"Neo-liberalism" and the Chinese Success Story

The University of Chicago is considering setting up a Milton Friedman Institute. Some professors are strongly opposed to such an establishment, and have written a letter to the Provost and the President stating their objections. One of the chief objections is:

'Many colleagues are distressed by the notoriety of the Chicago School of Economics, especially throughout much of the global south, where they have often to defend the University’s reputation in the face of its negative image. The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive. Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population, leading to the weakening of a number of struggling local economies in the service of globalized capital, and many would question the substitution of monetization for democratization under the banner of “market democracy.” '

A Militant Defender of the Legacy of Friedman responds to this letter, ridiculing the 'Global South Objection' in this fashion:

'I can think of lots of words to describe what’s going on in, say, China and India, as well as what happened previously to countries that adopted the “neoliberal global order” like Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. Billions of people are leading dramatically freer, healthier, longer and more prosperous lives than they were a generation ago.

Of course, we all face plenty of problems. I worry about environmental catastrophes, and their political, social and economic aftermath. Many people are suffering, primarily in pockets of kleptocracy and anarchy. Life’s pretty bleak about 5 blocks west of the University of Chicago. In my professional life, I worry about inflation, chaotic markets, and their possible death by regulation. There is a lot for thoughtful economists and social scientists to do. But honestly, do we really yearn to send a billion Chinese back to their “local economies,” trying to eke a meager living out of a quarter acre of rice paddy, under the iron grip of some local bureaucrat? I mean, the Mao caps and Che shirts are cool and all, but millions of people starved to death.'

Which is all well and good, but it leads me (and at least one other blogger) to ask the question: since when did China become a beaming poster child for the success of the neo-liberal agenda? How close, socio-politically, is the Chinese state to the neo-liberal dreamworld? Or, as Daniel Davies puts it far more eloquently:

'What is the intellectual journey that took the Davos crowd from laissez-faire via free trade and the WTO, to regarding China as a success story?'

Any thoughts?