Abstract
Transitional economics became a hotspot research topic that emerged in the research area of the theoretical economics in the 1980s in response to the needs in the practice of marketization reform. The study of transitional economics took the practice of the transformation from planned economy to market economy in China as the basis and referred to the experiences and lessons of transition countries in the international community. It made comparisons on the historical process of the vertical institutional change of the same country and the experiences and lessons of the horizontal institutional change of different countries. Through the comparison, people clearly identified specific characteristics of the planned economic systems and found out where the start point of transition study was. People clearly found out what kind of transition strategies and paths different countries had adopted and what kind of path transition study should take. People also clearly found out what kind of market economy different countries could establish eventually and studied what the target model of transition in different countries was. The study of this emerging discipline covered a series of most fundamental theoretical and practical issues on transition and development, such as where a transition country should start with, where it should go, and what the path was.
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Notes
- 1.
Deng Xiaoping Chronicles, pp. 89–90.
- 2.
Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol.3, p. 115.
- 3.
Deng Xiaoping Chronicles, p. 83.
- 4.
How should people evaluate the socialist transformation of the ownership system of the means of production in middle of the 1950s? It was pointed out in the document of Resolution on Several Historical Issues of the Party since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China in June 1981 that “After the summer of 1955, the cooperative transformation of agriculture and the transformation of handicraft industry and individual commerce showed too rash requirements, too rough work, too fast change and too simplistic and monotonous form so that some problems were left unsolved over a long period of time. After the transformation of capitalist industry and commerce was basically completed in 1956, the use and handling of some of the former industrial and commercial workers was rather improper.” However in the circle of and theoretical study, there were always different views on the judgement of the nature of the issues that occurred in this period. Bo Yibo reviewed this period of history in 1991.He said that the socialist transformation of agriculture violated the principle of voluntariness and it was completed with the dual means of political movement and economic measures. If people did not hurriedly and immediately carry out the transition towards socialism or shake private ownership but continued to implement the policies of new democratism after the land reform, it might be more favorable to the development of productivity. He also said that it was inevitable that polarization occurred in the countryside after land reform and it was the inevitable product of the development of commodity economy. He affirmed in particular the view that Liu Shaoqi supported at the time. He also particularly proposed very different views on the socialist transformation of handicraft industry. He believed that individual handicraft industry was different from individual agriculture. People in the industry did not have much means of production. They were small commodity producers and their production and sale activities depended on the market. The industry was characterized by numerous trades and flexible operation. Many technologies with specific ethnic features were passed on in the way that a master taught his apprentices. Therefore, it was a social transformation that "takes shape under the guidance of incorrect theory" those cooperatives were formed blindly in individual handicraft industry and, later, they were changed into cooperative factories operated by cooperative associations or directly into local state-owned factories.
- 5.
In the second volume of A Review on Several Important Decisions and Events, Bo Yibo recorded a sentence from a folk song that "On the Mount Lu, a person was wrongly criticized/ And thousands were starved to death nationwide". He also said that people nationwide suffered from malnutrition because of food scarcity during the Three Years of Difficult Time. Edema disease became epidemic and mortality rate increased because of famine in many villages in the countryside. According to statistics, total national population decreased by over 10 million in 1960. Chinese communists felt greatly sorry for the citizens when such terrible thing occurred during the period of peaceful construction. According to the record on page 91 in China Statistical Yearbook in 1986, China’s total national population did not increased from 1958 to 1961 and decreased by 13.46 million from 1959 to 1961. In a paper written in 1999, Lin Yifu analyzed the reason that caused the famine in China from 1959 to 1961 with the methods in econometrics through the study on food supplies and entitlements. The main reason was the deprival of food entitlements. The additional mortality caused by the crisis totaled about 30 million and urban, rural and regional mortalities varied. The disaster should be mainly attributed the systems and policies in planned economy. See Lin Yifu, Another Discussion on System, Technology and China’s Agricultural Development, Peking University Press, 2000.
- 6.
Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol.3, p. 252.
- 7.
See Wen (2007).
- 8.
Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.19, pp. 268–269. In 1880s, the Marxist group in Russia, namely the labor liberation society, had an argument in their study of On Capital when associating to rural communes, which were generally present in Russia at the time, and also on the Russian revolutionary process generated on the basis of such situation. A member of the group wrote directly to Marx on February 16, 1881 to ask about the question. He mentioned in particular in his letter, whether the historical necessity that you mentioned in On Capital was applicable to all countries in the world? After he received the letter, Marx made in-depth research on the social and economic conditions in Russia and wrote four manuscript replies successively. In the reply dated March 8, 1881, he said that the deprivation of peasants and “the ‘historical necessity’ of this movement” that the deprivation of the depriver would definitely occur were specifically limited to the countries in Western Europe and not applicable to the backward countries in the east.
- 9.
Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3, p. 139.
- 10.
Ibid, p. 225.
- 11.
Selections of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Vol.3, People's Publishing House, 1972, p. 323.
- 12.
Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Vol.22, p. 270.
- 13.
In 1906, Lenin said that, as long as monetary power and capital were preserved, any law in the world was unable to eliminate inequality and exploitation. Exploitation could be eliminated only when people implemented huge socialized planned economic system and, at the same time, gave the ownership of all lands, factories and tools to the working class. But after more than 10 years passed, Lenin spoke highly of Engels' view that capitalism was also a kind of planned economy on the basis of the new situations that emerged in the development of capitalism at the Seventh Congress of Social Democratic Party of Russia in 1917. He recognized frankly that capitalism was transforming towards its higher planned form.
- 14.
Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol.2, p. 236.
- 15.
- 16.
Gu (1957).
- 17.
Zhang et al. (1998).
- 18.
Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3, p. 83, p. 91.
- 19.
Editorial Group of the Guangdong Provincial Market Economics Society ed., Market Economy in the Primary Stage of Socialism, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics Press, 1988, p. 3.
- 20.
Yu (1988).
- 21.
Special Zone Times, January 4, 1991.
- 22.
See Social Sciences in China, Issue 6, 1991; Wu (1991).
- 23.
Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3, pp. 372–373.
- 24.
In his late years, Su Xing wrote a work of economic history with distinctive features. He sorted and selected a large amount of historical data and materials to describe the process of China’s transformation from planned economy to market economy. Refer to Economic History of the People’s Republic of China, Press of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, 1999.
- 25.
Mao (1997).
- 26.
American economist Joseph E. Stiglitz said in his work Economics that market socialism faced two key problems. One was obtaining the information needed for determining prices. The other was the absence of incentives for managers. When an enterprise gained profits, the manufacturer could not obtain rewards. But when an enterprise suffered loss, the government had to make it up. He said such market economy lacked both the market incentive structure in capitalism and the economic control mechanism in traditional socialism. He also pointed out that China achieved success in the production responsibility system in agriculture and improved the labor productivity in agriculture. But its reforms in other areas were still controversial. See Joseph (1998).
- 27.
Ma (1993).
- 28.
Joseph (1998).
- 29.
Masahiko (1999).
- 30.
Gerard (2002).
- 31.
Sheng (1994).
- 32.
Lin et al. (1994).
- 33.
Joseph E. Stiglitz made reflections on the basis of the theories of information economics, transaction cost theory and neoclassical economics. He also discussed some important issues in transition countries, for example, centralization and decentralization, property right definition, privatization, corporate governance structure, bank and legal person controlling, innovation, rent seeking behavior, distribution relation, adverse selection, moral risks, information asymmetry, capital market, financial policy, monopoly and competition, government function, market failure and government failure. He connected the economic transition of the former socialist countries with the world's economic integration and financial internationalization and believed that there were defects in socialist market economy.
- 34.
Yang et al. (2003).
- 35.
Grzegorz (2000).
- 36.
See China Statistical Yearbook 2009.
- 37.
See Social Science Weekly, April 19, 2007.
- 38.
In the former Soviet Union, each citizen enjoyed rather complete social welfare. People could ride a bus and get medical care for free. The government made up for the loss of the railway and medical care systems from its fiscal budget. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, welfare and preferential policies were inherited although privatization was implemented. During Yeltsin’s administration, the government increased social welfare without any principle in order to win over the voters. As a result, 103 million people among the 144 million Russian population, distributed in different industries and social classes, continued to enjoy the various preferential policies such as free medical care, education and property management. The great variety of preferential policies and the tremendous amount of welfare subsidies became a heavy burden of the Russian government. On August 5, 2004, the state duma passed the act of “replacing preferences with allowances”. According to this act, the welfare treatment for 32 million aged and disadvantaged population, including using city public transit for free, free drugs and rehabilitation, using municipal services such as water, electricity and gas at low prices, would all be canceled from January 1, 2005 and it would be replaced by the subsidies paid by the government in ruble cash. But in the process of its implementation, veterans, retirees and the disabled suffered the most serious impact because of unequal distribution in the reform and the social welfare preferences given to public servants at various levels were not changed. This caused new social contradictions.
- 39.
See Deng Xiaoping Chronicles (1975–1997) Vol.2, Central Party Literature Press, 2004, pp. 1356–1364.
- 40.
Sun (2002).
- 41.
Leonid.
- 42.
Simeon et al.
- 43.
Wu (2003).
- 44.
Mao (2007).
- 45.
Collected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol.6, People's Publishing House, 1999, p. 316.
- 46.
Selected Important Literature from the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, Book 7, Central Party Literature Press, 1993, p. 310.
- 47.
See China Statistical Yearbook 2009, China Statistics Press, 2009.
- 48.
Zhang (2006).
- 49.
Jia Genliang, Evolutionary Economics: The Hotbed of Economic Revolution, Shaanxi People's Publishing House, 2004.
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Mao, T. (2020). Reviews and Prospects on the Theoretical Study on Transition Economy. In: Zhang, Z. (eds) Historical Perspectives on Chinese Economics (1949–2011). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8163-2_26
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