Zhu was “an enormously impressive man,” Rubin recalled with some nostalgia. He and Zhu had grown close because of Zhu’s single-minded determination to move China from a state-run economy dominated by overstaffed and inefficient state-owned firms to a market economy more in line with the West. The two made an odd couple: the communist preaching capitalism-with-Chinese-characteristics and the former Goldman banker trying to coax China into adopting Western rules. Zhu talked of market reforms and capital flows so easily that Rubin joked with him that if it weren’t for America’s constitutional
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