Cambridge, ENGLAND -- At a recent conference in Berlin organized by the Institute of Asian Affairs of Hamburg, Ireland's leading China specialist said quite unequivocally that China's industrial policy has failed. As the speaker has long been known as one of the most vocal supporters of China's state-owned enterprise system, this was something of a shock.
When Peter Nolan, holder of the Taiwanese funded Sinyi Chair of Chinese Management in Cambridge University, says that China's industrial policy has failed, people listen. But is he right? Hasn't the industrial sector in China averaged 20 percent growth (or more) in gross output for more than a decade?
Nolan claimed that Chinese leaders set out develop globally significant Korean-style multinational corporations, "chaebol." And as China has conspicuously failed to establish such corporations, then its industrial policy must be deemed to have failed.