Friday, April 9, 2010
Communism, Capitalism, and Democracy in China
The article opens by giving a history of China starting from World War I and going until the present. The author talks about how following World War I Mao Zedong implemented communism in China. It seems that the Chinese peasant class was not happy with the reforms and for ten years there was a fear of the government "red guard".Then author continues by talking about when Deng Xiaopang took over and implemented capitalism into the economy. The reforms were gradual but were productive. Xiaopang created SEZ's to implement and test capitalist policy. The article talks about the successor of Xiaopang and how he is continuing the capitalist reformation and even some democratic reforms. The article then provides a chart comparing a communist government to a democratic (capitalist) one. It is interesting to see the differences laid out side by side for you. Overall the article is a pretty good summary of what we learned in class, with some more examples of the reformation into communism and the gradual change to capitalism.
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4 comments:
The modernization of China is one of the worlds greatest feats. China's arrival on the world stage, is truly "A Tale of Two Cities". Despite Mao's attempts to progress the Peoples Republic of China under the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China appeared to be continually moving in the wrong direction. However, with the coming Deng Xiaoping and the economic liberalization of the economy by 1993, China has experienced unprecedented economic success. The only question remains is not whether China has made it or not, but, is their flag flying just a bit to high to be sustainable??
I think the main question with China would be whether is was right for them to move towards a market society before they even started getting hints of being a democracy. Shouldn't it have been the other way around?
Theoretically and on paper it may seem that it would have made more sense for China to establish traits of Democracy before it began to push towards a market economy. However, China's political system has notoriously lagged behind it's financial markets and in most cases hampered its economic growth. After years of economic stagnation, China was prepared to move forward with or without political action. Clearly, China's inability to establish a strong democracy has not hurt them from becoming a prominent player on the world stage. Therefore, China has proven that democracy is not a necessary condition for market economies to be successful.
China not being a democracy does, however, get in the way of their interaction with other states and non-state agencies. Take recent Olympic games in Beijing, for instance. How much trouble did it cause to them the fact that there've been obvious human rights violations? How much money in losses and how much negative publicity did that cause to them when prominent figures and states have refused to do anything with the Olympics because of that?
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