That Old Marxist Envy

"Envy hasn’t yet been beaten in China. Yes, markets in China have been opening up, but traditional Confucianist disdain towards merchants goes back millennia. It won’t go away in a decade or two.

Over the past year, Marxist rhetoric has been heating up in the Chinese media. The Communist party’s official paper, the People’s Daily, has been talking a lot about income inequality (perhaps taking its cue from the New York Times). Powerful Communist party officials have been complaining about “black hearted” business tycoons and prattling on about social responsibility."