Elite Chinese Politics and Political Economy

Dear Readers, I am currently making a final push on my book, which explains why there has been so few postings. To give you some food for thought, I am currently reading the Collected Works of Jiang Zemin, which has some truly fascinating selections. One such entry is Jiang's speech to the provincial leaders financial training course in 1999, which is in volume 2. In this speech, Jiang says "...some international opportunistic merchants (ie hedge funds) specialize in taking advantage of some weaknesses in some countries' economic system or policies to attack them....which causes grave harm to some countries or region and even threatens their soverignty or security." 294

I think this is still the predominant attitude at the highest level today, which explains why capital account liberalization is so slow and why Citigroup's joint-venture with Carlyle Group to acquire Guangdong Development Bank caused unease in the leadership.