I recently reorganised my feeds slightly and added some Wall Street Journal, but I don't know if I'm strong enough. Here, for instance: Western critics say China's practices are a form of mercantilism aimed at piling up wealth by manipulating trade.
That is capitalism. China is good at that.
I also note that Spanish author Xavier Bru de Sala is not strong enough to resist bashing online piracy. He likes it, he understands the benefits, he participates in it, but also feels that technological protection measures whose sole purpose is keeping the technologically illiterate off information are our only saviour.
Actually, if you look up the meaning/definition of the words capitalism and mercantilism, and then look again at how the word mercantilism is used in the article, you will find that mercantilism is the correct word.
Capitalism means private ownership. It does not imply stockpiling money through protectionism, and certainly does not imply state intervention in global trade.
China isn't a nation state. It's a huge corporation. China Inc. Everything that goes in there is to some extent owned by the Chinese state. We all agree that the Chinese state is governed by one political party, entrance into which is not open and elections within which are neither open nor transparent to the Chinese public, therefore relatively close to a managerial structure with a top layer (government) functioning similar to a board.
It is capitalism. They're just better and bigger than all the other capitalists, and happen to own a lot of real estate.
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