Democratized Money: How China's System Builds Wealth for the Many
State-guided finance and universal home ownership deliver broader prosperity than market-driven capitalism—challenging the myth that only the West "democratizes" opportunity.
The State will own the big banks and the big industrial and commercial enterprises. Enterprises, such as banks, railways and airlines, whether Chinese-owned or foreign-owned, which are either monopolistic in character or too big for private management, shall be operated and administered by the state, so that private capital cannot dominate the livelihood of the people: this is the main principle of the regulation of capital. – Mao Zedong. On New Democracy. January 1940.
The term ‘capitalist democracy’ is self-contradictory, for the logic of capitalism clashes fundamentally with the logic of democracy. Private ownership of production, profit-driven markets and unequal distribution of resources clash with equal rights, majority rule, and collective decision-making. Capitalism distributes wealth and power based on market merit and marginal productivity – which results in vast inequalities – while a real democracy would allocate resources based on social need and civic participation.
Rethinking Financial Democratization
After a rocky start, China’s 1976 shotgun marriage of socialism’s democratic urges to capitalism’s selfish drive is working better than America’s, where two-thirds of us live paycheck to paycheck and, says the Fed, median1 US household net worth is $97,300. Trouble is, urban Chinese households’ net worth of $364,000 (PBOC) is four times
