Out of this Furnace

By embracing market economics while preserving the party’s monopoly on power and restricting political freedom, Mr. Pan writes, China’s Communist leaders have concocted an “authoritarian capitalism” that “could be as exploitative as anything Marx — or Mao — ever envisioned.” Free markets and private enterprise, he says, “generated wealth and prosperity, but unrestrained by democratic institutions, they also produced grim work conditions”: without trade unions, a free press, independent courts or elections, workers have little leverage with their employers and no way to remove corrupt officials, who often collude with business interests.

-La Kakutani reviewing Out of Mao's Shadow

Wow. Yeah. Those wily Chinese sure have come up with a unique system of state capital. Unprecedented.