卡特中心：这是卡特中心对于一本关于中国的新书的作者的访谈。这本书标题是The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class 作者是Teemu Ruskola这本书不同意一些西方流行的关于中国崛起的观点。认为中国吸引外资不纯粹依靠廉价劳动，社会主义遗产起了重要作用，特别是政治、社会稳定。世界上比中国劳动力更廉价的地方多的是。认为中国的渐进务实改革比俄罗斯的休克疗法成功的多。中国的农民工人化在某种程度与英国圈地运动相似，但还是不同。中国的农民不像英国农奴那样，失去土地。中国农民工保留着土地。It is a commonplace in the discourse of globalization that China’s “comparative advantage” is its cheap labor. But it’s not just the wages in China that attract global capital, as much cheaper labor can be found in many other parts of the world. Numerous countries far poorer than China are able to provide far cheaper labor, yet they do not hold the same appeal for global capital. China’s real advantage is at least threefold: the high quality of its workforce, its superior infrastructure, and its socio-political stability—all of which are results of socialism. Improvement in health, education, and literacy—all those factors that make Chinese workers attractive—are direct legacies of the state socialist era. The two economies also took very different approaches in their experiments with capitalism. The Soviet Union notoriously adopted the so-called Big Bang approach: rapid privatization of state property and instant price liberalization. Tragically, that resulted in a big bang indeed—namely, the nearly total collapse of the economy as the overnight privatization of state property turned into a giant orgy of looting of public assets by a handful of oligarchs. China, too, did consider the use of “shock therapy” in the form of price liberalization, but it ultimately rejected that approach and has pursued a far more gradual approach instead.

One way to understand that difference is that both Soviet socialism and post-Soviet capitalism relied on highly abstract and idealized models—even if those models themselves were built on diametrically opposed assumptions—whereas the Chinese approach to both socialism and capitalism has been gradual and pragmatic. And at least thus far, it has certainly been a much more successful approach.