Historically, no country like the U.S. has had a successful free market economy

Question

Historically, no country like the U.S. has had a successful free market economy without personal freedom and a representative type democracy. Will China eventually have to grant basic rights to its citizens and become a free society to maintain its free enterprise economy?

Historically, no country like the U.S. has had a successful free market economy without personal freedom and a representative type democracy. Will China eventually have to grant basic rights to its citizens and become a free society to maintain its free enterprise economy?

Explanation / Answer

While China would appear to benefit from granting its citizens more basic civil rights, and shifting its government in the direction of democracy, it is still too soon to tell whether China will afford these liberties to its citizens. China has been in the mist of economic growth for over three decades (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/16/chinese-economic-boom), but there have not been significant budges in the country's system of government. The text mentions China committing similar missteps around the same time that the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 20th century (362)
This time around, however, China has the benefit of learning from the egregious errors made by a communist predecessor. The Soviet Union was unable to keep up with the level of technological change necessary to sustain the real GDP per hour worked, which resulted in decreased outputs, which is known as which states that as we add more of one input, in this case, capital, to a fixed quantity of another input,in this case, labor, output increases by smaller additional amounts (344)
China is more equipped to deal with the demands that can be wrought with technological change. China also converted its economy from a centrally planned to a market economy, which averted any immediate threat of a collapse on the level of the Soviet Union. There exists a possibility that China could curtail its government just enough to ensure it will not suffer from similar collapses throughout history without granting full personal freedom and a representative type of democracy to its people.
But based on some of information provided in the readings, it may become necessary for China to grant more of these rights to citizens. The country of China currently faces of an issue of the bulk of China's GDP, which is composed of investment, not household consumption (366)
Local governments took sizable loans from the banking industry, which resulted in crowding out, and a decline in private expenditures as a result of an increase in government purchases (318)As a result, there has been a decrease in the supply of loanable funds, which had has an adverse effect in certain sectors, such as the Chinese housing market. If the Chinese government relinquished some control of their market, allowing consumers and producers to make more of the decisions that drive their market, more of its people's wages could be used for consumption, and less for saving. By granting the people of China's basic rights as it pertains to more freedom of expression, valid, meaningful elections and more democratic type of government, the country also reduces the risk of a social uprising, or the full-blown overthrow of its current government (362)
Will China ever grant the citizens of its Republic basic human rights and personal freedom? Only time will be able to yield an accurate answer. If history is anything to go by, then if the country does not fully learn from the sins of its Communist predecessors, then it will fade from the apogee of its successes in a similar manner.

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