Free exchange Hayek on the standing committee

The Economist
September 15th 2012

WEN JIABAO, China’s prime minister, this week gave one of his last big speeches before retiring from the Politburo’s powerful nine-member standing committee. He vigorously defended China’s bold response to the 2008 financial crisis—and conspicuously failed to promise anything similar in reaction to the economy’s present woes. Mr Wen described China’s 2008 stimulus as a “scientific response” to that year’s crisis, which prevented “factory closures, job losses and return of migrant workers to their home villages”. It would have delighted John Maynard Keynes, an economist once denounced as “anti-science and anti-people” by China’s Communists.

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