiracy theories of Naomi Klein.)
Napoleoni spends some time on Marx, and in particular the differences between Chinese and Western economic philosophies, drawing in briefly the Sharia model of finance as another valid and substantially different alternative to emphasize the point. With respect to monothematic economic thinking, she notes specifically our wholesale but mistaken discarding of Marx’s economics as a valid model, as demonstrated by Westerners’ confusion of Marx’s economic ideas with the Leninist and Stalinist governance models we fought so hard against during the Cold War.
Despite this good work, though, Napoleoni falls into the same trap she notes with respect to Marx’s economics and Russia’s now discarded political model, more than once confusing the monetarist economics of Milton Friedman and the murderous politics of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet as he tried to implement Friedman’s policies. Another contradiction occurs when she contends that emerging markets savings are used to buy bonds of IBM and other western companies, causing markets to rise falsely even in a period of falling profits (the profit claim is an error in itself), and later contends that the same savings in China are a domestic strength and that China needs to develop its own bond market. Money invested in the bond market is bad in one context and good in another; a symptom of her lack of knowledge and her methodology – trying to prove a thesis by pulling in different sources that seem to fit, rather than understanding the data and theory and developing a thesis from there.
Napoleoni’s book is also filled with hyperbole: shiny, new, vibrant Shanghai versus the decadent and tired western capitals; rising number of suicides in the west as proof of decay; examples of how the west violates human rights and China supports them; western politicians encouraging us to spend money we don’t have – a “now obsolete consumerist model”; and bodies flying out of windows in The Great Crash of 1929 (an image discounted by Galbraith in his excellent book of the same title). It is filled with inaccuracies too, from minutia that should have been caught in fact checking (misquoting Bill Clinton’s statement about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, and claiming Long Term Capital Management was the first US hedge fund), to fundamental misunderstandings of where investment banks derive the majority of their profits (not from T-Bills, as she claims), how interest rates work (claiming George W. Bush lowered interest rates), and even the current inflation rate (it is not excessive now as she claims). Finally, the book is also riddled with selective morality: consumerism in the west is bad, but 135 workers burned alive in Shenzen is a catalyst for modernization and growth.
Unfortunately the author is out of her depth in this book, and the result is a poorly written and very frustrating book. Spend your time elsewhere.
October 6, 2012
I enjoyed reading this book. Its most interesting idea is that the communist state may be perceived as more democratic in its own way than the West. China is an enigma on many levels. Westerners apply various points of reference to explain to themselves what exactly happens in this country. Napoleoni goes back in history, analyses the culture as a whole, looks at positive and negative factors and comes to a conclusion that China created a unique model of succeeding in the 21st century. While Europe and America are struggling with the current financial crisis, China concentrates on its own huge inner market, new energy sources and steadily improves the average standard of life for its citizens. The author acknowledges the level of corruption, inequality and pollutions in China; she does not dismiss many contradictions in commicapitalist country. At the same time she talks about the rise of racism in Europe, the endless wars that America fights in the Middle East and difficulties that European Union faces today. There are so many unexpected ideas in this book, that its reads like a good thriller.
January 16, 2015
Interessant anàlisi del capitalisme i del sistema polític occidental des de la perspectiva xinesa. Tot i això, és molt superficial pel que fa a la qualitat i quantitat de informació sobre la estructura institucional xinesa. Sovint s'utilitzen afirmacions i comparacions relativament poc contrastables.
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February 17, 2022Il fatto positivo è che c'è un libro destinato alla larga diffusione che evade dalla narrazione della Cina nazione maligna, venduta al capitalismo, colonizzatrice dell'Africa e che precipiterà il mondo nella tirannia e tutte le altre nefandezze da best seller rampiniano.
In più si spala un po' di sano letame su Reagan, sulla Tatcher e sul neoliberismo, e si trova anche un po' di spazio per demistificare un po' Obama.
Ottimo e abbondante.
Il problema è il resto. Napoleoni si inventa la categoria "capi-comunismo" di cui però non si comprendono bene i termini. Tenta di scostarlo dal "turbo capitalismo senza liberalizzazione politica" con cui ci hanno imbottito la testa per 30 anni, ma non riesce a dare una visione sistemica del tutto.
In questo senso, sarò monotematico ma titoli come "Dickens a Shenzhen" mi portano alla mente una polemica sviluppata sottotraccia contro l'Arrighi di Adam Smith a Pechino, problematico quanto si vuole, ma che quantomeno cercava di sistematizzare e polemizzava alla luce del sole.
La parte veramente deleteria è il confronto tra le culture politiche occidentali e orientali, ridotto ad un confronto tra delle versioni banalizzate di Machiavelli e Confucio. Da una parte una Machiavelli dipinto come teorico del potere assoluto che governa attraverso il crimine. Dall'altra un Confucio che descrive una società quasi idilliaca, che magari corrisponderà a certe visioni di Hu Jintao sulla "società armoniosa, ma non rende giustizia alla realtà della storia politica cinese, nel bene e nel male (come d'altronde la storia politica europea non è ascrivibile a quello che la vulgata chiama "machiavellismo", eccheccavolo!).
Semplificazioni dettate dall'urgenza di scrivere un volume accessibile al pubblico non specialista? Magari anche, ma si poteva essere decisamente più rigorosi, o quantomeno lasciare da parte certe velleità nell'impostare descrizioni sui massimi sistemi poi lasciate a metà.
In più si spala un po' di sano letame su Reagan, sulla Tatcher e sul neoliberismo, e si trova anche un po' di spazio per demistificare un po' Obama.
Ottimo e abbondante.
Il problema è il resto. Napoleoni si inventa la categoria "capi-comunismo" di cui però non si comprendono bene i termini. Tenta di scostarlo dal "turbo capitalismo senza liberalizzazione politica" con cui ci hanno imbottito la testa per 30 anni, ma non riesce a dare una visione sistemica del tutto.
In questo senso, sarò monotematico ma titoli come "Dickens a Shenzhen" mi portano alla mente una polemica sviluppata sottotraccia contro l'Arrighi di Adam Smith a Pechino, problematico quanto si vuole, ma che quantomeno cercava di sistematizzare e polemizzava alla luce del sole.
La parte veramente deleteria è il confronto tra le culture politiche occidentali e orientali, ridotto ad un confronto tra delle versioni banalizzate di Machiavelli e Confucio. Da una parte una Machiavelli dipinto come teorico del potere assoluto che governa attraverso il crimine. Dall'altra un Confucio che descrive una società quasi idilliaca, che magari corrisponderà a certe visioni di Hu Jintao sulla "società armoniosa, ma non rende giustizia alla realtà della storia politica cinese, nel bene e nel male (come d'altronde la storia politica europea non è ascrivibile a quello che la vulgata chiama "machiavellismo", eccheccavolo!).
Semplificazioni dettate dall'urgenza di scrivere un volume accessibile al pubblico non specialista? Magari anche, ma si poteva essere decisamente più rigorosi, o quantomeno lasciare da parte certe velleità nell'impostare descrizioni sui massimi sistemi poi lasciate a metà.
May 28, 2020
Loreta Napoleoni apresenta pela perspectiva chinesa, uma visão crítica do nosso capitalismo e das nossas democracias, explana como a China um país comunista cresce tanto.
Um otimo livro que nos faz refletirmos, se a China sendo um país comunista com esse crescimento exorbitante, então nos perguntemos: O comunismo (nos moldes chinês) pode funcionar?
Um otimo livro que nos faz refletirmos, se a China sendo um país comunista com esse crescimento exorbitante, então nos perguntemos: O comunismo (nos moldes chinês) pode funcionar?
March 5, 2020
Una narración bien fundamentada que deja ver con claridad las formas, métodos e ideologías que han llevado a China a convertirse en un país poderoso. En contraste la autora demuestra una gran tendencia por alabar lo chino versus lo occidental.
October 20, 2021
Ich habe dieses Buch 2021 gelesen und fand vor allem den vierten Teil Interessant bspw. mit der Zusammenarbeit mit Angola sowie den Epilog.
January 2, 2012
I represent Loretta. Another fresh, provocative take on a global economic dynamic. How much of what we've been taught to think about China is wrong? (And why?) And the question the Occupy movements ask: Is capitalism inherently democratic?
January 6, 2015
Loretta Napoleoni goes against traditional media portrayals of China and gives a very interesting perspective, albeit at a different angle, on the Chinese economy. It challenges you to rethink and question the consensus, Western perception of China as anti-capitalist and communist.
March 19, 2016
Cosa speravo di trovare : Perché il Pcc è riuscito a creare il miracolo economico del XXI° secolo, partendo dalla rivoluzione maoista ai giorni nostri.
Cosa ho trovato: L'occidente e gli yuppie sono brutti e cattivi, in Cina non si sta male.
Pessimo.
Cosa ho trovato: L'occidente e gli yuppie sono brutti e cattivi, in Cina non si sta male.
Pessimo.
March 10, 2012
Anyone who has seen her on TED knows this woman is doing some of our heavy thinking for us. So it's hard to discount her exploration of how the West is hoodwinked by spin.
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July 23, 20169/10
December 10, 2014
Highly recommend to everyone who wants to know more about China and the world nowadays...
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