1. China, State capitalism, market socialism . . .? It may be politically reassuring to find a down home label to capture the nature of China's political economy, and some argue that it is theoretically essential, but will the labels help us to grasp the nature of the contradictions in the present conjuncture, to understand why the Chinese economy has been the world's most dynamic over the last decade, or to understand where China is headed? Will it help us to better grasp the power or helplessness of workers or farmers in a situation that has brought growing insecurity, but also higher levels of autonomy; that breaks down statist structures in ways that could -- but thus far has not -- opened the way to new forms of cooperation? The questions can be multiplied. Given our present knowledge, I'd have to answer no. Focusing on TVEs as Paul Bowles and others seems to me one promising approach toward better comprehending the contemporary dynamic and its emerging features and possibilities. Better at present to make sense of the mix of state, village, private capital, and foreign capital in the ownership and control of these enterprises, including a sense of the dominant forms that Tavis Barr has asked about. Even though, as far as I know, there are no studies that would allow the regressions she inquires about. Rather, research is at the stage of looking closely at individual examples of the phenonomenon and attempting to gain perspective on the dominant forms, with little help in the way of basic statistical control over the types and forms. If such approaches leave us as blind men grasping at the elephant, the situation is not noticeably worse than it was in the late Mao years when the assumed identity of institutions and general conditions that ran through some of the literature simply masked our general ignorance of the situation on the ground. 2. Foreign trade. I'm interested in Lynn Turgeon's discussion of the continuing Maoist legacy with its preferance for balanced trade with each partner and how this so well suits the neo-mercanitism of advanced capitalist countries. That concept of balanced trade was, for example, explicitly written into the longterm Chinese-Japanese trade agreements in the 1980s and 90s (but perhaps not into US-China agreements?). At the same time, China has frequently had both substantial trade deficits and surpluses with particular countries at given times, and has not hesitated to use trade politically to secure specific ends, including buying sprees that were not balanced by sales. In mentioning a projected $9 billion import surplus for 1994, LT seems to be suggesting something systemic or chronic, but it is not clear what is meant. CND 4.15.94 for example notes that China for the first time in four years had a trade deficit (US$12.8 bil) in 1993. Nick Lardy's customs data on China trade from 1980-91 (CQ 131, p. 694) show substantial trade surpluses for 1989-91 following deficits in the preceding four years. How do the data relate then to the non-mercantilist preferences and what can this tell us about the ways in which China neatly fits into the strategies of advanced capitalist countries, or anyone else?
