Aquest dissabte el vaig sentir per primera vegada. Era una entrevista que li feien des de la George Washington University. L’entrevista va durar una bossa de doritos y una cola. Atenent que menjo molt a poc a poc els doritos, ho podem traduir en 2 hores d’entrevista. La veritat és que em vaig quedar atònit davant la bellesa de les seves respostes, les seves prediccions i les seves bromes intel.ligents. Després de l’entrevista, com era d’esperar, l’auditori es va aixecar i va aplaudir, tal i com es mereixia.
La veritat, s’ha guanyat que li compri el seu llibre aquesta setmana. Visca!
Enganxo un tros de l’entrevista que li feia Newsweek, per anar fent boca.
That was clearly an important political event, by why was it the most important economic event of our lifetimes?
On one side of the Iron Curtain were essentially centrally planned collectivist societies based on the principle that collective activity is what produces wealth and therefore there are no individual rights to property. On the other side were capitalist societies built around the market system, with free trade and individual-property rights. The classic case was East Germany versus West Germany, which were two economies coming from the same history, culture and language ... The conventional wisdom was that East Germany's economy was three fourths the size of West Germany's, and that the Soviet Union, while having major shortfalls, was a formidable economic power. Then the Berlin wall came down, and the economic ruin behind the Iron Curtain was utterly unexpected and unimaginable. Central planning did not work in the Soviet Union. And the standard of living in East Germany was not 75 percent of West Germany, but somewhere between a third and 40 percent. The impact of that on the rest of the world was dramatic.
How, specifically?
The evidence of the power of the marketplace versus central planning, as exposed so demonstrably in Europe, led to an extraordinary rise in foreign direct investment in these countries. In China, for instance, foreign direct investment, which had been $4 billion in 1991, by 2006 was over $70 billion a year. Deng Xiaoping called the transformation "socialism with Chinese characteristics." What it was was creeping capitalism.
It's common to hear complaints from many quarters about China's rapid rise. Does it worry you?
I am not, as many people are, concerned about China becoming a threat militarily. In my book, I'm essentially forecasting that what happened to the communist parties of Europe is likely what will happen to the Chinese Communist Party ... They are going to be a formidable economic power, which I think is all to the good.
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