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Economic Policy-Making in China: Summer 1981

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Michel Oksenberg
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Extract

More than five years have passed since Mao's death and the arrest of his principal surviving supporters who helped launch and wage the Cultural Revolution. Since 1976 and particularly since late 1978, a major effort has been made to reform the Chinese policy process at the higher levels, especially in the economic realm. Drawing on impressions gained from interviews with Chinese officials in the summer of 1981, as well as a reading of the Chinese press, this article assesses the progress of the reforms. To what extent and in what direction has economic policy making evolved since 1976? What of the Maoist system remains? Further, what are the strengths and deficiencies of the new system? Does the policy process in the economic realm seem capable of directing the substantive economic reforms which the leaders have in mind? These are the questions explored in this article.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 90 , June 1982 , pp. 165 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1982

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References

1. This view was espoused in Schumann, Franz, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).Google Scholar

2. See especially Pye, Lucian, The Dynamics of Chinese Politics (Cambridge: Oelgeschlager, Gunn and Haip, 1981)Google Scholar, and Chang, Parris, Power and Policy in China (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

3. Teiwes, Frederick C. traces the evolution in his Politics and Purges in China, Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms, 1950–1965 (White Plains: M. E. Sharpe Press, 1979).Google Scholar

4. Lieberthal, Kenneth, Central Documents and Politburo Politics in China (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, 1979).Google Scholar

5. Dittmer, Lowell, “Bases of power in Chinese politics,” World Politics, Vol. XXI, No. 1 (10, 1978), pp. 26–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Lardy, Nicholas, Economic Growth and Distribution in China (Cambridge University Press, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. For an early article noting this, see Lewis, John W., “Leader, Commissar, and Bureaucrat: The Chinese political system in the last days of the revolution,” in Ho, Ping-ti and Tsou, Tang, ed., China in Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), Vol. I, Bk. 2, pp. 449–482.Google Scholar

8. This summary of Deng Xiaoping draws from his policies of 1975, several speeches and interviews he gave in 1978–79, and conversations he had with U.S. officials. For his 197S policies, see Lieberthal, , Central DocumentsGoogle Scholar. For Deng in 1978–79, see especially the Hong Kong journal Cheng Ming for these years. The views of Chen Yun are summarized in Liqun, Deng, Xiang Chen Yun tung-chih xueh-xi zuo jing-ji gong-zuo (Study Economic Work from Comrade Chen Yun) (Peking: CCP Central Party School Press, 1981).Google Scholar

9. See Zhong-guo bai-ge nian-jian, 1980 (1980 China Almanac) (Peking: China Encyclopedia Press, 1980), pp. 43–46.Google Scholar

10. See Lieberthal, Kenneth, A Research Guide to Central Meetings in China (White Plains: M. E. Sharpe Press, 1976).Google Scholar

11. Though in detail, Chinese ministerial practices have changed somewhat, to a considerable extent the works written on the pre-Cultural Revolution system remain valid. The work of A. Doak Barnett and Audrey Donnithorne in particular remain valid. See Barnett, A. Doak, Cadres, Bureaucracy and Political Power in China (New York: Columbia Press, 1967)Google Scholar and Donnithorne, Audrey, The Chinese Economic System (New York: Praeger, 1967).Google Scholar

12. My sense is that Japanese corporations have already come to this conclusion and are developing a refined picture of bureau-level personnel and their practices.

13. This was true, for example, in Schurmann, , Ideology and Organization, op. cit.Google Scholar

14. One book which develops this perspective, however, is Lampton, David M., The Politics of Medicine in China: The Policy Process, 1949–1977 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1977).Google Scholar

15. Oksenberg, Michel, “Methods of Communication Within the Chinese Bureaucracy,” The China Quarterly, 01–03, 1974, pp. 1–39.Google Scholar

16. In addition to my interviewing, this section draws on Tsou, Tang, Blecher, Marc and Meisner, Mitch, “Policy change at the National Summit,” Select Papers of the Center for Far Eastern Studies, University of Chicago, No. 4, pp. 241Google Scholaret seq.; Zweig, David, “The ‘System of Responsibility’: National Policy and Local Implementation,” paper for the SSRC Conference on Bureaucracy and Rural Development, 08 26–30, 1981Google Scholar; and Domes, Jürgen, “New Policies in the Communes,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XLI, No. 2 (02 1982), pp. 253–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. See “Resolution of the third plenum of the CCP Eleventh Central Committee,” December 22, 1978, in Ren-min Shou-ce 1979 (People's Handbook, 1979) (Peking: People's Daily Press, 1980), p. 33.Google Scholar

18. The principal documents are “Decision of the CCP Central Committee concerning the hastening of agricultural development,” September 28, 1979, in Ren-min Shou-ce 1979, ibid., pp. 37–45, and “Notice of the Central Committee concerning strengthening and improving the agricultural production responsibility system,” September 27, 1980, in Ban-yueh-tan, 1981, No. 8, pp. 4–22.Google Scholar

19. See, e.g. Nong-cun gong-zuo tung-xun (Rural Work Bulletin), 1981, No. 6, pp. 2–5.Google Scholar

1 New China News Agency, 8 03 1982Google Scholar, in FBIS, Vol. 1, #046 (3-9-82), pp. K1–K7.