China's political economy, the quest for development since 1949. Oxford University Press, 1987, 418 pp.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230100211 |
| Date | 01 April 1990 |
| Published date | 01 April 1990 |
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT, VOL.
10,
241-25,O
(1990)
Book
Reviews
CHINA’S POLITICAL ECONOMY, THE QUEST FOR DEVELOPMENT SINCE 1949
Carl
Riskin
Oxford University Press, 1987, 418 pp.
The rapidity of change in China since 1979 has been such as
is
liable to overtake books
published on the subject, and to leave them stranded on the remainder shelf. Carl Riskin’s
book, however,
is
likely to retain its value for
a
long time to come, and to be in demand until
China has solved the problems
of
her socialist economy, the characteristics
of
which he
describes
so
thoroughly and
so
objectively in this volume-the best book on the subject, in
this reviewer’s opinion, since Audrey Donnithorne’s
China’s Economic System
of
1967. The
analysis is temperate, judicious and well-informed. The detail with which the book is packed
is always significant, never tedious, and does not detract from the ease and pleasure with
which it can be read.
Part
of
the book is concerned with ‘late Maoism’, that
is
with the economic experiments
of
Mao’s last
20
years. Riskin’s conclusion
is
that while the deficiencies
of
the centralized
command economy which Mao sought to supersede in 1958 through the policies of the Great
Leap Forward are obvious enough, Mao’s alternative proved to be no alternative at
all.
The
choice is between the planner and the market (although intermediate combinations are
possible); Mao demoralized the planners but resisted the market, and China ended up with
the worst
of
both worlds. It is a point of great significance
for
the history
of
the Communist
world in general, and not just for the history
of
China. The most crippling contradiction
among left-wing Communist reformers everywhere is that while, like Mao, they are
passionately in favour
of
workers’ management
or
community management, they are just as
passionately hostile to the market; and without the market, decentralized management can
have no reality. In 1958 what power to make economic decisions the central government lost
passed not to the local communities but to the local governments; even the communes
themselves quickly became government organs, with arbitrary power to allocate all
economic resources.
The latter part
of
the book deals with the Chinese economy since Deng Xiaoping launched
his reforms in 1978. In Mao’s attempts to find a more efficient and more humane alternative
to Stalinism the choice was between central direction and autonomy
for
the local
community. In Deng’s version it
is
between central direction and autonomy for the
enterprise. Franz Schurmann long ago showed that the distinction between these two
possible forms
of
decentralization played a major role in the conflicts within the Communist
Party
of
China. What Carl Riskin rightly shows is that, when it came to the crunch,
decentralization in 1958 did not (as noted above) empower the community, and
decentralization since 1978 has not empowered the enterprise; in both cases the local state-
Party authorities were the main gainers. Today, by the use of their power to tax, by the use
of
their authority to ‘coordinate’ the work
of
the enterprises, and by the use of a whole array
of
subterfuges, it is the local authorities which keep most of the profits ostensibly retained by
the ostensibly autonomous enterprises, and are thus in a position to dominate the allocation
of
resources.
Plus
Fa change
.
.
.
Indeed, Carl Riskin’s careful study shows that
if
Deng Xiaoping’s break with Maoism has
been in many obvious ways a startling and almost revolutionary change, there have
nevertheless been unmistakable continuities. The most obvious
is
the continuing encourage-
ment and support for village industries, which Mao in 1958 pointed to as ‘our great and
glorious hope
for
the future’, which were on the whole a disastrous failure during the Great
Leap, were mostly abolished in the reaction which followed, were revived when the left
0
1990 by John Wiley
&
Sons,
Ltd.
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