CLs like Bret Stephens and Veronique de Rugy are purists. They know, and they feel in their bones, that economic growth is only really possible with limited government. The free market always knows best; the government, on the other hand, knows nothing. Let the big dog off his leash and watch him eat!
China, of course, is a rebuttal to the CLs. You can hardly tout it as a shining example of limited government, and yet it grows at over 6 percent per year. It shouldn’t exist, according to the CLs, and yet it indubitably does. How can this be explained?
Just you wait–China is doomed, they say. Don’t pay any attention to all of that growth; China will implode, just as the Soviet Union did. It has to. Adam Smith says so.
To which I say: don’t hold your breath. China isn’t going away, any more than South Korea and Japan, neither of which is exactly a laissez-faire paradise, will in the foreseeable future.