Ten Years After Mao
Article Summary and Author Biography
An extensive review of political and economic reform in China a decade after Mao's departure. The new personnel policies, the changes to the bureaucracy, and the success (to date) of economic measures are explained. China is heading for liberalized authoritarianism and market socialism, and the generation of leaders after Deng is likely to maintain this course.
A. Doak Barnett is professor of Chinese Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of numerous books, including China’s Economy in Global Perspective and The Making of Foreign Policy in China.
TEN YEARS AFTER MAO
A decade has passed since the death of Mao Zedong. During these years, China has embarked on a course of reform that Deng Xiaoping has called a "new revolution" and Premier Zhao Ziyang asserts represents "an extensive, profound and sustained transformation" of the country's economic structure. In a 180-degree change of direction from Mao's last years, the Chinese have moved rapidly from ideological dogmatism toward eclectic pragmatism, from extreme totalitarianism toward liberalized authoritarianism, from a command economy toward "market socialism," and from autarkic isolationism toward international interdependence. These trends signal a major new stage in China's long march toward modernization.
The central theme in the historical drama that has unfolded in China since the mid-nineteenth century has been the search for "wealth and power" and a respected role in the modern world. Repeatedly the Chinese have started a new phase with great expectations, only to end in failure. The collapse of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 led to the creation of a republic, but soon China disintegrated into warlordism. In the 1920s the Kuomintang, or Nationalist, regime began a process of national reintegration, and for a decade it made real progress. Then, in the face of Japanese aggression and communist revolution, the Nationalists also failed; during the civil war after World War II, China again disintegrated.
The victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 was a major watershed. The new regime rapidly established an effective central government that reunified the country for the first time in the twentieth century. Within a few years, taking Moscow as a model but drawing also on their own three decades of revolutionary experience, China's new leaders built a strong totalitarian system and instituted a centralized, planned economy. They extended Beijing's power to the grass-roots level to an unprecedented degree, mobilized the nation's resources more effectively than any previous government, launched the most ambitious program of industrialization in the nation's history, and vigorously asserted China's claim to big-power status...
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