resistance is feudal: china gets its rich on

It seems to me that some kind of broadly liberal international consensus, implemented via international agreements, remains the best hope for cushioning the global blow and averting the sectarian, racial, tribal violence sure to flow from exacerbated economic inequality -- but we're precious short on leaders and visionaries of such a consensus right now.

Could you elaborate? On the surface of it, I'd have to strongly disagree even just technically.

From Wikipedia:

The word fascism has come to mean any system of government resembling Mussolini's, that

exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition,
engages in severe economic and social regimentation.

Which while true of many authoritarian states (apart from the Mussolini reference)is still true, largely, of the PRC. It is especially the corporatist aspects of modern China which make me doubt it has any communist cred left. Perhaps, fascist isn't quite the word, but it's close.

The World Bank can only do so much in the absence of government interest in a given policy. Wolfensohn and co. can state that the bank is interested in lending to support a given sector, but if the government doesn't want to pursue that, anything more would be pushing on a rope.

Also, even if the national government supports a certain project, if the provincial or local government hasn't bought into the idea, funding the project would be a tragic waste.

Would they regain credibility in your eyes if they went back to shipping people to the country to starve because of their education?

Oh yeah, I didn't mean to suggest they had. It's just that with them roaring so ferociously in the other direction, barely bothering any more with the Maoist figleaves of doctrine to conceal their Party oligarchism, it would be nice if someone were providing that leadership.

It was my impression that the IMF and the World Bank were pretty much interested in getting countries to do one thing (and one thing only), attract international investors

That's my impression too, although I claim no expertise. But surely that's not the only thing the IMF and World Bank are capable of doing, and both of them (from what I've read) have been doing a little institutional soul-searching in the last few years, in the wake of assorted catastrophes and growing resistance to their whole bitter-pill model. (And the fact that several countries, like Malaysia and maybe now Argentina, have been building their economies by pursuing nationalist models far removed from the IMF ideals.) More to the point, since the United States has pretty much abdicated its role as de facto chairman of international institutions, there are opportunities there for other people to step into those roles. I guess what I mean is that with the U.S. having bizarrely and voluntarily marginalized itself internationally, now might be a good time for the various groups and forces that have been focused on resisting the IMF and World Bank to be thinking strategically about finding reform-minded people in those institutions and working with them to identify common goals. I think the assumption by the Bush administration is that the American pullback from international organizations will render those organizations toothless and spineless, but that doesn't have to be the case. (And it's not like the U.S. has abandoned the World Bank and IMF to the same degree it has the U.N., but I think America's credibility problems extend to all those organizations -- so that anyone raising objections and challenges to American corporatist economics is more likely to get a sympathetic hearing now than under the enthusiastically globalist Clinton administration.)

So how close is China's economy to hitting the buffers?