What is The Beijing Consensus?

The Beijing Consensus is a model of economic development that has been posited as a challenge to the so-called Washington Consensus. The latter is taken to be a confluence of policies backed by international organizations including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, as well as most western governments whose interests the Consensus tends to promote. Those policies include market-friendly approaches such as privatization of national industries, slashing of welfare state provisions, opening of industrial sectors to international competition and so forth. It also tends to be associated with such western liberal issues as democratic elections, (relative) freedom of the press and human rights generally.

The Washington Consensus has been shown to be economically disastrous for country after country where it has been imposed, with millions thrown into unemployment and poverty and huge amounts of money leaving the countries involved in the pockets of foreign corporations.

The Beijing Consensus has arisen as a means of challenging this approach. Its origins were in the rapid economic development of the East Asian Tigers (Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, in the first wave) supplemented by the concept of Asian Values. Since the first wave of Tigers developed themselves while retaining authoritarian governments, an argument was constructed based on the concept of Neo-Confucianist philosophy and supported, primarily by former PM of Malaysia Dr Mohamed Mahathir and the creator of modern Singapore, Dr Lee Kuan Yew. The argument was based on the belief that there is a fundamental cultural difference between Asian and Western people. This difference is that Asian people do not need the kinds of democracy and personal freedoms insisted on by the Washington Consensus. Instead, Asian people welcome a strong leader and are willing to place their trust in him (a female leader is conceivable but only rarely occurs).

The Asian Values argument melted away when it became evident that countries such as Korea, in particular, were leading a new wave of economic development by moving from the middle income category to high income category by freeing people to act as they would, promoting intellectual creativity, ensuring full access to the internet for all and so forth. This was accompanied by genuine democratization of the country (although this is not of course perfect).

The Beijing Consensus is an attempt to reinvent the Asian Values argument by switching its point of origin to China. It aims to show that rapid economic development and modernization can be accompanied by authoritarian rule, such as continues to be evident in China and some other countries. It is clear why this model would be favoured by states which maintain repressive autocratic regimes but would quite like to be rich as well (not least in order to protect themselves from aerial assault or invasion). Currently, it is difficult for apologists for the western model to argue for the superiority of the western approach because people quickly point out the contradictions and hypocrisies involved in the continued use of Guantanamo Bay, torture, abuses of prisoners in Iraq, extraordinary renditions, drone attacks on civilians and so forth.