Abstract
Chinese investment cycles result from a collective action problem facing the Party and its members. On the one hand, overinvestment is undesirable for the Party as a whole because it is economically destabilizing. Individual decision makers, on the other hand, do not take the macroeconomic effects of their actions into account. For local officials, the optimal level of investment may be practically unlimited, particularly when the objective is to advance their own careers or to provide a vehicle for corruption.
What is brought about by history will be done away with by history.
—Mao Zedong
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Notes
The Charter 08 quotations given here are from the translation in: Liu Xiaobo, No Enemies, No Hatred (London: Belknap Press, 2012).
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books, 1999), 3.
Bloomberg News, “China’s Billionaire People’s Congress Makes Capitol Hill Look Like Paupers.” Bloomberg.com, February 27, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-26/china-s-billionaire-lawmakers-make-u-s-peers-look-like-paupers.html.
Pei Minxin, “China’s Politics of the Economically Possible.” Project Syndicate, March 16, 2012, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/chinas-politics-of-the-economically-possible
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© 2012 Mark A. DeWeaver
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De Weaver, M.A. (2012). Conclusion. In: Animal Spirits with Chinese Characteristics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137110121_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137110121_10
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