This is John Bachelor, conversation with Anne Stevenson Yang, the author of Wild Ride, the story of the rise and fall of the Chinese miracle economy and was witness and lived in China for many of those years.

This time the question of consumers.

Consumers drive the American economy,

69, 70% of the GDP. Not so in China. Why not? Why doesn't the central

government step back and let them shop and provides a very succinct answer, one

that cannot be solved on this side of ideology.

Anne Stevenson Yang, why the consumer does not rule in China compared to Europe, the United States, other democracies.

More of this tonight.

I think that the key issue in China, John, is that consumers, the average person in China receives less money in GDP

than does the government and manufacturing and state-owned industry, and that's the key. They have less. and now where the government has always been more comfortable in

in getting less money to consumers and more power to the

central government.