chinese economic development

[...]... superstructure, it makes no sense to assess the course of Chinese development in narrowly economic terms The mature Mao was many things, but he was not an economic determinist: culture was no superstructural epiphenomenon which responded passively to changes in the economic base On the contrary, cultural change was a necessary precondition for economic modernization We will never understand the purpose... than in other state capitalist economies across the developing world The Chinese state is withering away, but it has dominated Chinese economy and society for many years It is an integral part of China’s story of development Perhaps more importantly, politics, education and culture cannot be ignored in any discussion of Chinese development, because Mao saw all as instruments by means of which the economy... than the decades after Mao’s death This is because the development strategy pursued over the last thirty years has been remarkably orthodox To be sure, as we will see, it has not been a model of capitalist economic development, at least until 1997 Nevertheless, the focus of policy has been on promoting economic growth, and on doing so by exclusively economic means It is hard to get very excited about... 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 The Gini coefficient Modern cotton spindles in China, 1890–1936 Chinese geographical regions Average annual rainfall in northern Chinese cities Average annual rainfall in southern Chinese cities Per capita GDP by province, 1953 Chinese crude death rates, 1953 The growth of light and heavy industrial output, 1952–1957 Growth of industrial GVA and... factor; social outcomes were not merely the product of changes within the economic base but were significant in their own right Mao’s approach to the problem of development therefore differed from the economic determinism of Lenin, Stalin and Mao’s successors, and this is one of the reasons why Maoism is of great interest as a developmental strategy Some scholars (such as Liu Kang) have argued that... of Chinese industrial output, 1980–1996 12.6 Total factor productivity growth in independent-accounting industrial enterprises, 1980–1996 12.7 Growth of industrial output and employment, 1965–1996 12.8 Sectoral shares in total employment 13.1 Chinese GDP growth after 1978 in historical perspective 13.2 Chinese life expectancy, 1973–2000 13.3 Official estimates of rural poverty 13.4 SSB Estimates of Chinese. .. a work of political economy By that, I mean that this book discusses political questions as well as more narrowly economic issues I have taken this approach because I do not believe that that we can separate the economics from the politics in explaining, or assessing, the Chinese road to development The very commitment of the Party to some notion of socialism has translated into pervasive state intervention... confident is 1931–6, and even then grave doubts hang over the estimates of farm production This book also starts from the premise that we will not understand very much about either the Chinese revolution, or Chinese economic development, unless we recognize the extent and the significance of spatial variation Of course this point about spatial variation should not be overemphasized China has long been a... descriptive one: what development strategy has China pursued? There is no simple answer to this; the strategy has varied over time For that reason we need to distinguish between the strategies pursued in different eras I adopt a fourfold categorization here: early Maoism (1949–63); late Maoism (1963–78); market socialism (1978–96); and Chinese capitalism (1996–2008) In dividing up Chinese development into... favour of a development strategy which gave as much emphasis to superstructural transformation as it did to the modernization of the economic base The SEM was followed in 1964 by the initiation of the programme of Third Front construction, by some way the defining economic feature of the 1960s and 1970s My choice of 1996 is dictated primarily by the fact that it was the last full year of economic activity . and development economics. Chris Bramall is Professor of Chinese Political Economy at the School of East Asian Studies, Shefeld University, UK. Chinese Economic Development Chris Bramall Chinese. Data Bramall, Chris. Chinese economic development / Chris Bramall. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Economic development China—History. 2. China Economic conditions—1949-. outlines and analyzes the economic development of China between 1949 and 2007. Avoiding a narrowly economic approach, it addresses many of the broader aspects of development, including literacy,