[lbo-talk] Gorbachev: I Should Have Left the Communist Party Earlier

Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Thu Aug 18 13:18:22 PDT 2011


China's development has been more successful because it followed a specific road to capitalist development: the Asian economic system. China imitated Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, while the Soviet Union looked to the West for advice. It has nothing to do with democracy, because none of the other Asian countries were democratic during their initial periods of industrialization either.

China's path of first decollectivizing agriculture, then creating township-village enterprises, then decentralizing and privatizing smaller state enterprises and opening special economic zones, and finally ending up with an export-led economy still dominated by nominally state owned manufacturing and extractive industry companies, looks very different than the Eastern European and Russian reform programs in the 1990's. Instead it looks more like the path followed by their anti-communist rivals in Asia which is characterized high capital investment, low rates of saving, low rates of profit, cheap, skilled labor in the initial phases, and a heavy role of government in subsidizing and directing industrial development.



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