What's most interesting about the news that (1) China has halted its biofuel drive because of food price inflation and (2) about two-thirds of all Chinese cities lack central sewage treatement and suffer from major air pollution is that centralized socialist planning is supposed to be great at addressing problems like these.

The tradition of French Rationalism has inspired policy wonks -- from the early utopian socialists through Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton -- to trust that "smart" centralized thinking will quickly build just and efficient societies. (It takes a village to run an economy. Yeah.)

So why does the world's fastest-growing manufacturer suffer defficient infrastructure major economic dis-coordination even though it still has a centralized planning structure with virtually absolute power?