There's a kind of a slogan, which has been made much of in the last
few months, which is what's called common prosperity.
And the idea here is that the party has to apply itself to common prosperity. Now,
there are two questions which which can be asked of it. First, why are they doing this. And I think
the answer is that most Chinese now know that the country is unequal and that there is not common
prosperity and that the party, if it is to have its legitimacy or the Communist Party maintained,
is going to have to do something Draconian about the inequalities. And that, therefore the party
asserting its commitment to common prosperity is a very very important step. But, asserting
its commitment to it is one thing; doing it is another. So, now that the party is in the
same sort of position, is it just going to simply pass a law about common prosperity or is it going
to make it a case? All the signs are that they're going to experiment down that path. They've set up
a common prosperity zone. Now, this is interesting because in exactly the same way that capital got
introduced into China by these economic zones in the south of China, so now China is saying,
"Okay. We're going to create a common prosperity zone." And they've taken one province and said,
"Okay. You are going to be a common prosperity zone." And the province is the one where Alibaba,
one of the biggest corporations in China is and Jack Ma and all the rest of it.
That's where they exist. So, it's taking province where there is the greatest level of inequality,
and it's going to say, "All right. How do we reconfigure this space in such a way that it can
reasonably looked upon as a common prosperity?" So, what would that common prosperity look like?
This is obviously going to take resources, and one of the things we've seen is that all of the
oligarchs and all of the big companies have rushed to promise that they will devote huge amounts of
money and funds to this project of common prosperity and all the rest
of it there. It's a bit like in this country we have the Ford Foundation and so on. So,
the companies are forming foundations to try to work through improvement of living standards,
improvement of access to education, healthcare and housing and many of these.
They've been trying to to work on this, and of course, at that point, the party steps in and kind
of says, "Well, it's all very well, but you're actually assembling political power by, in effect,
controlling these non-governmental organizations (the equivalent). You're controlling them
through your philanthropic enterprises. So, your philanthropy has to be going through us." In other
words, the party wants to control all of this. There's a big struggle going on as to how much
corporations can keep their philanthropic operations to themselves and how much they're
going to have to cede and concede to the Communist Party, that the Communist Party controls it.
I suspect that, at this particular moment, is still a bit ambiguous and a bit vague as to
which way they're going. Now if all of this is the case, if this is going on, then this
suggests that there's a fundamental reset going on in terms of China's economic development
that is going to be much more oriented to social requirements as opposed to profitability.
And it's interesting to see the responses in the West. Somebody like George Soros says,
"Oh they're going to come unstuck totally unstuck because they don't understand market economics.
And they're going against that, and they're going to lose as a result of it." Well, I'm not so sure.
I think probably the problem in the west is that everybody doesn't understand market economics. So,
it's a good job the Chinese, at least, are prepared to go against market economics for
social purposes. And if they're going against market economics for social purposes, then this is
at the same time going to lead into other things like, for example, the push right now to start to
really take on the climate change issue. So, there seems to be almost a revolutionary reconfiguration
going on in China but as Giovanni would say, it's not a done deal. You can't tell. You don't know
where this may go, but it is going in a different direction now than it was just six months ago. And
all the signs are then that this is a different kind of world which is being envisaged by China.