introduction

 

“Oh, so you’re a banana!”, said a Chinese classmate to me after a heated debate on ethnic and cultural identity in the first year of my masters in the United States. “Yes, a banana,” she reasserted seeing my bafflement, her accent audible through her laughter. “That’s what we call people who, like the fruit, are yellow on the outside and white on the inside.”

 

This term was new to me. She went on to explain that in China and in Chinese communities all over the world, this expression is used to designate people who, like me, are of Chinese origins and features, but who have a Western worldview in their culture, language, and mannerisms. It’s often used pejoratively – and with the intention to offend – by Chinese purists critical of their fellow countrymen who distance themselves from their cultural origins and adopt Western values and behaviors. This term is more often than not used playfully to characterize the Westernization of Chinese people, and how their habits and customs are ever more distant from their roots.

 

Once familiar with the meaning of this new metaphor, but still under the shock of what I had perceived as an insult, I retorted and said “I am not a banana.” “Using your fruit metaphor, I am closer to a passion fruit, yellow on the outside and mixed on the inside, like any good Brazilian is.” Brazil is not exactly Western, I explained, with no desire to linger on this point. And I’m also not white, I thought to myself. Maybe we are a mixed and tropical West, an Extreme West — a blend of worlds.

 

This was in the year 2000. China had barely gone through two decades of economic reform following the redefinition of the role of the state and the market led by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Despite its high growth rates, I didn’t find China particularly interesting. To me, it was a great and distant country of geopolitical significance, and that, like Brazil, sought a path to prosperity.

 

Today, all of this has radically changed. My attitude towards China went from indifference to perplexity. How did China manage, in just four decades of reform, to become the world’s largest economic power, not only in terms of growth, but also in incomparable technological innovation and educational outcomes? And why is it that in Brazil, after three decades of reforms outlined by the constitution of 1988, we feel condemned to economic and social stagnation?

 

For any Brazilian, the contrast between the two countries is appalling. For me, a Brazilian of Chinese origins, the difference is torturous. Why did my father leave China? Was moving to Brazil worth it? I can obviously find clear answers to those questions. If my father had not escaped China, he would probably have been killed, given the political relationships he maintained with the elite of Chiang Kai-shek’s old nationalist regime. My second oldest brother, who stayed behind with our grandmother, became depressed as he was no longer allowed to play his violin during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and shortened his life by jumping into a railway .

 

It seems obvious that it was indeed worth it to leave, but this is not an equation that is emotionally simple to solve. China’s thundering economic success defies reason. What is worse is that my indignation in seeing Brazil’s failure in comparison makes it impossible to be objective. Where did we go wrong? Can we learn from the Chinese example? Or is the cultural and political context of each China and Brazil so unique that comparing them is impossible?

 

In the absence of analytical clarity, I take recourse in political theory. Political science literature teaches us that the transformations of the state happen as a result of three factors: (i) international forces, (ii) domestic variables (“bottom-up”), and (iii) pressures exerted by the state apparatus itself (“top down”).[1] Perhaps a comparative analysis between Brazil’s development post-1988 vis-à-vis China’s post-1978 could elucidate these two countries’ future paths.

 

Objectively speaking -- and leaving the ideological debate aside - a single question emerges in my perplexed mind: in these last few decades of reform, what led to China’s exceptional economic performance and to such negligible growth in Brazil?

 

Was it historical, cultural, and geographic determinism that catapulted China into a leading position in the global economy?[2] Or was this success due to the determination and voluntarism of its leaders and its people, or even to the quality of the of the ‘socialist economy with Chinese characteristics'? And wherefore Brazil’s own relative failure? From our heritage, our peripheral historical and geographic circumstances, or from our leaders and of our people? What can be done about it?

 

My intention with this essay is to try to glean something from this comparison. I would like to add a caveat to not discourage any readers from the start: if I express admiration or make reference to China’s achievements, it does not mean that I complacently or naively endorse its complex system. My objective is merely to observe, with humility and as free of prejudice as possible, what lessons the Chinese experience can offer, as well as to identify possible alternatives for Brazil’s own social and economic development. That is, without imitating China, how can Brazil translate those lessons to its own context to succeed?[3]

 

i. international factors

 

From an international perspective, it seems obvious that the geopolitical context of the 1970s would put China in a much more central position than that of Brazil. Controlling the third largest territory on the planet, spanning from Central Asia to the Pacific Ocean, with more than 8,500 miles of temperate coastline, inhabited by more than a billion people with a culture and history dating back thousands of years, China has always been, because of its history and geography, incomparably more important than Brazil in an international system long determined by the relations between countries from the global north.

 

In the context of the Cold War, China’s relative advantage led to the rapprochement between Washington and Beijing, articulated by Kissinger’s secret visit to Zhou Enlai in 1971. This meeting propelled China to reach a level of geopolitical and diplomatic importance that Brazil could never attain.

 

Thus, the so-called ‘triangular diplomacy’ took off under the leadership of Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon. China began to distance itself from the Soviet Union and altered the balance of what had thus far been a binary balance of power. By doing so, China opened the doors to cooperation with the United States, a relationship that would prove fruitful to China’s economic development. In particular, it is important to note that the Sino-American alliance triggered their deep, complex, and sophisticated bilateral economic and commercial interdependence still in vigor today.

 

Brazil’s trajectory in the same period was the complete opposite. Due to geopolitical contingencies, strategic irrelevance, extreme vulnerability, political ineptitude, creative insufficiency, or the absence of sufficiently catalyzing leaders, Brazil did not establish a preferential relationship with any of the hegemonic powers that could have opened its access to markets, provided support in revolutionizing work productivity, and transformed our economic destiny as China did in its relationship with the United States.

 

Brazil, targeted by the protectionism of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act and weakened by its dependence on oil imports (the price of which rose markedly as a result of the 1973 crisis, resulting in a significant commercial imbalance as well as great inflationary pressure), distanced itself from Washington during Ernesto Geisel’s presidency. And, thus, after periods of greater alignment with the United States, Brazilian diplomacy in the 1970s focused instead on looking for a more independent stance in defence of universal values.

 

In other words, the Sino-American relationship created the necessary institutional stability for their economic and cultural interests to become intertwined. Meanwhile, Brazilian diplomacy, overlooked by Washington, faced a series of complicating or vexing factors in its relationship with the United States, including the decision to distance itself from Israel and develop a relationship with the Arab world, support the decolonization of Africa and Asia, recognize the independence of Angola, Guiné Bissau, and Mozambique (despite the fact that these new states were founded by marxist movements), and lastly sign the West German-Brazilian Nuclear Agreement of 1975, which prompted the construction of the Angra 1 and Angra 2 power plants.

 

Brazil’s autonomist stance, termed “responsible pragmatism” by historians, expresses the awareness that, given the country’s geopolitical irrelevance, any automatic alignment with Washington would not necessarily result in any relevant advantage for Brazil. On a personal note, my impression of Itamaraty — having worked in the Brazil's foreign service from 1991 to 2001— is that the majority of my former colleagues were primarily concerned with identifying and defending our permanent national interests on pragmatic and non-ideological grounds.

 

In the classrooms of the Rio Branco Institute, Brazil’s diplomatic academy, we often admired how the professionalism of foreign service officers in the military regime clearly distinguished state interests (i. e. permanent, national, and strategic) from government interests (which seemed more situational), to the point of supporting socialist movements even at the height of the military dictatorship. This distinction between state and government interests became slowly diluted throughout the subsequent democratic (civilian) presidential mandates, gradually transforming diplomacy into a partisan instrument serving ideological and internal interests instead.

 

Take Brazil’s foreign policy towards Venezuela, for example. Under Lula’s mandate, our bilateral relationship was founded on supporting Chavismo, while today, under Bolsonaro, diplomatic action is focused instead to opposing Maduro. In both cases, it seems clear that opportunistic and transitory concerns trumped our permanent, non-partisan geostrategic interests, such as control and management of the Amazon, border stability and security, combating drug trafficking, and access to oil, considering Venezuela’s ownership of the world’s largest oil reserve.

 

The consistency of China’s foreign policy over the past four decades shows that its ideology is strongly anchored in the fundamental strategic interests of the state, even when it comes to its international alignment with Pyongyang or Caracas. Diplomacy in China’s case is thus deployed as an instrument for protecting national interests — such as territorial integrity, economic and commercial development, cultural and educational cooperation, technological innovation — in the long-term. Undoubtedly, the stability of China’s foreign policy is a result of the single-party political system. Given that Brazil is a democracy with a multiparty political system, the question, or rather the dilemma in this case, is how to ensure that Brazil’s permanent interests are not obfuscated by the competing demands of opposing political currents, which, though legitimate, can jeopardize the country’s broader, collective interests.

 

It is not necessarily worth revisiting the foreign policies of these two countries in recent years. What is worth noting, however, is that international forces shaping China and Brazil had very different results: China’s transformation had a global reach (e.g. China’s membership in the WTO, the One Belt, One Road Initiative, etc.), while in Brazil these changes had a regional impact instead (e.g. MERCOSUL, Treaty of Asunción, etc.). These international changes were proportionally reflected domestically: of great, radical impact across China, yet comparatively limited and moderate in Brazil, with no real internal impact.

 

Overall, the stability of China’s rapprochement to the United States resulted in a wave of investments that transformed China into the world’s great factory, which had an impact on international power structures and in China’s internal reality. Brazil, on the other hand, overlooked by hegemonic powers, depended on endogenous changes to consolidate a status quo of a middle power, and to strengthen its autonomy, but without ascending in the power hierarchy like China did.

 

Could a genius of diplomacy or formidable leader have changed our fate? Had we had the vision and drive of a statesman like Bismarck, the unitive power of a visionary like Gandhi, or even the charisma of a leader like De Gaulle, would we have been able to build a less peripheral path? Perhaps we can find solace in the thought that, at least in the diplomatic realm, we did what we could (and we could count on what intellectual assets we had at our disposal). Therefore, we can argue for a pardon, as there was little else we could have done to avoid the sidelines of international power politics.

 

Think of the Western world as a club of elite membership, which adopted institutions like the UN Security Council, the G7, or the OECD as symbols, but also as instruments of power. This club, led by the United States over the past century, did not count Brazil among its members. Over the post-war decades, Brazil’s position has been subsidiary.

 

Usually, one does not enter a prestigious and powerful club for three main reasons: because one does not want to, because one is not invited, or because, despite having tried, one has failed. In the club called The West, led by the United States in the 20th century, Brazil did not enter. I’ll let the reader guess why.

 

ii. domestic factors (bottom-up)

 

Maybe, and I emphasize maybe, the comparison of domestic factors in the transformation of China and Brazil points to a more encouraging and optimistic perspective for our country. In order to understand the parallel reality of different countries, methodologies in comparative politics recommend the systematic analysis of a series of variables, which I will list henceforth as questions:

 

- When the two great reforms began in China and Brazil in 1978 and 1988 respectively, what was each country’s level of industrialization? What was the magnitude of their respective consumer markets? At what stage in the transformation from fordism to a service economy were each of them? What was the scale and quality of the education sector; the strength of unions; the strength of social mobilization; the level of democratization (to be discussed in more depth in the next section)?

 

- Can we discuss the welfare state in Brazil and in China in that historical moment as an expression of the balance between capital and labor? What was the size of the agricultural sector? - What was the level of concentration and structure of land ownership? What was the size, quality and availability of human capital, or, in other words, what was the size of the middle class with completed post-secondary education? What was the availability of raw materials, energy, and natural resources? What was the degree of ethnic homogeneity and social cohesion, from the point of view of the values and principles that guided each society?

 

A table plotting the situation of each country on the first year of their respective reforms would indicate that Brazil started from a more advantageous position in the main indicators listed above. In only a few decades, however, China surpassed us in almost every domain. The real figures for each of these indicators are well known, so I will only cite a few random examples of this dynamic comparison as to not bore the reader. In 1980, China’s GDP per capita was US$200 and US$3,500 in Brazil; in 2019, China reached US$10,000, multiplying its GDP per capita more than fifty-fold, while Brazil, with a population six times smaller, reached 2019 with US$8,796, only growing 2.5 times in the same time period.

 

Qualitatively, the recent results of the PISA (the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, considered the world’s most important evaluation in education, that measures student performance in reading, math, and science), China is first by far and ahead of countries that traditionally lead the ranking.[4] In contrast, Brazil ranked in 57th place in the reading exams.

 

I reserve the final lines in this section to comment on two fundamental aspects for an comparative analysis of two countries that, in light of future action, require elaboration. Brazil became an influential actor in the global stage in two economic sectors: agriculture and energy. Curiously, China’s blistering growth resulted in its becoming dependent in these two sectors: China is the world’s largest importer of agricultural products as well as oil. A popular metaphor depicts China as an economic giant standing on two gnome legs, highlighting the fact that its trajectory has led to its becoming dependent on foreign actors, and as a result, vulnerable to external shocks. (Inversely, Brazil has the legs of a giant in agriculture and energy, but walks as a gnome…)

 

Is there a deep political reflection to undertake on this matter? Throughout the 40 years that China climbed to the Mount Olympus of the great global powers, Brazil went from importing foodstuffs to becoming one the main players in global agribusiness as one of the largest exporters of agricultural products in the world. There were important gains in production and soil productivity, as much in plantations as in cattle farming and aviculture. In terms of energy, we became a reference in the international production of ultradeep offshore oil.

 

Should policy action target this curious complementarity? Or should we let market forces and agents alone construct the convergence of these interests? Of course, Brazil has other assets. We have a competent mineral industry, a significant aerospace segment of the market, as well as quality mathematics. But my focus here is agriculture and energy, since it is here that China and Brazil are extremely complementary. I leave further reflection on this subject on hold until the end of this text.

 

With regard to domestic factors that contribute to state transformations, I would like to highlight the strong contrast between the human and historical heritage of each country. No value judgment can be made on this issue, as we run the risk of delving into delusions of ethnocentric evaluations. But the striking differences are of course worth noting as a point of reference for both reflection and action, so that the reading of the present and the construction of the future can somehow be produced from the particularities of each reality.

 

On the one hand, there is the ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural homogeneity of China. The systemic uniformity that prevailed in the 1970s (and still prevails today) is the result of a millenary, rich, and violent history, where a dominant ethnic group, the Han (which today makes up 92% of the population), made its values, principles, in short, its worldview prevail even over invaders. In the last two millennia, a philosophy, social ethics, political ideology and way of life — Confucianism — has shaped with rare force the collective and political Chinese behavior, reinforcing homogeneity and social cohesion.[5] The social equality of the 1970s, which took the shape of widespread poverty, had, as a short-term factor, the general failure of the statism of the means of production established by the Maoist regime and, as a long-term factor, the decline of the imperial regime throughout the 19th century, which would lead to the fragmentation (and humiliation) of China in the first half of the 20th century.

 

In the Brazilian context, our rich ethnic and cultural diversity is the defining feature of who we are as a society. What's more, the patrimonial roots of the Brazilian State have made inequality our other defining feature. That is, the starting points in China and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s were completely different, not to say diametrically opposed. It is key to keep in mind that our diversity is rooted in European immigration and two great horrors: the gradual decimation, by disease and extreme violence, of the indigenous population, that killed over 10 million people, and slavery, which subjected 40 million Africans for centuries. These are wounds in our social body that still remain open and inflamed.

 

With these differences in mind, what are the bottom-up State transformations in each country, that we can hope for in the coming years?

 

If China's recent stability is the result of its ethnic and cultural homogeneity, something that was inherited from previous generations, Brazil's political, economic, and social stability is yet to be built on the basis of the richness of its diversity. Yet, this potential can only be realized from an attitude of active integration, where no single identity struggle - for ideological, ethnic, or gender recognition, all legitimate and necessary - prevails over ideals of universal value.

 

I admit that this statement is vague, but the ideals that move the masses are necessarily diffuse and haughty so that they can precisely engage and encompass the largest number of individuals. "What is your utopia?" asks the graffiti, the red ink bleeding down the wall. "What is our utopia?", I ask in return. In a preliminary attempt to give a clear outline to this imaginary collective purpose, perhaps our way out is to imagine that we will be able to build a radical and uncompromising attitude in defence of social, political and economic integration, based on tolerance, respect and solidarity towards the differences that define our society.

 

Neuroscience shows us that, from an evolutionary point of view, we tend to prefer what is familiar because familiarity makes us feel safe.[6] In this sense, our brains have been programmed so that the new, the unknown, the unfamiliar - which may or may not represent danger - trigger warning signals. In urban centers, where the large majority of the population live, we must reprogram ourselves to tame this atavistic reflex: either we learn to live with our differences or we will be doomed to our self-destruction as a society. After all, are we rational animals or not? To quote Angela Davis' famous motto: "It's not enough not to be racist, we have to be anti-racist." In other words, it's not enough to criticize inequalities, we have to actively fight them. In cities, we must fight for the creation of urban spaces that (a) foster healthy environments and promote public safety, and that (b) induce, foster and stimulate (the redundancy here is purposeful) the coexistence of differences through social and economic integration, and especially through quality public education.

 

"What is strange to us today will be familiar tomorrow," said Mayor Richard J. Daley, in riposte to the horror, repulsion and criticism that the installation of Picasso's monumental cubist sculpture, 15 meters high and 162 tons of steel, sparked among Chicago’s conservatives. These were truly visionary words: in the following years the public embraced the work in such a way that its presence triggered the installation of what is now one of the largest collections of public sculptures in the world, with works by Chagall, Miró, Dubuffet, Calder, Noguchi, Moore, among so many other universal masters, spread throughout the city, opening the way for other manifestations of urban art.

 

Can the transition from strangeness to familiarity, and from familiarity to affection, which has taken place in art, extend to people? Perhaps so, but with more time. Even Chicago, which has achieved this great feat in public art, is far from placating racial and class prejudice. Either way, history will tell, and this must be the Illuminist vote, of possible light for a civilization, or at least for a certain civility, at one time local and global. We have some hope here. You see how, in three generations, the perception of same sex relationships and gender equality has changed in Brazil. Even in the midst of the terrible setbacks that we are now experiencing, and although full acceptance, or even tolerance, has not been achieved, it is undeniable that progress has been made.

 

Returning to Brazil and China, it is indeed sad to see that in both countries cities are advancing with urban and real estate development programs that deepen territorial segregation. The creation of urban spaces, mainly driven by private forces in both cases, follows the natural rise in land prices dictated by markets, which has forced lower income people out of cities into suburban regions, increasingly farther from their workplaces.

 

Unfortunately, Chinese cities today reflect the growing income inequality across China, which represents a large departure from the situation of the 1970s. In big cities, the more you move to the outskirts, the less beauty and less wealth there is. What’s more, urban sprawl is growing exponentially. Beijing, for example, which expands around peripheral rings, already extends beyond its sixth ring. China has lost a great opportunity in this regard: that of making poverty reduction also lead to greater socio-territorial integration.

 

The social cohesion of a country will increasingly depend on its capacity to develop cities with large public spaces and neighbourhoods that promote the cohabitation of people from different income groups, ethnic groups, beliefs, and behaviours. This agenda may become a priority in China as well, as increasing inequality might engender social tension. Many critics of the Chinese urbanization style, which include Chinese nationals like the award-winning architect Wang Shu, have pointed to the segmentation of space and the loss of places for cohabitation and spontaneous social contact.

 

But this is the great difference between Brazilian and Chinese cities: while chaos invades order here, order invades chaos there. In both cases we see a process of strong socio-spatial segmentation, but China advances rapidly in expanding the infrastructure and connectivity of its cities. The subway networks of Shanghai and Beijing, for example, now total over 1,300 km, while in Brazil, the two subway systems of São Paulo and Rio combined make up a mere 159 km. Here, we are witnessing the growing presence of militias, organized crime and homelessness in cities. In China, cities are safer and are connected by high-speed trains, whose network already exceeds 29,000 km.

 

I end this section by resuming the "maybe" I started it with. Brazil will only be viable if and only if we are able to recover a minimum set of values ​​that guide us and make us see ourselves as a collectivity united around a common destiny. Perhaps the possible way out for us involves a set of initiatives aimed at building better cities, which, in objective terms, would work as an intense and intelligent distributive policy, through the massive generation of urban collective goods and services.

 

Such a policy must start from a consensus, still to be built, that a better city will generate productivity gains, which is an essential condition for a more competitive integration in the new economy. There is no efficiency when large proportions of workers spend hours in traffic daily. Therefore, behavioral change needs to be accompanied by a reorganization of the built space, actively involving market and societal forces, from the bottom up, as well as government initiatives, agreed upon from the top down, based on initiatives that I will comment on the next section.

 

Maybe we can, but it won't be easy. It will require us to take proactive action in these two domains associated with the general question of the differences we address here: the construction of tolerance, respect and solidarity - overcoming atavisms - and the permanent promotion of economic inclusion.[7] Not through paternalistic distribution mechanisms, but through the construction, I repeat, of better cities, through the massive distribution of urban public goods and services. Using creativity, we will not lack mechanisms that promote the reproduction of private capital in public enterprises aimed at reducing inequality, notably socio-spatial segregation.

 

iii. The State apparatus as a factor of State transformation (“ top down”)

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In the domestic sphere, the factors of transformation of the state that prevailed in China and Brazil in the 70s and 80s also differed. In China, in 1978, the urgent imperative was to structure the market after the economic disaster of full nationalization. In 1988 in Brazil, the urgency was to rebuild democracy after the trauma of the dictatorship period. In China, the state opened the door to free market agents. In Brazil, the state opened itself up to the plurality of forces in politics and to the voices of organized society.

​

The partial result of these two processes is known by all: in China, in four decades of reform, there was a marked strengthening of political and economic power. In Brazil, we have witnessed the opposite: a stagnation in labor productivity rates, and a weakening of the state, with a notorious exception namely in agribusiness and certain segments of the energy industry. Economic stagnation and the weakening of the state were symbiotic processes marked by the capture of public policies, the advancement of organized crime and militias, and, of course, as we know, by a pathological increase in corruption.

 

Obviously, corruption is not unique to Brazil. It also leaves deep scars in China, and has been the focus of a vigorous campaign led by the nation’s supreme leader. This has resulted in the indictment of more than 1.5 million high-ranking officers, among which feature army generals and influential members of the Party Central Committee. However, in contrast to Brazil, China’s wealth creation managed to consistently pull hundreds of millions of people over the poverty line. More than 80% of the population, the equivalent of approximately four Brazils, have crossed over that line in the past 40 years. As we have seen, the fight against corruption in Brazil has also gained ground, with the consolidation of several important tools, that were, unfortunately, not always used in a lawful and impersonal manner.

 

"What about the voice of the people?", eagerly ask China’s staunch critics. It is worth remembering that social power in China has always made itself heard throughout its thousand-year history, invariably in the form of protests, rebellions, and wars. Never in China's history has the voice of the people been channeled through institutions that guaranteed popular assent on the great issues of governance in the country. Not even in the periods following the Republican (1912) and Communist (1949) revolutions was it possible to build democratic structures of wider participation that extended beyond the revolutionary body itself.

 

Social power in China has therefore remained, over the last 40 years, where it has always been: "buffered" and, as always, ready to manifest or explode when necessary. The central power understands this reality better than anyone. During the Tang Dynasty, for example, the Anshi Rebellion (756-763) led to the death of an astonishing 36 million people,[8] a world record of horror that would only be surpassed 1,200 years later during World War II. And the list of Chinese rebellions, aside from being thousands of years old, is extensive and its scale is commonly measured in the millions of casualties.

 

From a cynical perspective, a possible simplistic explanation is that corruption has spread enormously, both here and there, but the wealth generation in China has been of such magnitude that it has been able to maintain the legitimacy of the Communist Party. From talking to local friends and family, I learned that democracy and its value are alien to the vast majority of the Chinese population. The formulas of governance built up over millennia have always been authoritarian in nature, and attempts at openness or flexibility have invariably resulted in chaos.

 

In Brazil today, we cannot accept any tolerance towards any signs of authoritarianism. Having said that, and remaining aware of the countless imperfections and weaknesses of Western democracies, we must avoid a judgmental, blindly critical stance towards the formulas of governance in China. After all, they are the holders of the most continuous and populous civilization on the planet; they are the ones who, in four decades, have lifted 800 million people above the poverty line.

 

Although in our Western eyes a deficit of democracy prevails in China, the country has undoubtedly generated a surplus of merit for the extraordinary social achievements it has achieved in such a short time. Logically, this account is not unambiguous, nor can it be used as a justification for authoritarian formulas in Brazil. But it is important to keep in mind that the legitimacy of a government or a party certainly rests on a broad legacy of results that, although multifaceted, enter into a linear or non-linear evaluation by the population.

 

Taking as a premise the idea that the organization of societies has always obeyed the action and interaction between market, government, and societal forces, the reform of the state in China implemented from 1978 onwards is absolutely unprecedented. This reform required a rebalancing of economic, political, and social forces, qualitatively different from the readjustments promoted by the three revolutions that defined the formation of contemporary states: the French Revolution (1789), the American Revolution (1776), and the Russian Revolution (1917). In Giovanni Arrighi's characterization, it is a question of implanting, in "the socialism with Chinese characteristics" (1978), not a market economy, but an economy with a market,[9] after the failed attempt to completely suppress the capitalist mode of production in the Chinese Revolution of 1949.

​

Finally, I’d like to address a final remark to the transformative elements originating from the state itself known as veto points.[10] Veto points are defined as the set of situations in bureaucracies in which collective choices (decisions, public or private projects, bills, proposals for changes in the status quo, etc.) can be obstructed. Veto points are at once necessary and perverse. Necessary because in some way they constitute vectors of social and/or technical control of projects emanating from political or economic power. Perverse, because, as advocates of the minimum state argue, every veto point, in the hands of veto agents, becomes easily captured by the shady interests of public or private agents.

​

Many known experiences of structuring complex projects demonstrate that the Brazilian State, in the general effort to institutionalize democracy, has created in its different spheres of power a sea of veto points that condemn us to inefficiency and immobility. Inspection bodies quickly became centers of fundraising for political or private purposes. Public agencies were captured by companies or parties, undermining the necessary independence of these institutions. Even development banks have been the object of this process through decades and different governments. Public debates, in turn, are often captured by pressure groups that do not necessarily represent the public interest.

 

To make matters worse, in addition to the slowness and uncertainty that characterize these processes, each decision is adopted diachronically, one after the other. Any project, whether infrastructural, environmental or real estate, needs to be submitted to different counters. We do not have a one-stop shop that could examine in a synchronic way all the variables of a certain project. For example, a project of urban intervention of a certain complexity in São Paulo may, in case of success, take more than 5 years for approval, until it goes through all the approval instances. Finally, perhaps the problem is not exactly the existence of "veto points", but their lack of coordination, and their capture by individuals and corporations more interested in raising funds (whether for corruption or not), than the public interest.

 

Let us remember that the modelling of any infrastructure project requires technical knowledge that is usually not available within the public machine in Brazil, given the insufficient human and material resources in the different spheres of government. Such insufficiency of the State also contributes to the development of incestuous (or at least conflicting) relations between the public and private sectors in the concession and infrastructure sector. We have seen improvements in the regulatory framework in recent decades, but we are still falling far short of what is desirable.[11] Either we make the contracting of competent projects on the market easier (as preferred by those who are more liberal) or we provide the State with qualified personnel to do so (as desired by the more statist ones). Regardless of your preference (more liberal or more statist), the fundamental component is to make it happen and try to catch up, catalyzing the project discussion process with the stakeholders: the market forces and the population (the benefited portion, and also those who will be negatively affected).

 

The reader can probably infer that in a powerful and centralizing state like China, the number of veto points is reduced. In fact it is. Large-scale projects are decided quickly, and the Council of State and various government bodies at the provincial and municipal levels have systematically sought to integrate government approval bodies into a unified approval system in order to shorten approval times.

 

It would be simplistic and reductionist to characterize the differences between China and Brazil as an opposition between technocracy and democracy. It is fair to say, however, that China might make even better decisions if it developed a more diversified system in order to capture opinions and local knowledge of its stakeholders, which is precious information in major projects. On the other hand, we would certainly gain in efficiency if we look into how China has managed to drastically reduce approval deadlines, increasing the technological density in the public administration and unifying processes that run diachronically in a single synchronic flow.

 

If we want to reduce inequality and exclusion by promoting social inclusion through the provision of better collective public goods (I insist because this is my favorite thesis), we urgently need to find formulas to provide the state and the market with the conditions that allow for infrastructure and housing projects to be completed more quickly and with higher quality. Let us move away from the slowness in the construction of our subways. And the horrors of the Minha Casa Minha Vida project.[12]