At a closed-door business meeting in Singapore in March attended by representatives of large US firms, much conversation was about China. Is the purported ‘de-coupling’ of the world’s two biggest economies working? Is it the correct direction to take? Will the politics in Washington ahead of next year’s presidential elections, and naming of China as the ‘prime enemy’.
Category Archives: Economics
Tea And Capitalism
For much of the 20th century, Western experts viewed China as a pre-capitalist society. They typically equated ‘capitalism’ with industrialisation and innovation, spectacular benchmarks such as coal-powered engines, steel factories and advances in chemical and mechanical engineering. These technological breakthroughs distinguished the ‘West’ from the ‘rest’, and it was their absence in China – and much of Asia – that marked it as ‘pre-capitalist’.
Against Economics
There is a growing feeling, among those who have the responsibility of managing large economies, that the discipline of economics is no longer fit for purpose. It is beginning to look like a science designed to solve problems that no longer exist.
Platonically Irrational
In his essay ‘On Being Modern-Minded’ (1950), Bertrand Russell describes a particularly seductive illusion about history and intellectual progress. Because every age tends to exaggerate its uniqueness and imagine itself as a culmination of progress, continuities with previous historical periods are easily overlooked: ‘new catchwords hide from us the thoughts and feelings of our ancestors, even when they differed little from our own.’
This Day And That 