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Questo articolo è stato pubblicato il 10 settembre 2013 alle ore 17:06.

My24


STANFORD – The recent trial of Bo Xilai highlighted the biggest challenge facing contemporary China: the corruption and abuse of power by some government and party officials. Until his fall, Bo, a former Politburo member and party leader of Chongqing, a megacity of 30 million people, was a potential candidate for China’s ruling seven-member Politburo Standing Committee.

Bo’s trial occurred at what is a critical moment for China. Millions of rural Chinese annually flood into the country’s cities in search of employment; but China’s export-led growth, which previously masked the macroeconomic costs of corruption and excessive state intervention, is slowing. As China enters an era of more subdued growth amid increased competition from other low-cost countries, this damage will become increasingly apparent – and increasingly destructive.

An economically successful China is more likely to be stable and geopolitically constructive; a China beset by serious economic problems would be far less so, and, as the first-ever developing economy to become a global power, could even become a source of systemic risk. Chinese manufacturing assembly is integral to global supply chains for many products. Moreover, China is the largest holder of US Treasury securities (aside from the Federal Reserve), has significant euro holdings, is likely soon to become America’s largest trade partner, and looms large in trade with many European and Asian economies.

Research reveals that strong enforcement of property rights and stable, predictable, and non-confiscatory tax and regulatory regimes are essential to long-run economic prosperity. The key to China’s reform, and what the Chinese people want most, is John Adams’s government of laws, not men – even-handed administration of reasonable laws, not special favors for the connected few. Indeed, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei echoed Adams (and Adam Smith) when he proclaimed, …resources should be allocated by prices and markets, not government officials.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that a crackdown on corruption is a top priority, and that unless it reaches both tigers (higher-ups) and flies (lower-level officials), there may well not be another orderly leadership transition of the type that brought him to power earlier this year. Indeed, reducing corruption is essential if China is to join the small list of developing economies – Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan – that have escaped the middle-income trap that ensnares most developing countries and prevents them from attaining advanced-economy status. More than the unseemliness and capriciousness of many officials’ behavior, this is what is really at stake in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.

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