Westerners Think He Made China Capitalist. They're Wrong | Mick Dunford & Radhika Desa

Westerners Think He Made China Capitalist. They're Wrong | Mick Dunford & Radhika Desai <



Zhu Rongji, China's reform-era premier, has died, and the Financial Times wasted no time eulogizing him as a liberal hero, hoping Xi Jinping might take a leaf out of his book. Mick Dunford, professor emeritus at the University of Sussex and a longtime resident of Beijing, joins me to dismantle that myth, walking through the real human costs of Zhu's reforms, from mass layoffs to soaring inequality, and arguing they were not capitalist triumphs but turbulent steps within a still-socialist system, whose excesses were later corrected by Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, and Xi himself. The "liberal hero" the West is mourning is largely their own invention. 00:00 Introduction: Zhu Rongji's death and the <



https://youtu.be/Olg02jMaSpM?si=sWSYj2uW1_ZcKECY



West is mourning is largely their own invention. 00:00 Introduction: Zhu Rongji's death and the West's liberal hero narrative 03:59 Mick Dunford: Zhu Rongji's career and the reforms of the 1990s 08:04 The human cost of privatization, layoffs, migrant workers, and the property boom 15:44 Reform as decentralization within a still socialist system 26:15 Zhu's liberal roots and the ideological spectrum inside the Communist Party


28:47 Inequality, environmental damage, and the costs of 1990s liberalization 31:02 Correcting course, rural policy, poverty alleviation, and the Chongqing model 39:54 Ideology, industrial policy, and the rise of a capitalist class 48:47 Washington's real goal, the Qinghai episode and the pattern of US interference 54:00 The plan to contain China, lessons from Russia in the 1990s, and the road ahead Support me on Patreon - • / radhikadesai