there's a line of thinking that the chinese economy is best described as "neo-confucianist", which is actually a kind of casino capitalism with large overlaps with calvinism. the chinese are not the same as us the way that the russians or iranians are, it's an inherently different culture, but the jarring thing about them is how similar they are to us.

and, what he's saying about wages is true, but that's fordism.

also, to tie into previous posts, let's remember that nationalizing the railroads was one of the prime goals and accomplishments of 19th century populism. historians of populism will present it as a farmers revolt against the banks, and i tried to explain that they get the class analysis completely wrong when they do that. wolff's deconstruction of that point is quite useful, here, and backs up my points on the topic.

the other thing i want to point out is that the united states once had 10% growth rates, too, and that it's a function of the development level and technology level more than anything else. really, everything that has happened in china over the last fifty years happened in the united states a hundred years earlier, and if you could find an even less developed economy that needed to be built up even more, you'd see growth rates there hit those levels, too. it's consequently worthwhile to recognize that china's embrace of capitalism has no future but the same thing we saw happen in america; that is capitalism, it undoes itself in the end. as such, it is predictable that rising wages in china will inevitably lead to outsourcing in countries like vietnam, which is contributing to lower growth rates. and, in the end, you'll end up with chinese workers complaining that africans and malaysians stole all their jobs, as shanghai falls apart in post-industrial decay.

you sleep with the devil, right?

so, what wolff has forgotten is that america built it's wealth through state control, as well - not through free markets. chomsky & hudson are better sources on this topic; they'll both explain the point that china got rich by following the example that america followed, not by reversing it. but, they're crystal clear that america was, at the time, a state capitalist economy, as well - something wolff tends to obscure, to try to build them up as a counter-model.