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Q: Is China blindly following western capitalism?
My own personal opinion is that, in many circumstances, China isn't blindly following, but actually leading. Capitalism used to be about free enterprise without government intervention, and according to the classic definition of the word, the west is moving more towards fascism.
I'm not saying that all government regulations are bad, particularly in the areas of health and safety, but why do interior decorators have to be licensed in the U.S? Or hair dressers? Whatever happen to the intelligent consumer, and the idea of caveat emptor? And how has zoning laws affected business? Why can't one set up a business in their home without the local government telling a person what they can and cannot sell? Why can't I bargin for a price in a U.S. store?
When I look around in China, I see capitalists everywhere, doing what they do best; charging what they want and seeing what price the market will bear! Supply and demand at work, as it were.
Granted, this is a rather simplistic answer, but these are things just off the top of my head. It will be interesting to see what others have to say! 
nevermind:
Well, first of all, the west has been deregulating at a rapid and stupid pace.... that's how you end up with things like the BP oil spill, enron and the economic crisis. And I don't think you realize that in China the government technically OWNS your business. You want to talk about government interference? It gets no more so than that. You can't even name your business something the government doesn't like.
I think you need to do some more research.
giadrosich:
Actually, I stand by my answer. By your comment, you have affirmed what I wrote, and disproved nothing. If you had taken the time to read what I wrote carefully, you would have seen that.
The premise remains correct as is.
nevermind:
Anyone with a so much as high school politics and economics and who has sent five minutes in China knows your answer is bollocks.
What's this "you have disproved nothing" nonsense too? You think the entire world is out to "disprove" you all the time? Sorry, the mere fact you think a state that technicaly owns your business and actually sets the prices for many "private" business doesn't interfere with business shows you have a knack for just denying the obvious. Your answer looks like satire. But I guess you're one of those "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge" types.
Sadly, they are making some serious mistakes with the credit sector...expect a big crash.
I would consider it more a controlled capitalist consumer driven society where half the GDP is controlled by state owned companies run by family members of the CCP.
This is what I like to call an illusionary capitalist country...smoke and mirrors
You can only make a killing here if you have the favor of the government.
nevermind:
Yeah, lots of guys make their fortune courtesy of government contracts their brother in law happens to be in charge of..
China definitely has a form of state capitalism which is ideologically different from the Nazi state capitalism. China creates a lot of artificial subsidies which make their products cheaper. These include infrastructure, cheap natural resources, price controls and supports, and various types of financial subsidies. This distinguishes China from an ideal pure "Capitalist" state with little government intervention, and also from mixed market systems which tend to do a fairly even mix of subsidy and tax.
In one sense, this is the natural result of globalization. China has an interest in maintaining a positive balance of trade. If they succeed, this means that someone else must have a negative balance of trade. We will move toward mercantilist regimes in part because of the failure of western democracies to make the proper policy decisions (expansionary fiscal policy, job guarantee programs, etc) that would properly adjust for the economic effects of this trade balance.
I don't think we will see movement toward pure capitalism in the future, at least not as part of any type of evolutionary process. We might see it temporarily as part of a political plan by one or more parties, but it will fail rather quickly. "Pure" capitalism can't really compete with state capitalism or effective mixed market economies. Government involvement is necessary in order to correct for a variety of information asymmetries, perverse incentives, externalities, etc. It is also important for building up of infrastructure.
the_horror:
There was no such thing as "Nazi state capitalism". Actual Nazi Germany had capitalism with plenty of defense contracts and very few state owned enterprises. The later were in industries deemed strategically important but not yet profitable (marginal raw materials, mass motorization).
The core of the classic definition of fascism is capitalists' puppets taking over from a democratic systems, because elected politicians hadn't cared enough about profits: Hitler, Franco, Pinochet... Dubya?
Communists switching from planned economy to market-driven economy are a completely different matter.
The confusion goes back to the totalitarianism doctrine from the 1950s that basically put all non-US-style systems into the same category of totalitarian = evil. You will never make sense of China with that 1950s propaganda filtering your perceptions.
Tapwater:
Well, I don't agree with you but which of us is right probably depends on which historian you ask. I feel that because the Nazi policies involved many price and wage controls along with a high degree of central planning, this was a type of state capitalism. Although the structure is some what different from China, the final result is largely the same - rapid development of infrastructure. Also, if Hitler hadn't gone to war, we might have seen a Germany with the type of corruption that China has today.
the_horror:
It seems to me that the benchmark-capitalistic USA deployed price and wage controlls during WW2, Korean War and even during the Vietnam war in 1971.
China is trying to follow the West as she wants to be a world leader and sees the capitalist system as a way of achieving that. Can a country be truly capitalist and communist at the same time, I don't think so. The two ideologies are diametrically opposed. Apart from the political problem of trying to square a circle can she be capitalist and play on a level playing field with the rest of the world. Again I don't think so, there are simply too many problems to be overcome at the moment. China sees herself as the supplier to the world for a lot of produce. to be a supplier one needs customers and customers have come to China because of the low cost of the products, but we are starting to see other markets opening up which are even cheaper. Globalisation being what it is customers and producers will look to the cheaper alternatives. We must remember that the cheap cost is attained partly by the artificially low exchange rate of the yuan.
Business is done differently here in China to that in the west, the idea of good after-sales service is something that most Chinese customers do not expect are or not bothered about and therefor a lot of businesses here offer fairly appalling service if any at all. Intellectual property rights are another problem to be solved.
Is China going to become a capitalist player on the world stage? I don't think so, at least not for a long time yet. To really become a player quality Chinese products need to be on the wish list of overseas customers and I don't see that. Even the Chinese themselves prefer to buy foreign goods rather than home produced because of the perception of much higher quality. Whilst that may not be true in all cases that perception has to have come from somewhere. The banking system here has to be updated to really allow China to flourish, it is simply years behind the west. Where are the true innovations from China appearing on the world market, I don't see any.
I believe China will continue to be "capitalist" in the manner that she now is, but that is a long way from the type of capitalism seen on the other side of the wall.
not really since the big companies are goverment control
