Author: Arve Hansen

The Socialist Market Economy in China, Vietnam and Laos: A development model to embrace?

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By Jo Inge Bekkevold, Arve Hansen and Kristen Nordhaug

China, Vietnam and Laos have for three decades been among the fastest growing economies in the world. In other words, three of the best growth performers in global capitalism are authoritarian states led by communist parties with socialism as the official development goal. This fact has received surprisingly little attention, especially when considering their strong performance on a wide range of development indicators. Many claim China and Vietnam indeed represent some of the most impressive 鈥渄evelopment success stories鈥� the world has seen in recent decades. The three countries claim to have found their own model of development combining a market economy with socialism 鈥� 鈥榯he socialist market economy鈥�. According to official definitions, this is not capitalism, but a more sustainable and socially just way of making a market economy work for national development and the improvement of living standards. In , an edited volume newly published by Palgrave Macmillan, we engage with the coherence, achievements and failures of this particular development model.

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A room full of elephants? Population, consumption and sustainability

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Shopping street.

The SDGs are are a good example of our inability or unwillingness to deal with consumption, writes the author. Photo: Arthur Kraft/

Consumption, not population, is the elephant in the room of the sustainable development agenda.

罢丑别听聽seems to be experiencing yet another resurgence in discussions on climate change and sustainable development. This is perhaps unsurprising. What is surprising is the extent to which population is presented as a 鈥榝orgotten鈥� or 鈥榯aboo鈥� topic, or as an 鈥榚lephant in the room鈥� (just google population in combination with any of the terms).

Population has always been part of sustainability agendas and still is. As David Johnson from the Margaret Pyke Trust puts it in a聽, 鈥榯he elephant left the room quite some time ago鈥�. Furthermore, I would add, while addressing population growth is obviously important, and while we should continue placing reproductive rights at the core of development efforts, population growth is not our main sustainability challenge.

If we are to make development sustainable, we should rather be dealing with questions of distribution of resources and with the consumption patterns of the rich.

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Consuming development: Capitalism, economic growth and everyday life

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With the consumption patterns in rich countries being more unsustainable than ever and the consumption of the 鈥榚merging middle classes鈥� increasing rapidly, it is about time 鈥榗onsumption and development鈥� becomes a field of study. Such a field would necessarily be interdisciplinary and combine analyses of everyday life and the structures of capitalist development. A useful starting point could be found at the intersection of theories of practice and systems of provision.Read More »