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16 - China’s Struggle with the Soviet Growth Model, 1949–1978

from Part II - 1950 to the Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2022

By
Dwight H. Perkins
Edited by
Debin Ma  and
Richard von Glahn
Debin Ma
Affiliation:
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Richard von Glahn
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

When the Communist Party of China announced a new government on October 1, 1949, the economy that government inherited was in shambles. China had been at war for over twelve years and much of the infrastructure of the country had been destroyed or badly damaged and prices were rising at 51 percent per month or 13,000 percent per year. The Guomindang government fleeing to Taiwan took much of the country’s foreign-exchange and gold reserves with them, along with many of the managers of the banks and industrial firms. Inflation and war left many of the businesses that stayed barely able to function even when their managers and technicians did not flee.

Keywords

communepricesruralThird Frontcentral planningfive-year planmarketsGreat Leap Forwardprivate plotsrecovery
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Economic History of China , pp. 565 - 605
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Donnithorne, A., China’s Economic System (New York, Praeger, 1967).Google Scholar
Eckstein, A., Galenson, W., and Liu, T.-C. (eds.), Economic Trends in Communist China (Chicago, Aldine, 1968).Google Scholar
Griffin, K., and Zhao, R. (eds.), The Distribution of Income in China (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacFarquhar, R., and Schoenhals, M., Mao’s Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naughton, B., “The Third Front: Defense Industrialization in the Chinese Interior,” China Quarterly, September 1988, 351–86.Google Scholar
Perkins, D.H., Market Control and Planning in Communist China (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1966).Google Scholar
Walder, A., China under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
J., Wu, Understanding and Interpreting Chinese Economic Reforms (Mason, OH, Thomson/South-Western, 2005).Google Scholar

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