Republican China hawks have a problem. They're eager to sell us on the notion that China is, as old GOP hand Newt Gingrich puts it, "the greatest threat to a free America that we have faced in our lifetime." Gingrich pins China's ascendancy on its "totalitarian system, extraordinary organization, and immense population," brushing aside the economic liberalization and market reforms initiated by former leader Deng Xiaoping—which ushered China out of Maoist isolation and into the global market—as mere smoke and mirrors, a "40-year-long propaganda campaign" masking the "real China."
This presents a quandary for the hawks. If they argue that China's meteoric rise is indeed the fruit of its "totalitarian system and extraordinary organization," does that mean they'll have to eat their words on the virtues of free enterprise and stop scoffing at socialist economies? Could it be that China has cracked the code on making a centrally planned economy thrive, a feat unseen elsewhere?
