It's time to send Marxist economist Liu Guoguang a copy of Hayek's Road to Serfdom, according to the SCMP:

Market-oriented reforms must not override state planning because it is a remedy for market failures, including the widening wealth gap, a leading mainland economist said.

The latest shot from Liu Guoguang , an adviser to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, shows that intense debate over the direction and thrust of the mainland's economic reforms is continuing. Mr Liu's comments, carried in the China Youth Daily yesterday under the headline "Socialist market economy also needs planning", came after Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to push ahead with reforms earlier this month at the National People's Congress' annual conference.

Mr Liu said pro-reform economists had "blind faith in the market". "An erroneous perception is widely spreading at the moment, and that is to use the word `planning' in a totally derogatory sense," he said in the newspaper's review of China's past 50 years of economic development. "Excessive marketisation which excludes the use of planning is abnormal and wrong."

Mr Liu said his emphasis on the role of planning did not advocate returning to a planned economy. Rather, "effective government regulation and intervention is necessary to correct market defects".

He listed five issues which the market alone was unable to address: the overall balancing of demand and supply, economic restructuring, fair competition, environmental protection and social equity. "The market, which is conducive to the promotion of efficiency and development, cannot realise real social equity and will inevitably result in polarity between the rich and poor," he said.

"The government should take some measures to prevent those problems from worsening. It is more necessary for the government to play a complementary role to remedy market defects."

At his post-NPC press conference, Mr Wen vowed to press ahead with reforms despite "difficulties as we move ahead" and warned that "a retreat offered no way out". Many analysts believe Mr Wen's strong support for reforms may help turn the tide and help the pro-reform camp to prevail over conservatives arguing that reforms have gone too far.

Most worryingly, there's plenty of people that will agree with Mr Liu, and not just in China.

Seeing we're on things planning, Jake van der Kamp notes that Hong Kong's been paying consultants for several years to come up with a master plan, but they've not been able to finish the task. Full article below the jump, but here's the money graph:

These big visions never work. Events always overtake them and, if we shackle ourselves to them, we only make ourselves less responsive to events. Just imagine what a Vision 2006 would have been 30 years ago. It would have forecast a much poorer but more populous Hong Kong surviving on a garment industry with the industrial emergence of China ignored. Long-term studies do not look forward. They just take the present and project it forward and we wind up spending public money on the wrong things for a few years until we recognise reality and give up.

Planners' vision for the future no clearer after five years of babble - Jake van der Kamp

Among my few scholastic achievements include learning to speak Consultababble. I learned it when I was a cub reporter in Vancouver many years ago and assigned to cover the municipal council of the district of North Vancouver.

The big story in this municipal council at the time was the decision to formulate a master plan for the entire district. There was to be no more haphazard planning of development. All would be decided years in advance.

I was as keen as mustard. North Vancouver was leading the way in sound urban planning and I would be there to make sure it got full play in the Vancouver Sun.

I believe I actually managed to plough my way through about three series of the resulting consultants' reports, two more than anyone on the council read and then, fortunately, the whole thing petered out. Net result: I learned to speak Consultababble while North Vancouver paid a big consultants' bill, was told more studies were needed, and went back to haphazard planning, the best sort.

Thus, you will understand that I am not entirely surprised to see Hong Kong's own big vision for the future, Strategy 2030, seemingly adrift and moving nowhere five years after being trumpeted as the answer to where we will be in 30 years' time.

The table shows you where we should have been. This outline schedule, adopted in February 2001, called for all three stages of the study to be completed in 20 months. That means that the final public consultation on Formulation of Development Strategies and Response Plans should have been completed in February 2002.

Hello, fellows, knock, knock, where are we? Do we have that master plan yet?

At least I can say for North Vancouver that it recognised things were going nowhere and let the idea drop. But, as I understand it, we are still formally committed to Strategy 2030 and no one has yet recognised what a charade it has become.

The babbling stream of Consultababble has slowed to a trickle, however. Click the tab marked "What's New" on the official website and three entries come up.

In May 2004, there was a press release on Hong Kong residents' experience of and aspirations for taking up residence in China. In December 2004, there was another press release on Hong Kong people working and living in the Pearl River Delta and then 10 months ago we had a working paper on additional cross-boundary links to the eastern part of Guangdong.

Long-sighted vision, indeed, vision across the border and nowhere short of it. Was this not meant to be a study on what we would be on this side of the border in 2030?

But, then again, what are we to do with the visions of our past chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa?

He told his planners he wanted not only a major Chinese city but the most cosmopolitan one in Asia with a status comparable to New York and London.

From what I can see, they complied by forecasting population growth well above what we have actually had and, if this had any effect, it was to commit us to far more infrastructure spending than we will need for years to come.

Fortunately, we have taken a somewhat wiser course with the Commission on Strategic Development, which is also supposed to think grand thoughts about the future for us. We have appointed all the great and good of Hong Kong to it and they will talk up a storm until they get tired of it, which should not take very long.

These big visions never work. Events always overtake them and, if we shackle ourselves to them, we only make ourselves less responsive to events. Just imagine what a Vision 2006 would have been 30 years ago. It would have forecast a much poorer but more populous Hong Kong surviving on a garment industry with the industrial emergence of China ignored.

Long-term studies do not look forward. They just take the present and project it forward and we wind up spending public money on the wrong things for a few years until we recognise reality and give up.

I think it is about time that we recognise reality with Strategy 2030 too, but, if our planners will not, let us hear from them where we stand and what we are doing.