Meditating on China. Capitalism, Socialism and Class, Struggle

China's economic transformation has impressed the world. This country has become one of the major exporters of manufactured goods the world over; it is also seen as one of me best investment opporrunities by transnational corporations while millions of people assumedly cease to be poor. Consequendy, different analyses from a wide range of the political spectrum have embraced China's marker reform strategies and have promoted them as models to be followed by other countries. Politically, the main features of this consensus on China are a bird's view of socioeconomic change and an idealized view of the markets and the reform process. Both right and left wings coincide about the fact that the success of China's developing process reflects the wisdom of the leaders in power. This helps to explain the reiterated appraisal of the "shrewdness" exhibited by the Chinese leadership. At the same time, both groups admit that the fast economic development of China has generated social and economic problems: macro-economic instability, increasing inequalities, failures in the public health and educational systems, worse pollution and ecological condtions, and others. To a large extent, they rather see such failures and suffering as symptoms of insufficient institutionalization of the commercialization process, instead of seeing them as organic products of the mentioned process.