WHATEVER image you may have of the reformists hoping to shake up China’s creaking economic system, it is probably not one of octogenarians who fiddle with their hearing aids and take afternoon naps. But that is a fair description of three of the country’s loudest voices for change: Mr Market, Mr Shareholding and the most radical of all, the liberal. With growth slowing, the stockmarket once again in trouble and financial risks looking more ominous, their diagnoses of the economy, born of decades of experience, are sobering.
Wu Jinglian, Li Yining and Mao Yushi—their real names—were born within two years of each other in 1929 and 1930 in Nanjing, then China’s capital. Whether it was that or pure coincidence, all three grew up to demand an end to Soviet-style central planning and to propose, to varying degrees, capitalism in its place. Their influence has waned with age, but their powers of analysis remain sharp. And they do not much like what they see.
Mr Wu is in some ways the most important of the group. He advised the government from the earliest years of China’s “reform and opening” in the 1980s, through...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/1RvlpMp
EmoticonEmoticon