April 2008
Intermediate to advanced
240 pages
4h 41m
English
If I tell you how things are, I’ve told you why things cannot change.
—Professor Edward C. Banfield
This sobering observation from one of Harvard’s great conservative professors would suggest that there is little or nothing that the Chinese government is going to do to bring about constructive change. I do not, however, entirely share Professor Banfield’s “council of despair” on the prospects for internal reform within China. In fact, there are small signs of progress.
For starters, China’s latest Five-Year Plan, which was unveiled with great fanfare by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, marks a significant evolution, if not altogether dramatic shift, from its “Adam Smith on steroids” growth-at-any-cost ...
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