На информационном ресурсе применяются рекомендательные технологии (информационные технологии предоставления информации на основе сбора, систематизации и анализа сведений, относящихся к предпочтениям пользователей сети "Интернет", находящихся на территории Российской Федерации)

Feedbox

12 подписчиков

What is socialism like in China?

Author: Scotty Hendricks / Source: Big Think

  • China has undergone massive economic reforms over the last few decades while remaining officially communist.
  • The state still has tremendous power over the economy, but private enterprise and markets dominate daily life.
  • The question of if the Chinese economy is technically capitalist remains unanswered.

When people today think of a communist country, they often think of The People’s Republic of China. Once known as a promoter of global revolution, it is now better known as the workshop of the world and an increasingly powerful global influencer. But while most people know China is communist, they don’t know how that communism works. Is there a softer version we can more comfortably call socialism? If so, what is socialism like in China?

What is socialism like in China? How does it work? How did it get to be the way it is now?

After the establishment of the People’s Republic, Mao and his government got to work establishing a communist system in China. The system they instituted, known as Maoism, had more than a few problems.

During the Great Leap Forward, the overzealous name for the second five-year plan, the tendency for political goals to replace common sense had drastic consequences. General incompetence in agricultural planning, crack downs on dissent, and bad crop conditions caused a famine that killed around fifty million people.

After this fiasco, Mao was sidelined until he launched the Cultural Revolution, a socio-political movement dedicated to driving out perceived capitalistic influence in China. This event also wreaked havoc on the economy and resulted in the death of millions. It ended only with the death of Mao and the arrest of his high-level supporters in 1976.

Enter Deng Xiaoping and “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”

In the late 70s, a moderate named Deng Xiaoping came to power. His administration was marked by various economic reforms that he collectively named “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”

Agriculture was de-collectivized, and farmers gained the right to sell their surplus. Special economic zones where foreign investment was allowed and state regulation was reduced were created. Price controls were relaxed for urban industries. Private businesses were allowed to exist again for the first time in decades. The Shanghai Stock exchange reopened, and many state corporations were privatized.

Unlike Gorbachev’s reforms in the USSR, many of these were first tried on a local level and then applied to China as a whole after they were proven to work. Many observers argue that this is why reform was successful in China while it was disastrous in Russia.

Since the beginning of these reforms, China has seen meteoric economic growth. As a result of this growth, the standard of living of millions upon millions of people has improved and the food shortages that plagued China vanished. There has been considerable liberalization of Chinese society as a whole, though it has been less than what Western analysts predicted it would be.

Click here to read more

The post What is socialism like in China? appeared first on FeedBox.

Ссылка на первоисточник
наверх