This is a sharp piece, and you've got hold of something most people miss. The danger cuts both ways. A state can be bought by capital, or it can swallow the market. Either way, the public loses.
Your explanation of how the American version got locked in is convincing. Citizens United, SpeechNow, and McCutcheon wrote big money into the constitutional rules, so it stays put no matter who wins the election. Once the channels are legal, the advantage doesn't need anyone to be corrupt. The people with the most money shape the rules in the open, and it stays that way whoever is in office.
However, I would be cautious about leaning on self-restraint as China's answer. A government that holds back today is still one that could stop holding back tomorrow. The experience from 1949 to 1978 shows the same hands can go the other way. The American danger is written into the rules. China's protection still rests on the people at the top making the right choices. That's a real difference, but I think it runs counter to optimism rather than for it.
The question I would ask is: what can an ordinary business owner count on? Not good intentions, just whether they can trust that what they build won't be taken back. If the rules can change whenever the state likes, then people quietly invest less. If breaking its word would cost the state something real, they commit. After 1978, the farmers and the small township firms made exactly that bet - successfully.
And there's something more underneath the rules. Part of what changed after 1978 was the law. Another part of it was respect. "To get rich is glorious" turned the trader and the small manufacturer from someone suspect into someone worth admiring, and what a society comes to honour is harder to take back than what a policy grants.
So that's the real question under your last section. Is China's opening now protected by both things at once, a promise the state would pay to break and also a respect for enterprise that it would struggle to reverse? Or does it still rest just on the people at the top choosing well, year after year?
I agree with the concern, but I would add one historical nuance.
China’s deepest political risk has always been the weight of personal authority. The Mao era showed this very clearly. The authority of a founding revolutionary leader, combined with the planned economy and the political structure of that period, produced enormous social disruption. At the same time, that period also reorganized Chinese society in fundamental ways and cleared some of the structural ground for the later reform era.
But I would be careful not to reduce Chinese history to a simple story of one-man rule without constraint. Most Chinese emperors were not able to do whatever they wanted. Their decisions were constrained by the civil bureaucracy, moral judgment within the Confucian political tradition, military power holders, court politics, factional struggle, fiscal limits, local society, and the practical costs of governing a vast country. Power was highly personalized, but it was rarely frictionless.
That is also how I would think about China today. The risk of concentrated authority is real. But China is not simply ruled by one person’s will. Society is much stronger than before. Capital is much stronger than before. Local governments, ministries, courts, firms, markets, public opinion, and the Party-state bureaucracy all create constraints of different kinds. Within the Party itself, there are also rules, procedures, elite balancing mechanisms, bureaucratic interests, and institutional routines that limit arbitrary action.
Of course, none of this eliminates extreme possibilities. Every political system has tail risks. The real question is how strong the restraining forces are, how predictable they become, and whether entrepreneurs, households, and local actors can form stable expectations around them.
So I would not say China’s post-1978 settlement rests only on goodwill from the top. It rests on a more complex balance among state power, social power, capital power, bureaucratic routines, Party rules, and the state’s own need to preserve legitimacy and development capacity.
But I agree with the deeper challenge: China still needs to turn these forms of practical constraint into more durable rule-based constraint. The long-term question is whether capable governance, social vitality, market confidence, and institutional restraint can reach a more stable balance.
China’s deepest historical risk has always been the weight of personal rule. For thousands of years, the effectiveness of the system depended heavily on the judgment, discipline, and self-restraint of the highest ruler. A wise ruler could enlarge public capacity; a bad ruler could turn the same state machine into arbitrary power. That is the central risk in any system where political authority remains highly concentrated.
This is why I do not think China’s answer can simply be “good leadership” or “self-restraint from the top.” That is not enough.
The real question is whether China can gradually transform political self-restraint into institutional restraint: law, procedure, predictable property rights, stable expectations for enterprise, bureaucratic discipline, policy accountability, and real costs for breaking commitments.
China is already building more rule-based governance, but this is a long historical process. It is not the same as Western constitutional liberalism, and it is not yet fully insulated from the risk of personal rule. The Chinese word 治 is useful here: it means governance, order, and statecraft, but it must increasingly be joined with 法 — law, rules, and institutional constraint.
So I agree with your caution. China’s post-1978 settlement is not protected by self-restraint alone. It is protected only to the extent that enterprise, markets, law, public expectations, and state legitimacy together make arbitrary reversal costly.
Perhaps the long-term Chinese challenge is precisely this: to move from rule by capable people toward a more durable balance between capable governance and rule-based constraint.
That balance may eventually become China’s real institutional innovation. But it is still a process, not a settled achievement.
Perhaps the central political question of the 21st century is no longer “state vs market”, but whether modern states still possess enough autonomy to prevent both political power and capital from quietly consuming the public sphere together.
This is a sharp piece, and you've got hold of something most people miss. The danger cuts both ways. A state can be bought by capital, or it can swallow the market. Either way, the public loses.
Your explanation of how the American version got locked in is convincing. Citizens United, SpeechNow, and McCutcheon wrote big money into the constitutional rules, so it stays put no matter who wins the election. Once the channels are legal, the advantage doesn't need anyone to be corrupt. The people with the most money shape the rules in the open, and it stays that way whoever is in office.
However, I would be cautious about leaning on self-restraint as China's answer. A government that holds back today is still one that could stop holding back tomorrow. The experience from 1949 to 1978 shows the same hands can go the other way. The American danger is written into the rules. China's protection still rests on the people at the top making the right choices. That's a real difference, but I think it runs counter to optimism rather than for it.
The question I would ask is: what can an ordinary business owner count on? Not good intentions, just whether they can trust that what they build won't be taken back. If the rules can change whenever the state likes, then people quietly invest less. If breaking its word would cost the state something real, they commit. After 1978, the farmers and the small township firms made exactly that bet - successfully.
And there's something more underneath the rules. Part of what changed after 1978 was the law. Another part of it was respect. "To get rich is glorious" turned the trader and the small manufacturer from someone suspect into someone worth admiring, and what a society comes to honour is harder to take back than what a policy grants.
So that's the real question under your last section. Is China's opening now protected by both things at once, a promise the state would pay to break and also a respect for enterprise that it would struggle to reverse? Or does it still rest just on the people at the top choosing well, year after year?
I agree with the concern, but I would add one historical nuance.
China’s deepest political risk has always been the weight of personal authority. The Mao era showed this very clearly. The authority of a founding revolutionary leader, combined with the planned economy and the political structure of that period, produced enormous social disruption. At the same time, that period also reorganized Chinese society in fundamental ways and cleared some of the structural ground for the later reform era.
But I would be careful not to reduce Chinese history to a simple story of one-man rule without constraint. Most Chinese emperors were not able to do whatever they wanted. Their decisions were constrained by the civil bureaucracy, moral judgment within the Confucian political tradition, military power holders, court politics, factional struggle, fiscal limits, local society, and the practical costs of governing a vast country. Power was highly personalized, but it was rarely frictionless.
That is also how I would think about China today. The risk of concentrated authority is real. But China is not simply ruled by one person’s will. Society is much stronger than before. Capital is much stronger than before. Local governments, ministries, courts, firms, markets, public opinion, and the Party-state bureaucracy all create constraints of different kinds. Within the Party itself, there are also rules, procedures, elite balancing mechanisms, bureaucratic interests, and institutional routines that limit arbitrary action.
Of course, none of this eliminates extreme possibilities. Every political system has tail risks. The real question is how strong the restraining forces are, how predictable they become, and whether entrepreneurs, households, and local actors can form stable expectations around them.
So I would not say China’s post-1978 settlement rests only on goodwill from the top. It rests on a more complex balance among state power, social power, capital power, bureaucratic routines, Party rules, and the state’s own need to preserve legitimacy and development capacity.
But I agree with the deeper challenge: China still needs to turn these forms of practical constraint into more durable rule-based constraint. The long-term question is whether capable governance, social vitality, market confidence, and institutional restraint can reach a more stable balance.
I largely agree with this concern.
China’s deepest historical risk has always been the weight of personal rule. For thousands of years, the effectiveness of the system depended heavily on the judgment, discipline, and self-restraint of the highest ruler. A wise ruler could enlarge public capacity; a bad ruler could turn the same state machine into arbitrary power. That is the central risk in any system where political authority remains highly concentrated.
This is why I do not think China’s answer can simply be “good leadership” or “self-restraint from the top.” That is not enough.
The real question is whether China can gradually transform political self-restraint into institutional restraint: law, procedure, predictable property rights, stable expectations for enterprise, bureaucratic discipline, policy accountability, and real costs for breaking commitments.
China is already building more rule-based governance, but this is a long historical process. It is not the same as Western constitutional liberalism, and it is not yet fully insulated from the risk of personal rule. The Chinese word 治 is useful here: it means governance, order, and statecraft, but it must increasingly be joined with 法 — law, rules, and institutional constraint.
So I agree with your caution. China’s post-1978 settlement is not protected by self-restraint alone. It is protected only to the extent that enterprise, markets, law, public expectations, and state legitimacy together make arbitrary reversal costly.
Perhaps the long-term Chinese challenge is precisely this: to move from rule by capable people toward a more durable balance between capable governance and rule-based constraint.
That balance may eventually become China’s real institutional innovation. But it is still a process, not a settled achievement.
Perhaps the central political question of the 21st century is no longer “state vs market”, but whether modern states still possess enough autonomy to prevent both political power and capital from quietly consuming the public sphere together.