One piece of Chinese policy that seems pretty smart/rational is their long term infrastructure projects. Even if keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power is their first priority, long term thinking is a high priority for them. From the news of big infrastructure projects I’ve read about, China has much clearer thinking on infrastructure than the US.
Smart from one point of view, perhaps.
I see a great deal of criticism of it—that the investments are terrible, the market is over-saturated, things like high-speed rail are leading to perverse consequences like migrants overloading the bus system to avoid the necessarily high-priced tickets, and the whole shebang is basically welfare to keep the house of cards going until someone finally eats all the bad debt from the railroads (http://chovanec.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/beijings-bad-debt-bailout-problem-solved/) and other big projects you laud.
Smart from one point of view, perhaps.
I see a great deal of criticism of it—that the investments are terrible, the market is over-saturated, things like high-speed rail are leading to perverse consequences like migrants overloading the bus system to avoid the necessarily high-priced tickets, and the whole shebang is basically welfare to keep the house of cards going until someone finally eats all the bad debt from the railroads (http://chovanec.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/beijings-bad-debt-bailout-problem-solved/) and other big projects you laud.