Neoliberalism ‘with Chinese Characteristics’

Chinese

firms have now positioned themselves to compete with

foreign rivals not only in the domestic market but also in the inter-

national arena. And this no longer occurs only in the low-value-

added sectors. What is now the eighth-ranked computer maker in

the world, for example, was set up in 1984 by a group of Chinese

scientists backed by government funds. By the late 1990s it had

transformed itself from a distributor to a maker and held the larg-

est share of the Chinese market. Lenovo, as it is now called, is

currently locked in 

fierce competition with major players, and has

now taken over IBM’s personal computer line to gain better access

to the global market. The deal (which, incidentally, threatens Tai-

wan’s position in the computer business) enables IBM to build a

firmer bridge into the Chinese software market at the same time as

it builds a huge Chinese-based company in the computer industry

with a global reach.

52

 While the state may hold shares in companies

like Lenovo, their managerial autonomy guarantees an ownership

and reward system that permits increasing concentrations of

executive o

fficer wealth on a par with that found elsewhere around

the world.

Real-estate development, particularly in and around the large

cities and in the export development zones, appears to be another

privileged path towards amassing immense wealth in a few hands.

Since peasant cultivators did not hold title to the land, they could

easily be dispossessed and the land converted to lucrative urban

uses, leaving the cultivators with no rural base for a livelihood and

forcing them o

ff the land and into the labour market. The compen-

sation o

ffered to the farmers is usually a small fraction of the value

of the land then passed on to developers by government o

fficials.

As many as 70 million farmers may have lost their land in this way

over the past decade. Commune leaders, for example, frequently

asserted de facto property rights over communal land and assets in

negotiations with foreign investors or developers. These rights

were later con

firmed as belonging to them as individuals, in effect

enclosing the commons to the bene

fit of the few. In the confusion

of transition, writes Wang, ‘a signi

ficant amount of national prop-

erty “legally” and illegally was transferred to the personal eco-

nomic advantage of a small minority’.

53

 Speculation in land and

property markets, particularly in urban areas, became rife even in

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