China in the 1980s shifted from Maoist command policies to pragmatic market-oriented reforms under Deng Xiaoping, prioritizing output and selective privatization while avoiding full capitalist liberalization. Deng favored a hybrid model—"socialism with Chinese characteristics"—that balanced growth with control to prevent cronyism and Western-style liberalism. The United States now confronts prolonged class conflict and a weakened economy missing critical development inputs such as housing, public infrastructure, and industrial capacity. China accumulated those inputs aggressively, prompting U.S. concern about overcapacity and raising questions about whether the United States should pursue more active, state-directed investment and strategic economic restructuring.
In the preceding decades of Mao Zedong's long reign, his cyclical policies of class struggle ended up leaving a mess in their wake. Mao achieved some modicum of reduced inequality, albeit in bloody fashion, but those years culminating in the disastrous Cultural Revolution did little to foster economic growth. The government leadership of the '80s, led by Deng Xiaoping, inherited an economy with dismal infrastructure, listless workers, and stagnation.
The United States is crossing its own river today. It too has been stuck in a period of prolonged class conflict, though with the capitalists besting the workers in this case. It too has a weakened economy lacking key inputs for development: housing, public infrastructure, and industrial capacity. Notably, these are inputs that China has accumulated in spades, so much so that America accuses it of "overcapacity." A look across the Pacific raises some uncomfortable questions: Has China leapfrogged ahead?
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