- May 30, 2022
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Economy
In an address to the House of Commons in 1947, Winston Churchill quipped that “democracy is the worst form of government, apart from all those others that have been tried”.
Given democracy and capitalism normally are tied at the hip, the saying was regularly adapted to describe how best to run an economy.
Until the turn of this century.
China’s economic revolution — with its unique combination of a centrally planned one-party state atop a market-based economy — transformed the country from an agrarian society in the 1970s to a global economic powerhouse. The sheer speed and magnitude of its feat was unprecedented.
And its neighbour, under Vladimir Putin, set about restoring Russia’s economic and military place in the world after the humiliation of the Soviet empire’s collapse. He ruled with an iron fist, all the while aided by a clutch of uber rich oligarchs.
For many in the West, the transformations were unnerving. And when the Western financial…
