Today's WSJ (subscription required) has this interesting passage in an article on French rioting over a labor law that would permit terminations of employees in their first 2 years of employment:
According to a recent poll, France is the only country among 20 surveyed where those who don't have faith in the free market outnumber those who do. Only 36% of those polled in France agreed with the proposition that the free market is the "best system on which to base the future of the world" -- compared with 71% in the U.S., 66% in Britain and 65% in Germany. In nominally communist China, 74% said they favored the free market, according to the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes.
Is it any wonder that China's best economic days are ahead of it and France's best economic days are behind it?