Everything You Heard About China is Wrong with Vincent Huang

What do you know about modern China? Is it capitalist? Socialist? What do those terms mean in today’s global economies? According to Steve’s guest Vincent Huang, China considers itself “a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics.” In this episode, Vincent tells Steve how this socialist market economy plays out in Chinese society, and how it compares to the world we know in the US – and just about everywhere else. There’s a stark difference in the power wielded by corporations, for example. In China...

The state is the representative, it's the agent that mediates the conflicts between the corporations and the working class. So that actually is quite important because for China's socialist market economy, the goal is to elevate the well-being of people. And the means could be marketization, could be liberalization, could be market-oriented reforms, but it doesn't have to be.

American listeners may be surprised by the people’s faith in government. When comparing public versus private, whether in schools or housing construction, Chinese citizens tend to trust the public, because there’s no profit motive involved.

Vincent, who got his PhD at University of Missouri - Kansas City, is an MMTer. He and Steve discuss the attitude towards deficits, the role of endogenous money, and China’s infrastructure policies. They talk about what it means for China to be the world’s manufacturer. Steve asks about the possibility of a job guarantee.

In a sense, the obstacle for China to implement a job guarantee also depends on how successful its already established projects are in absorbing excess labor ... And frankly, if they do a good job already and there is no need for a job guarantee anymore, then that's perfectly fine.

This episode looks at China’s treatment of ethnic minorities, its commitment to transitioning to green energy, and the agility with which the government shifts between regulation and leniency with private corporations. The latter appears to be based on social and economic outcomes. Vincent explains that the attitude toward the public good is tied to the relationship between individual rights and collective order.“In fact, your individual freedom can only be viable and real when a collective order is in place.”

Vincent (Yijiang) Huang is a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and a Teaching Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Denver. He received his Ph.D. in Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Missouri – Kansas City. His research and teaching interests include Money & Banking, Green Job Guarantee, Political Economy of China, Comparative Economic Systems, and Trade Wars & Agreements.