From food, to water, to key minerals, many of these resources are under strain and the state firms of China in particular are keen to shore up privileged access to these supplies.
One of the reassuring messages in Ian Bremmer's The End of the Free Market is that the world's autocratic capitalist states (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc.) did not have a zero-sum view of economic growth, like many nations did in the early half of the 20th century. So while their state champions and sovereign wealth funds can distort global markets, the world can escape the beggar-thy-neighbor cycle of economic destruction that marked the Great Depression.
Reading Vivian Fritschi's analysis on a coming era of resource constraints, I'm no longer sure we can be so sanguine about state capitalism. Economic growth is fundamentally anchored in the exploitation of resources, many of them finite in nature. From food, to water, to key minerals, many of these resources are under strain and the state firms of China in particular are keen to shore up privileged access to these supplies. While they may take a more liberalized view on the prospects of shared economic growth, these autocratic states seem to take a more 20th century view of the resource base this growth is built upon.
(AP Photo)
