February 15, 2008 10:37AM # The Free Market Produces Incoherent Headlines By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) --- SHARE Today’s *Washington Post* has a story on economic espionage by Chinese interests, most of which have connections to the Chinese government and military. Inexplicably, the headline of the story is “[Even Spies Embrace China’s Free Market](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/14/AR2008021403550.html).” Government-sponsored economic espionage has little to do with free markets. These are crimes (or at least civil wrongs) sponsored directly or indirectly by over-large governments. Crime and over-large governments are antithetical to free markets, not a part of them. Evidently, there’s some kind of market failure at the *Post*. (Note to the economic illiterates at the *Post*: That’s a joke.) ##### Related Tags [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).