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July-August 2004, Volume 56 — Number 3 China
and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle c o n t
e n t s This month’s “Notes from the Editors” is a tribute to William Hinton (1919–2004). | more |. Editors’
Foreword We depart this year from our usual practice for MR's July-August double issue. Instead of a collection of articles on a common theme, we are devoting the issue to a single manuscript—a study of China and economic development theory by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett that will be published in book form by Monthly Review Press early next year. Although there are numerous books on China, this one is especially worthy. It is a careful, clear, well-grounded Marxist study of how a major post-revolutionary society turned away from socialism. In addition, the current transformation in China throws light on why capitalism, by its very nature, creates poverty, inequality, and ecological destruction in the process of economic growth. Introduction: China and Socialism China and socialism...during the three decades following the 1949 establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC), it seemed as if these words would forever be joined in an inspiring unity. China had been forced to suffer the humiliation of defeat in the 1840-42 Opium War with Great Britain and the ever-expanding treaty port system that followed it. The Chinese people suffered under not only despotic rule by their emperor and then a series of warlords, but also under the crushing weight of imperialism, which divided the country into foreign-controlled spheres of influence. Gradually, beginning in the 1920s, the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong organized growing popular resistance to the foreign domination and exploitation of the country and the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek. The triumph of the revolution under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party finally came in 1949, when the party proclaimed it would bring not only an end to the suffering of the people but a new democratic future based on the construction of socialism. 1. China’s Rise to Model Status China's post-reform rapid economic rise has led many progressives to view the country as a development model whose experience proves that there are viable alternative paths to growth within the existing capitalist world system. Significantly, although not widely acknowledged by most of these progressives, many mainstream economists have also embraced China as a development model. 2. China’s Economic Transformation When the leaders of China's Communist Party announced their program of market socialist reforms in 1978, they argued that it was necessary to overcome the country's growing problems of economic stagnation and waste caused by the Mao era's overly centralized state systems of planning and production. China's rapid growth and industrial transformation during the 1980s encouraged many on the left, both inside and outside of China, to view market socialism as an attractive vehicle for achieving sustained growth, an egalitarian distribution of goods and services, and new forms of democratic participation in economic decision making. 3. Contradictions of China’s Transformation: Domestic Many progressives agree that China is not a socialist country, but argue that its controlled process of transformation has been a success, having produced rapid industrial growth and a rising standard of living for the great majority of Chinese. The reality, however, is that the marketization, privatization, and increasing foreign domination of China's economy have generated growing tensions and contradictions that have already undermined economic stability and imposed unacceptably high costs on China's working people. 4. Contradictions of China’s Transformation: International China has become a major regional and global economic force. It has not only recorded double-digit real GDP growth for most of the decade 1985-95, but also maintained rapid growth of over 7 percent per year during and after the 1997-98 East Asian crisis. According to Stephen Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley, "China's growth rate is now strong enough to have accounted for 17.5 percent of the growth in world gross domestic product [in 2002]-second only to the growth contribution of the United States."1 By 2002, China's shares of Asian GDP and exports stood at over 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively.2 Some purchasing power estimates have China accounting for half of Asia's GDP.3 5. China and Socialism: Conclusion We have argued that it is wrong to celebrate China as an economic success story or development model. But why is it so important how socialists and other progressives understand China? Is this all just an academic desire to properly interpret the Chinese experience, or a political sectarianism based on an a priori notion of "pure" socialism? The answer is no; the stakes are arguably much higher and more meaningful. Appendix
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 About the Editors:
Paul M. Sweezy (1910-2004) ·
Harry Magdoff Contact: Monthly Review If you have any questions or comments |
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