China As A Developmental State

Located in Eastern Asia, China is a country known for being a worldwide economic superpower that has had a communist government for several years. Beginning in 1978, China, under Deng Xiaoping’s rule, began to incorporate capitalistic ideas in the government. Deng created various reforms unlike any of the policies or reforms in prior years that began to reconstruct China’s economy through modernization and by establishment of international trade.

Since the market orientated economic reforms were introduced in 1978 (Khan, Hu (1997, P103) China’s economy has seen a 10% increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Per year (Vincellete, Manoel,

China has always been renowned for being successful in the domains of science and arts, however in previous decades, China has been ravaged by famines, civil discomfort and foreign outsourcing. China was consumed by this injustice until well after the Second World War when Mao Zedong introduced Communism adapted from the U.S.S.R, and created an autocratic socialist system which imposes firm constraints upon the Chinese social, political and economic system. It wasn't until the 1980's China's following leader Deng Xiaoping who focused focused on developing China into a

Despite extensive criticism, proponents of the measure feel that it has improved life in China. The policy, implemented in 1979, “was created by the Chinese government to alleviate social, economic and environmental problems in China” (Cabrera). Supporters of the policy claim that is has been successful. One measurement of a country’s success is its financial growth and China has seen an improvement in that respect. “With that rapid GDP growth, has come better nutrition, rising levels of education, longer life expectancies, and higher living standards for the vast majority of Chinese people.” (Azubel 2). Unfortunately, that financial growth has had little impact on the isolated farms and villages.

China has reached a milestone in terms of achieving its centenarian goal of making China a prosperous nation once again. One of the ways that it has done this is by having steady economic growth even in the midst of an economic crisis. Not only has China’s economy grown, but its standard of living has also improved, it has achieved this by spending 70 percent of its fiscal revenue towards improving people’s standard of living. China has also pushed more anti-corruption reforms and has made efforts towards widening its economy by setting up freer trade.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Maoist government in China implemented a socialistic economy wherein the state controlled nearly every aspect of national and economic development. The process of making the Chinese economy public took the better part of the decade, but resulted in an explosive rate of expansion. Both the nation’s industrial and agricultural sectors grew exponentially until finally reaching a tapering off point during the late 1960s.

To capture the benefits of globalisation, the communist government has moved its focus from domestic to trade oriented. China has become the second largest economy in the world. Since 1980s, it has gone from being the 12th largest economy in the world to the second largest. This indicates that its economy has been growing with an average rate of 10 per cent per year for the last three

I aim to establish whether ‘the Great Leap Forward’ and ‘Cultural Revolution’ were successes for China in modernising and pushing the country forward or a failure that achieved

Hung’s stated goals are as follows. First, he aims to outline the historical origins of the capitalist boom in China as well as the conditions which predicated said boom. He also names four conceptions against history to explore the global effects of China’s capitalist boom and the limit of that boom. Firstly, he seeks to challenge the notion that China is challenging the United States neoliberal order. Secondly, he examines the belief that the increasing incomes of poor Chinese citizens helps to reverse worldwide income polarization. Thirdly, he analyzes the claim that China’s rise is challenging Western dominion over the world, and is radically altering the world order. Lastly, he plans to evaluate the assertion that China has been emerging as the most powerful driver of growth since the global financial crisis. He plans to devote a single chapter to the refutation of each of these views and explanations of why they overstate the importance of China, in addition to several introductory chapters describing China’s rise. He aims to prove with this work that China is no different than the other major capitalist powers, that its boom is dependent on the global neoliberal order, that its boom contributes to rampant inequality, and, in sum, that China is just a foundation of the capitalist status quo.

Throughout time, many countries have needed to implement some sort of economic reform in order to strengthen their economy so that they can be more of a power on the world stage and to stabilize their country. The Chinese reforms were long in the making, an unfolding process that had spanned most of the 20th century and, unlike other countries such as Russia who were trying to do the same thing but whom eventually failed, China prospered, and increased its economy greatly. China has had the fastest growing economy in the world for the past two decades, with an annual growth rate of approximately 10 percent since the economic reforms in 1979, and now has the second largest GDP in the world, second only to the USA. Starting in 1979 they

During Mao’s time, he strongly stressed his principles of the “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution”. However, due to these philosophies, China’s economic and social foundations crumbled and was severely damaged. The country was severely poor and economic production slowed. After Mao passed away, Deng Xiaoping emerged as Mao’s successor. He launched comprehensive economic reforms. These reforms aimed to decrease the role of the state in the economy and gradually introduce private forms of production in agriculture and industry. Because of these reforms, production increased by leaps and bounds and poverty was reduced dramatically. However, there was a problem that was arising. There was a lot of corruption and nepotism that was beginning to take over the economy. The gap between the wealthy and poor was growing and people began to see it as unfair.

Charles Darwin in his theory of natural selection said “ the fittest of the fittest will survive,” and year after year China has proven they are the fittest by climbing the economic ladder, as Mark Schwartz Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs and Chairman of Golden Sachs Asia Pacific, claims in his speech “China’s Economic Success and Opportunities,” “China is coming out of a period of rapid growth almost ten percent over the last thirty (30) years. In 2013 China’s gross domestic product (GDP) was 9.3 trillion dollars in size the second largest economy on the world and in 2013 China contributed 28% GDP to the world growth globally” (Schwartz). Was this growth due to rapid industrialization or the implementation of polices using Marxist and Keynesian perspectives or was it the authoritarian regime? However, it is China’s collectivist approach towards socialism that is responsible for their recent success.

Without a doubt, China has been one of the leading countries in terms of economic developments in recent decades; however, the downside of the rapid economic achievements has risen to surface, calling Chinese Government to action.

Over the course of the Communist Party’s ruling history, the economy has fluctuated in its quality. From Mao Zedong’s reign (1949-1978), Chairman Mao focused on the industrialization of communes and agriculture. The economy not only remained relatively stagnant as a result, but also caused an immense famine throughout these communes. Since Mao’s death in 1976, the Communist Party has steered away from its communal form of economy and became the world’s second largest economy through capitalism. This act of change depicts how the Communist Party has influenced the People’s Republic of China’s financial system into becoming increasingly capitalistic. The People’s Republic of China had issued a multitude of economic reforms in 1978 after the death of Mao Zedong. As a result, China has risen in the ranks of the world’s economy, effectively becoming the second fastest growing economy in the world as well. All in all, the Communist Party of the People’s Republic of China has aided the Chinese economy to reach its current success.

. Xiaoping implemented significant change going from a centrally planned economy run by the state, towards a private entrepreneur market based economy. This transition to a new type of socialist thinking, known as the socialist market economy, proved highly successful as it allowed China to move from a nation in poverty ruled by a single person to the second largest economy in the world. A more sudden or abrupt change could have easily resulted in the fall of China’s economy, similar to what certain European countries experienced in 1991 at the end of the cold war between the super powers.