Comment on China’s Economy and the Communists

Good comment from this site
“Connect The Dots
Oct 22nd 2011 14:16 GMT
China has been the largest economic producer for nearly the past 3000 years save the last 300 years.
Communist leaders have only been a factor in the past 100 years and the majority of the time, it has been a catastrophe. Face it, up until 1980, China would have look comparable to North Korea today: dreary, starving, frustrated and broke.
Mao centralized the economy and used 5 year plans with great names like The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, and The Industrial Revolution….they all ended in disaster. In particular, the Great Chinese Famine of 1960 which killed more Chinese than WWII and makes Sub Saharan Africa today look like Sweden. The communists leaders are as ham handed and incompetent as the Soviets, Cubans, and North Koreans. It is the nature of a dysfunctional system of government.
What changed since 1980?
Deng simply allowed a ‘Laissez Faire’ attitude of government, allowing the natural capitalistic instinct of the people to be UNLEASHED economically. Look at the Chinese overseas diaspora to see some of greatest capitalists on the planet. Now homebound Chinese are matching the productivity and risk taking of their overseas brethren and China is booming with breath taking speed.
I would argue that China would be booming under ANY political or economic system: capitalism, socialism, communism, libertarianism, preindustrial Neolithic. Look at Singapore, British Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia, and any Mom and Pop Chinese Dry goods store or take-out restaurant in any world city from Tripoli to Soweto to Rio to San Francisco to Washington, DC.
It is the individuals and the culture that make the economy great. Governments mostly get in the way.
The Chinese Communists are NOT adroit masters of world leadership and 20th Century management technique. Remember during the Cultural Revolution all books were burned and the educated class was purged, setting back education by a century. Rather the Communists Post-Deng have learned to get out of the way of commerce.
And not allow the heavy hand of government not to hand cuff the invisible hand.