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Saturday, July 12, 2008

An Authoritarian Olympics

In order to clean up air for Beijing Olympics, a lot of industrial plants are ordered to shut down.  This can only happen in an authoritarian state like China. Thirty years of market reform, the government still has not learned how to respect property rights, and rule of law is not there to protect the interest of businesses.  Why the business should take government's order?
 
We all want cleaner air, but this is not how you achieve it.  So I label Olympics 2008 "an authoritian olympics".
 
BusinessWeek has more on the story.
 
http://images.businessweek.com/story/08/370/0703_mz_beijing.jpg