MULT10018 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Market Power, Gini Coefficient, Tves
28 Jul 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
1. China in 1993
1979-89:
- Progressive liberalisation of markets - halfway bet a planned and market econ
- CCP separated from direct management of bureaucracy and the economy
- SOE still significant employers
- Fiscal decentralisation
- Central spending fell
- Capitalist class emerging
1989-1993:
- The Tiananmen crisis put reforms on hold
- Growth dropped significantly in 1989-91
- Renewed debates about economic liberalisation within the CCP
- Attempts at recentralisation of financial powers, but resisted by Guangdong and
Shanghai
- ‘Privatisation with Chinese Characteristics’ (Harvey 2005)
- Deng Xiaoping’s ‘southern tour’ in 1992, gathered support for new wave of reforms
- “To get rich is glorious,” (more accurately: Some people can get rich before others)
- Democracy of consumption in urban areas
● Econ reforms to amass wealth, upgrade technologies to better manage internal dissent,
better better defend against external aggressors, maintain position in Asia and SE Asia.
● Econ dev as a means to an end, not in and of itself.
2. Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a theory of political and economic practices.
- Holds that human well-being is best advanced through free markets, free trade, and
institutions that protect private property rights
- The role of State is to secure the freedom of capital:
- The legal, military, and policing structures necessary to secure private property
rights and guarantee the free functioning of markets
● Neoliberalism is:
- opposed to social protection
- opposed to min wages
- comfortable with the market power of large firms, but is opposed to organised
labour
● The State should not interfere in markets
- Regulation impedes efficiency
- Regulation is prone to capture by interest groups
● Neoliberalism emerged after the end of the ‘golden age’ of capitalism in the late 1970s:
- Rising unemployment and inflation
- Communist and socialist parties gaining influence
- calls for increased govt intervention in the economy, rising taxes, increased
public spending, and price control
- while profits contracting, and stock prices falling
Document Summary
Progressive liberalisation of markets - halfway bet a planned and market econ. Ccp separated from direct management of bureaucracy and the economy. The tiananmen crisis put reforms on hold. Renewed debates about economic liberalisation within the ccp. Attempts at recentralisation of financial powers, but resisted by guangdong and. Deng xiaoping"s southern tour" in 1992, gathered support for new wave of reforms. To get rich is glorious, (more accurately: some people can get rich before others) Econ reforms to amass wealth, upgrade technologies to better manage internal dissent, better better defend against external aggressors, maintain position in asia and se asia. Econ dev as a means to an end, not in and of itself: neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a theory of political and economic practices. Holds that human well-being is best advanced through free markets, free trade, and institutions that protect private property rights. The role of state is to secure the freedom of capital:
