China/Russia
This is a response to the exchange on Russian and Chinese development
initiated by Jim Devine and particularly directed toward the 4.12
intervention of Joseph Medley.
I share the essential premises, that China's economic performance and
attempted reform, particularly of the anti-market collectivist order that
prevailed in the countryside, have been far more successful than the
uniformly abortive Russian attempts, and that our discussion should focus
on contradictions within the reforms. This comment focuses on some aspects
of the rural outcomes in China and offers a rather different assessment on
key issues than that of Medley.
Medley rightly notes that the most dynamic growth occurred in China,
particularly in the countryside in the initial years of reform (in fact to
1984), but the argument then becomes confused. On the one hand, he talks
about the end of the growth surge; on the other he asserts that "growth,
albeit rapid, is highly uneven." He talks further of "100 M peasants . . .
reduced to below subsistence levels"; "current rural labor surplus exceeds
130M adults" and rising inequality.
The countryside is in fact experiencing severe problems, but there has been
no 100 million reduced to below subsistence levels (such people were at
bare subsistence levels earlier), likewise, the disguised unemployment
which continues to plague China was in the range of 100-300 million in the
late collective era. There are indeed problems of underemployment and
unemployment, but they must located against this history.
My overall assessment differs on a number of key points. First, it seems
to me important to clarify the limits and achievements of reform against
the background of the preceding 25 years of mobilizational collectivism.
For me the salient points of the collective era include the transfer of
much of the surplus to industry, the state and cities, the use of massive
labor to build infrastructure, 25 years of per capita income stagnation,
and the binding of villagers to land they did not own and could not leave.
The reforms, against this background, brought significant gains for many.
They made possible substantial across the board income gains for virtually
the entire rural population, including the poorest families and poverty
areas. The trope of critics that these gains were unequally distributed
is partly correct: We should note the record of the previous era of
enormous gains in the relative advantage of city over countryside; and we
should note that the new income patterns both increase and reduce
inequalities considered in regional and class terms. The picture is NOT
simply one of growing inequality.
In a December visit to rural areas in poor regions of the North China plain
and in booming regions of the Canton delta I came away with a sense of the
enormous regional differences in rates and patterns of growth. I believe
that Medley underestimates the overall continued dynamism of the Chinese
economy; but the problems are indeed severe in stagnant areas. From other
perspectives, such as environmental destruction, they are also severe in
the booming areas where the richest rice and fishpond land in the world is
being paved over at an astonishing rate.
Finally, I believe that we are going to be forced to reconsider the widely
held view that what is emerging in China is "capitalism." I believe that
we are seeing the emergence of a distinctive Chinese form of organizing
economy and society that will not readily fit into either of our neat boxes
of "capitalism" or "socialism". . . but given this too long post that issue
had best be saved in the event there is interest in such a discussion.
My views on the Russia-China comparison, with particular reference to the
logic and limits of collective transformations, are in spelled out in the
spring 1994 of Contention and at greater length in the fall 1994 Review.
