The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind

by Raghuram G. Rajan

Apart from structures that promoted collective leadership, one tradition was a limit of two five-year terms for the national president. A second was that the current president’s successor would be determined in the middle of his term so that the succession would be smooth. Both traditions have been abandoned recently, corroborating the point that without sources of power in the country that are independent of the state, such norms are unlikely to constrain a determined leader. The party seems to be moving toward more control and centralisation. A Communist Party memo in 2013 entitled Document No. 9 warns about the perils from Western constitutional democracy, a free press, and other ‘universal values’ as ideas meant to undermine and even break up China.20 In a related vein, China’s ‘Great Firewall’ prevents radical ideas from the internet from seeping into the country, while China’s large internet platforms have to share their data with the government. China’s proposed ‘social credit system’ intends to combine all the data on a person through artificial intelligence to produce a score for each Chinese citizen, which will determine their access to private and social services. Whether political and social activity will be taken into account remains a source of worry. With facial recognition software, and ubiquitous cameras, there may indeed be no privacy for the citizen from the state, as well as no freedom from it. Hopefully, China’s commitment to economic growth will keep ...

China's centralised state & innovation