An article in the April 28th issue of The Economist, “The People’s Republic in the Grip of Popular Capitalism,” came with a small cartoon showing a red-hot Chinese dragon balancing on the top of a globe with its enormous bubble-belly about to burst. The message, as in nearly all Economist articles on China, was that the country’s economic growth – through a hodgepodge of controlled capitalist projects and wild, unregulated “popular capitalism,” of the Chinese people seen everywhere, including the boom in small stock market investing due to “the growing involvement of low-income groups such as students and pensioners,” – threatens to outpace Chinese social institutions’ ability to deal with the growth and consequently the stability of the country. An article in the March 8th Economist calling property rights “China’s next revolution,” makes a similar point that “if China’s fantastic 30-year boom is to continue and if the tensions it has generated are to be managed without widespread violence,” legal and economic reforms affecting “the masses,” including regulations on or provisions for the “popular capitalism” sweeping the country, are essential. But the articles, aimed at investors, policymakers, and analysts, beg the question of just how (or why) their audience is to set about making these changes.
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