In the 20th century the west achieved unprecedented personal freedom. Every citizen was able to vote, or be voted into office. Economic freedom came through market liberalisation. Lower trade barriers brought higher living standards, and freer financial markets redefined the global economy. Freedom, however, cannot go unchecked. The west is now in many respects too free.
There is no denying that China, like most Asian countries, currently leans too far in the other direction. For two millennia this lack of personal freedom did not impede its development. But limiting liberty to interact with the world since that time hastened the country’s decline. Reforms in the past 30 years have loosened things up and China’s people enjoy more prosperity today than at any other time in the country’s history.
The US, founded on the principle of liberty, may have a propensity to go to extremes and push the pendulum too far. America’s murder rate, for example, is three times higher than China’s. But it is in economics where this glut of freedom is most obvious. In the name of efficiency, western capital markets have gone wild as recent cries for more regulation attest. The past two decades also saw an explosion of money sloshing around global markets, over 90 per cent of which has nothing to do with trades in goods and services. Now such freedom to speculate is wreaking havoc on many economies.