PAGE 10 Chapter 16: COMMUNIST CHINA: An Historical Overview and the Importance of Ideology (Written 1989; Revised 2006) Loren Lee, Palomar College With its victory over the Nationalist government in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party came to power. The communist party leaders agreed that the country needed to develop economically and that such development was to occur within a socialist framework. However, since 1949, there have continually been major disagreements as to the ways by which these goals would be accomplished. Until 1976, the main disagreements were between party chair Mao Zedong and his followers (who will be called “radical leftists”) and a more moderate group of party leaders led by Liu Shaoqi and then by Deng Xiaoping (who will be called “pragmatists” or “moderates”). Following the death of Mao in 1976, the “pragmatists” became dominant and China entered a period of major reform. From 1949 to 1976, Mao’s ideology was the dominant influence on Chinese economic policies. In the ten years prior to his death (1966 to 1976), his ideology could be likened to a state religion. Several features of this ideology should be kept in mind as we attempt to understand the peculiarities of China’s economic history. · First, Mao believed that people, through sheer human willpower, could accomplish practically any end. This belief developed from his quarter century as a leader of a guerilla revolutionary army. The “guerilla mentality” carried over into economic matters in his belief that people, if properly mobilized, were more important to economic development than capital or technology. · Second, unlike Marx, Mao believed in the primacy of politics over economics. You will see below how the Cultural Revolution illustrates Mao’s belief in the primacy of politics. · Third, following from this elevation of the role of politics was Mao’s desire to eliminate “economic man” and replace him or her with “communist man”. Communist man would be selfless and capable of total self-denial. He would be one whose main motivation is to benefit the group. You will see this belief illustrated by Mao’s advocacy of “moral incentives” for peasants and workers and his repudiation of material incentives. To Mao, allowing any type of “capitalist” incentives (such as higher pay) would necessarily lead to a reversion to capitalism. · Fourth, for Mao, an equal distribution of income was at least as important as economic growth. This included equality between men and women. · Finally, Mao saw class struggle and revolution as a continuing process and not as a process that would end with the revolution. He saw a continuing tendency to revert to capitalism that had to be continually fought. As a result of this need for continual revolution, China’s economic history is extremely unstable--- reverting from one set of programs to another and then back again. In examining this instability, we will look four at specific sub-periods: (1) 1949 to 1958, (2) Th.

1. PAGE
10
Chapter 16: COMMUNIST CHINA:
An Historical Overview and the Importance of Ideology
(Written 1989; Revised 2006)
Loren Lee, Palomar College
With its victory over the Nationalist government in 1949, the
Chinese Communist Party came to power. The communist party
leaders agreed that the country needed to develop economically
and that such development was to occur within a socialist
framework. However, since 1949, there have continually been
major disagreements as to the ways by which these goals would
be accomplished. Until 1976, the main disagreements were
between party chair Mao Zedong and his followers (who will be
called “radical leftists”) and a more moderate group of party
leaders led by Liu Shaoqi and then by Deng Xiaoping (who will
be called “pragmatists” or “moderates”). Following the death of
Mao in 1976, the “pragmatists” became dominant and China
entered a period of major reform.
From 1949 to 1976, Mao’s ideology was the dominant influence
on Chinese economic policies. In the ten years prior to his death
(1966 to 1976), his ideology could be likened to a state religion.
Several features of this ideology should be kept in mind as we
attempt to understand the peculiarities of China’s economic
history.
· First, Mao believed that people, through sheer human
willpower, could accomplish practically any end. This belief
developed from his quarter century as a leader of a guerilla
revolutionary army. The “guerilla mentality” carried over into
economic matters in his belief that people, if properly
mobilized, were more important to economic development than
capital or technology.

2. · Second, unlike Marx, Mao believed in the primacy of politics
over economics. You will see below how the Cultural
Revolution illustrates Mao’s belief in the primacy of politics.
· Third, following from this elevation of the role of politics was
Mao’s desire to eliminate “economic man” and replace him or
her with “communist man”. Communist man would be selfless
and capable of total self-denial. He would be one whose main
motivation is to benefit the group. You will see this belief
illustrated by Mao’s advocacy of “moral incentives” for
peasants and workers and his repudiation of material incentives.
To Mao, allowing any type of “capitalist” incentives (such as
higher pay) would necessarily lead to a reversion to capitalism.
· Fourth, for Mao, an equal distribution of income was at least
as important as economic growth. This included equality
between men and women.
· Finally, Mao saw class struggle and revolution as a continuing
process and not as a process that would end with the revolution.
He saw a continuing tendency to revert to capitalism that had to
be continually fought.
As a result of this need for continual revolution, China’s
economic history is extremely unstable--- reverting from one set
of programs to another and then back again. In examining this
instability, we will look four at specific sub-periods: (1) 1949
to 1958, (2) The Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1961), (3) 1961
to 1978 interrupted by the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1969),
and finally (4) the Reform Period (1978 to the present). The
first three of these period comprise what we can call “the
Socialist period”.
(1) 1949-1958
The first decade following the Communists coming to power
was a period of recovery from the destruction caused by years
of war and revolution. It should not be too surprising that at this
time the Chinese attempted to create an economic system
similar to that of the Soviet Union. In fact, aid from the Soviet
Union helped finance Chinese industry in this period and the

3. Soviet Union provided important technical assistance. Financial
aid from the Soviet Union was used mainly for 156 large,
integrated plants (“integrated” means that they produced at
several different stages of the production process). This has
been called the largest technological transfer between countries
ever attempted. The influence of the economic system of the
Soviet Union in this period is shown in three important ways.
· First, agriculture was collectivized. A land reform took-place
between 1949 and 1952 that virtually eliminated the landlords
and rich peasants as social classes. This was followed by the
merging of the rural population into more advanced types of
cooperatives until finally, in 1958, most of the rural population
were organized into communes. Private ownership in agriculture
was virtually eliminated within a six month period. This process
will be described in detail in Chapter 17.
· Second, wholesale trade, retail trade, and most of industry
came under complete government control by 1956. Enterprises
“belonged” to a Ministry, as in the Soviet Union. This
nationalization was done without much difficulty, as much of
industry had been owned by the Japanese or by the Nationalist
government. In 1957, there was a major decentralization, with
some control of industry transferred to lower levels of
government. But industry was still under the control of some
branch of government. The government also controlled
managerial career paths and incentives through the
nomenklatura system.
· Third, in 1953, China launched its first five-year plan,
modeled on the Soviet materials balance planning system. China
adopted the “Big Push” strategy. Investment spending was
promoted greatly while consumption was restricted. Large
industrial projects were favored despite China’s large number of
workers and shortage of capital goods. Between 1952 and 1978,
the share of Chinese GDP accounted for by industry rose from
18% to 44%. Because of the decentralization that began in 1957,
Chinese planning was less tightly controlled than that of the
Soviet Union. At its peak, the central government in China

4. planned for 600 different commodities, compared to over 60,000
in the Soviet Union.
· Fourth, through the planning system, prices were artificially
set by the government. That is, prices did not reflect demand
and supply. Prices were artificially high for industrial goods
and artificially low for agricultural goods. This was the way for
the government to extract resources from agriculture for use in
industry. The “profits” of the industrial enterprises were the
main source of government revenue.
· Fifth, wages were also set by the government. They were low
and were rarely changed. Throughout the socialist period,
strong restrictions were placed on worker mobility, especially
between rural and urban areas. Incomes were much higher in
urban areas than in rural areas.
(2) The Great Leap Forward, 1958 to 1961
The first important manifestation of Mao’s belief in what could
be accomplished by sheer human willpower came with the Great
Leap Forward. In agriculture, the Great Leap Forward is
associated with the rapid establishment of the commune (see
Chapter 17). The communes were extremely large and had both
economic and governmental functions. Mao had advocated the
rapid establishment of communes as a way to overcome the
tendencies to revert to capitalism. The “pragmatists” had
opposed it, believing that collectivization in agriculture should
come after the country industrialized. As we will see, the
commune was an organizational form that was intended to
increase agricultural production significantly while requiring
fewer agricultural workers. These surplus agricultural workers
were then to be shifted to industry.
Nearly 30 million new workers were absorbed into the urban
government- owned factories in 1958 alone, with millions more
taken out of agriculture to work in rural factories. Mao believed
that this organizational change alone, without increased state
investment spending, would be capable of increasing industrial
production while also increasing agricultural production enough

5. to feed the population and provide the raw materials needed by
industry.
In industry, the Great Leap Forward is associated with the
development of small scale rural industries using labor and
other resources from the rural areas. Most famous are the
“backyard steel furnaces”, which involved at least 60 million
people. Another 100 million people were involved in irrigation
projects. Others were involved in fertilizer plants, machine
shops, cement production, food processing, and so forth. The
people were mobilized along semi-military lines to participate
in the campaign. Through using the large population in China,
highly mobilized, Mao thought that a large increase in
agricultural and industrial production could be achieved in a
short time.
The Great Leap Forward was a great failure. The communes
were poorly managed and encountered considerable peasant
resistance. Incentives to produce had been destroyed. Workers
were pushed to work overtime seven days a week. With 30
million workers withdrawn from agriculture, grain production
fell considerably in 1959 and 1960, generating a severe famine,
especially in the rural areas of China. It is estimated that by the
end of 1961, there had been excess deaths totaling 25 to 30
million people and that some 30 million births had been
postponed because of malnutrition. The industrial goods
produced were often of such poor quality that they were
unusable. And the push for industrialization led to problems in
finding sufficient transportation, fuel, and raw materials. Often
grain was left to rot because transportation was not available
while millions were dying of hunger.
In the late 1950s, China also experienced a political rift with
the Soviet-Union. In 1960, the Soviet Union withdrew its
advisors; this meant that many of the 156 projects that the
Soviet Union had started were not completed because China did
not have the expertise to do so.

6. (3) 1961-1978
The failure of the Great Leap Forward and the split with the
Soviet Union reduced the influence of Mao. At this time, the
“pragmatists”, led by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, became
major influences on Chinese policy-making. These pragmatists
believed that economic development was more important than
political considerations at this early stage of China’s
development. They believed that, with the elimination of the
capitalist and rich peasant classes, the class struggle in China
was over. They thought that industrial growth and efficiency
through modern technology and modern management were the
goals that China ought to be pursuing.
To achieve these goals, the “pragmatists” relied heavily on
material incentives. In the early 1960s, profits became more
important incentives for enterprise directors in industry and
wage bonuses became more important incentives for workers.
(It should be stressed that, in this period, profits and bonuses
were still of secondary importance. The point is that they were
more important than they had been.) In agriculture, there was a
significant decentralization of decision-making from the
commune to lower levels of government. Private plots were
restored as were free markets for some farm production. The
government agreed to spend more on agriculture and
agricultural-related industries. About 20 million workers were
sent back to work in agriculture. The details of these changes
will be given in Chapter 17. From 1961 to 1965, industrial
production almost doubled while agricultural production rose
almost 50%.
In 1966, Mao strove to reassert his authority by a campaign to
“eliminate revisionism”. Thus began the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution. In part, the Cultural Revolution can be
seen as a pure power struggle. In part, it can be seen as an
idealistic attempt to avoid the emergence of a bureaucratic elite

7. of high government officials, as had occurred in the Soviet
Union.
The Cultural Revolution once again illustrates the importance of
ideology to Mao. Purges occurred on a large scale (from 1966 to
1969, 68% of the Central Committee of the Communist Party,
73% of the Politboro, and 86% of the first secretaries of the
provinces were purged or at least severely humiliated. Many of
these people would later emerge as the leaders of the reform
period. More than 200,000 intellectuals were persecuted.) The
goal espoused by Mao was “spontaneous development” ---
socialism was to be created simultaneously with the creation of
a developed country. Many of the policies of the Great Leap
Forward were resurrected, including emphasis on moral
incentives, an elimination of the traditional enterprise manager
in factories, emphasis on small-scale factories, “resettlement”
of millions of people into rural areas, and so forth.
The role of profits and bonuses as incentives was ended. In fact,
wages were basically frozen through most of the latter 1960s.
Even promotion by seniority was not allowed. In agriculture,
the system of payment to commune members was changed in
favor of the Dazhai system. Under the Dazhai system, the
peasants would sit in judgment of each other at periodic team
meetings to determine what each peasant’s work was worth. The
idea was to use social pressure to induce people to work hard.
(If you wish to understand the idea of “moral incentives”, think
of the change in work and other behaviors that occurs when
people feel that their country has been attacked by an enemy.
Mao thought he could maintain this attitude continually.)
In the companies, revolutionary committees took-over the
functions previously performed by the enterprise director. In
both the communes and the factories, there was widespread
politicization dominated by a “personality cult” of Mao.
Between 1965 and 1967, over 100 million copies of the Selected
Works of Mao Zedong were printed. Peasants and workers were
judged largely by their “political correctness” in relation to

8. Mao’s thought. During the late 1960s, educational opportunity
was not based on performance in school. All high school
students had to work for two years after graduation; some might
then be nominated for college by their enterprise or commune.
College curriculum focused on practical work. For about three
years, most universities were closed. Scientists and intellectuals
were denigrated; “red” was much more important than “expert”.
The period of the late 1960s was one of widespread unrest.
Various factions fought (often with each claiming itself as the
only one true to Mao’s thought). Millions of paramilitary
troops, organized as Red Guards, caused widespread disruption.
Worker absenteeism was high. Decisions came to be made by
very few people, as workers became afraid to say anything that
might be construed as negative. (Merely being accused of being
a “capitalist-roader” could be extremely harmful,). With this
disruption, it is hardly surprising that GDP fell at an annual rate
of 2.5% from 1966 to 1968 and that industrial production fell
much more. The Cultural Revolution was a period in which
there was no stable framework of law. Rule was often by
arbitrary whim, enforced by the Red Guards. Hundreds of
thousands of people died; millions suffered from injustice. The
legacy of the Cultural Revolution is important in understanding-
the direction that China has been taking in the reform period.
In 1965, with the American escalation in Vietnam, the recent
split with the Soviet Union, and the weakness caused by the
failure of the Great Leap Forward, China felt militarily
threatened. From 1965 to 1971, China tried to develop a “Third
Front”. The Third Front was a massive construction project to
create an entire industrial system in remote sites in the interior
of China. There it was believed that the project would be secure
from foreign invasion and would be available to allow China to
mount an effective resistance. The project was large, hastily
prepared, and very inefficient. One estimate as of the late 1980s
is that “China’s annual industrial output was 10-15% below

9. what it would have been if the Third Front had never been
undertaken”.
Many of the excesses of the Cultural Revolution were ended by
1970. In the early part of the 1970s, the pragmatists regained
control of most of the government administration. Material
incentives were re-established. Central planning was re-
instituted with even greater decentralization to lower levels of
government. Relations with the United States were opened in
1972 with the visit of President Nixon. This led to a greater
openness to trade and to the importation of Western equipment
and technology. However, the control of the pragmatists was not
complete; the radical leftists, led by the so-called “Gang of
Four”, had a certain amount of control as well. With the aging
of its leaders, especially Mao, China was about to embark on a
major struggle for power.
The Maoist model of economic development had differed
somewhat from the model practiced in the Soviet Union. Five
key differences have been noted.
· First, the economy of China had been militarized. Much
production was organized along military lines. And the military
had first priority on resources.
· Second, the Chinese economy had been more decentralized
than the Soviet economy. Small businesses had been
encouraged.
· Third, China practiced regional as well as national autarky.
Not only did China avoid international trade as much as it
could, but also its regions were expected to be self sufficient
and not trade with each other.
· Fourth, for much of the socialist period, there was an absence
of material incentives.
· And fifth, labor mobility had been completely restricted.
When Mao died in 1976, evaluation was made of the economic
results of his leadership.
Some results were very positive. GDP per capita had

10. approximately doubled since 1952, investment rates (the buying
of capital goods) were high, literacy rates had increased to 65%,
and life expectancy had risen to 64, which is very high given
the country’s standard of living. But most of the evaluation was
negative. Unemployment and underemployment were
considerable. Of the 191 million person increase in the labor
force between 1952 and 1978, only 37% had been absorbed into
industry or services. The rest had remained in agriculture where
they were seriously under-employed. Both rural and urban
incomes had been virtually stagnant since the mid-1960s.
(However, there was a large gap between urban incomes and
rural incomes.) The population was very poorly housed. Indeed,
consumption of all kinds (especially in services) had been
neglected and there were shortages of all kinds of consumer
goods.
The problem of rapid population growth had not been solved.
And the technological level of China was 10 to 20 years behind
the West; perhaps 60% of China’s capital was technologically
obsolete by Western standards. Efficiency and productivity were
very low. The country had suffered from the great instability in
policy making; the period from 1949 to 1978 had seen five great
surges in investment spending followed by periods of much
slower growth (or even a decrease) in investment spending.
Following the death of Mao, leadership passed to Hua Guofeng.
He had the “Gang of Four” arrested, “rehabilitated” Deng
Xiaoping, and began a systematic campaign to destroy the
influence of Mao. From 1978 until his death in February of
1997, Deng Xiaoping was the most important leader in Chinese
politics. The return to power of the “pragmatists” meant a return
to the goal of economic development and a reduction in the
importance of ideology. The Four Modernizations Program,
which called-for the development of agriculture, industry,
science and technology, and defense, was stated in 1976. By
1978, a period of substantial reform had begun.
(4) The Reform Period: 1978 to the Present

11. The recent reform period began in 1978. The details of the
reforms will be discussed in later chapters. The reform period
has been noted for the limited importance of any ideological
considerations. The goal has been economic development and
the leadership has embraced whatever means it believed were
necessary to achieve that end. As you will see in later sections,
this has meant an expansion of markets, an expansion of
production from companies not owned by the central
government, and an opening to the global economy that would
have been unthinkable prior to 1978. By the mid-1990s, China
had moved away from being a command economy and had
become basically a market economy.
China’s strategy of reform was on of gradualism, in contrast to
the reforms of Russia and Eastern Europe. Despite never using
“shock therapy”, over a twenty year period, China basically
dismantled all of the institutions of the command economy. The
earliest aspect of this reform period was the restructuring of the
agricultural economy and the elimination of the communes. In
the reform period, agriculture was greatly changed by the
introduction of the household responsibility system and the
growth of township and village enterprises, as will be described
in Chapter 17. It was the success of the reforms of agriculture
that generated further economic reforms (agricultural
production increased by 1/3 between 1978 and 1984 despite
there being fewer work days in farming).
A second aspect of the reforms was a change in the planning
system. At first, central planning was greatly reduced in
importance. In this period, he plan targets were frozen. Any
increase in production could be sold for higher market prices
outside of the plan. As the economy grew, the plan targets
became less and less significant and China “grew out of the
plan”. By 1993, central planning had been phased out
completely.
A third important aspect of the reform period was the dramatic
enlargement of the importance of markets. Consistent with the

12. growing importance of markets, there were major changes in the
types of enterprises. In Chapter 18, we will discuss the growth
of rural industry (called township and village enterprises), some
important changes in the organization of urban state-owned
(i.e., government owned) enterprises, the growth of urban
collectives (companies owned by their workers), and the growth
of privately-owned companies. Throughout the reform period,
there were a large number of new start-up companies. These
new companies enhanced market competition. Prices were
gradually decontrolled and came to reflect the forces of demand
and supply. Enterprises became more and more focused on
profits instead of fulfilling the plan targets.
A fourth important aspect of the reform period was the
decentralization of decision-making. Enterprises, local
governments, and peasant households now have much more
decision-making power than they did prior to 1978. Personal
savings have increased and banks gradually have replaced the
government as the source of funds for business investment
spending. Beginning in 1995, however, there was some
recentralization of decision-making that came with the creation
of a modern tax collection system.
And a fifth important aspect of the reform period has been an
enormous increase in Chinese integration into the global
economy. This began with the creation of Special Economic
Zones and then culminated in China’s entry into the World
Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Indeed, China made many
more concessions than other countries had to make in order to
be admitted to the World Trade Organization. This entrance into
the global economy will be discussed in detail in Chapter 19.
As we will see, China’s reforms were very different from those
of the former Soviet Union or the Eastern European countries.
They also seemed to go against the prescription for reform made
by most Western economists. The reforms actually can be
categorized into two periods. From 1978 to the early 1990s, no
social group suffered any significant economic loss as a result

13. of the reforms. This period has been labeled as a period of
“reform without losers”. Even those who worked in the state-
owned enterprises were protected. This ability to prevent
“losers” meant that the economic reforms were widely
supported by the population.
The second period began in 1993. In this period, China began to
create a modern tax system. China restructured its banking
system with its central bank, the People’s Bank of China,
coming to resemble the American Federal Reserve System and
with its commercial banks cut off from government subsidies.
And China revised its company law so that all state-owned
companies were transformed into corporations with shares listed
on newly-formed stock markets.
Along with other changes we will discuss, employment in state-
owned enterprises declined 40%. Profits of state-owned
enterprises declined greatly (due to increased competition from
other kinds of enterprises). In the mid-1990s, many township
and village enterprises, collectives, and state-owned enterprises
were privatized (usually bought by the management). By 2004,
nearly twice as many urban workers worked for private
enterprises than worked for state-owned enterprises. Finally, as
noted above, China acceded to the World Trade Organization in
2001. This second period of reform was definitely a period of
“reform with losers”, especially those who worked in the state-
owned enterprises.
Overall, as we will see in Chapter 20, the Chinese reforms seem
to have been successful, although there are still important areas
where improvement is needed. The growth of GDP per capita in
China averaged an astonishing 8.5% per year between 1978 and
2005. No other country has ever achieved growth rates of GDP
per capita that high for such a long period of time. But the
benefits of the reforms have not been equally shared across the
population.
Since there have been disagreements within the leadership ever
since the beginning of Communist China in 1949, it should not
be surprising that these reforms have generated great

14. controversy within China. Those now called “conservatives”
desired a return to the pre-reform policies. Many of these
people were government officials at various levels whose power
and prestige was threatened by the reforms. One of the
compelling points about the nature of the early economic
reforms in China is that, as we saw, they were created so that
there would be no “losers” from them, as we will see. As a
result, the reformers were able to overcome the opposition from
the “conservatives” that typically accompanies any kind of
significant reform. The debate was thus framed between the
“moderate reformers” and the “radical reformers”.
The moderate reformers based their proposals on Deng’s four
cardinal principles: commitment to Marxism-Leninism and
Maoism, leadership by the Communist Party, socialism, and the
maintenance of the existing state structure. They saw reform as
a slow process, taking perhaps 30 years. They desired to
maintain central planning as the heart of the economy. They did
not see labor or land as commodities to be exchanged on a
market, and therefore they opposed the creation of true labor or
land markets. They wished to maintain strict government
control over investment spending (buying capital goods) and
over all foreign exchange. They were very opposed to political
pluralism. And they were concerned by the rise in “spiritual
pollution” (crime, corruption, materialism, and so forth) that
they thought would likely accompany the creation of a market
system. As you can see, China’s reforms did not follow the
ideas of the moderate reformers except for the opposition to
political pluralism.
On the other hand, the radical reformers favored a much greater
role for the market, with the plan to be secondary. They favored
the development of true markets for labor, natural resources,
and capital goods. They saw reform as occurring relatively
rapidly. And they favored political pluralism and a greater move
toward democracy. While the actual course of reform has been
less than the radical reformers desired, they certainly have been

15. the major influence on the economic reforms, especially in the
1990s. However, political reform has not occurred at all in
China. In 2003, Hu Jintao became Party leader and therefore the
leader of the Chinese government. Wen Jiabao became Premier.
With their leadership, there seems to have been no change in the
direction of Chinese reform policy.
Additional Information from The World Bank:
http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/china/overview
China’s Economy: Overview
Since initiating market reforms in 1978, China has shifted from
a centrally-planned to a market-based economy and has
experienced rapid economic and social development. GDP
growth has averaged nearly 10 percent a year—the fastest
sustained expansion by a major economy in history—and has
lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty. China
reached all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by
2015 and made a major contribution to the achievement of the
MDGs globally.
With a population of 1.3 billion, China recently became the
second largest economy and is increasingly playing an
important and influential role in the global economy.
Yet China remains a developing country (its per capita income
is still a fraction of that in advanced countries) and its market
reforms are incomplete. According to China’s current poverty
standard (per capita rural net income of RMB 2,300 per year in
2010 constant prices), there were 70.17 million poor in rural
areas in 2014.
Rapid economic ascendance has brought on many challenges as
well, including high inequality; rapid urbanization; challenges
to environmental sustainability; and external imbalances. China
also faces demographic pressures related to an aging population
and the internal migration of labor.

16. Significant policy adjustments are required in order for China’s
growth to be sustainable. Experience shows that transitioning
from middle-income to high-income status can be more difficult
than moving up from low to middle income.
China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) and the newly
approved 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) forcefully address
these issues. They highlight the development of services and
measures to address environmental and social imbalances,
setting targets to reduce pollution, to increase energy
efficiency, to improve access to education and healthcare, and
to expand social protection. The annual growth target in the
12th Five-Year Plan was 7 percent and the growth target in the
13th Five-Year Plan is 6.5 percent, reflecting the rebalancing of
the economy and the focus on the quality of growth while still
maintaining the objective of achieving a “moderately
prosperous society” by 2020 (doubling GDP for 2010-2020).
Last Updated: Apr 06, 2016
ECON 4603 Comparative Economic Systems
Guidelines for Writing an Article Review
The purpose of an article review is to summarize the article’s
main ideas, arguments, positions
and findings – and connect those to what we are studying in
class. It is not designed to be a
critique of the article per se, but more focused on increasing
your knowledge and awareness of
the topic(s) being discussed.

17. When writing an article review, be sure to put the information
into your own words. Do not copy
the article verbatim and post it in your paper. Anyone can read
and repeat what the author says;
the goal is to know if you understand the information presented
and can relate it to this course.
For this class, your article review should contain the following
information:
Part One: An opening paragraph summarizing the article
content and main ideas.
Part Two: A list of the top five things you learned from reading
the article. This list
may include information that is new to you, information that
relates to
another class you have taken, or a different perspective from
what you
thought. You may also note statements/ideas/concepts that you
agree
with, or statements/ideas/concepts that you disagree with. Be
sure to
identify the reason(s) you agree or disagree, or why you have
chosen these
topics to be important.
Part Three: A brief summary of what you learned and how it
connects to this course.
Each article review should be no more than two pages, typed,
double-spaced with one-inch
margins, 12-14 point font.

18. Each article review is worth a maximum of 20 points. All
articles must be posted in the
appropriate Dropbox on D2L by the due date in order to receive
any credit for the assignment.