Journal of Economic Perspectives
ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)
Is China Socialist?
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 31,
no. 1, Winter 2017
(pp. 3–24)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
It has been 40 years since Deng Xiaoping broke dramatically with Maoist ideology and the Maoist variant of socialism. Since then, China has been transformed. Forty years ago, in 1978, China was unquestionably a socialist economy of the familiar and well-studied "command economy" variant, even though it was more decentralized and more loosely planned than its Soviet progenitor. Twenty years ago--that is, by the late 1990s--China had completely discarded this type of socialism and was moving decisively to a market economy. China today is quite different both from the command economy of 40 years ago, and from the "Wild West Capitalism" of 20 years ago. Throughout these enormous changes, China has always officially claimed to be socialist. Does the "socialist" label make sense when applied to China today?Citation
Naughton, Barry. 2017. "Is China Socialist?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31 (1): 3–24. DOI: 10.1257/jep.31.1.3Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- O17 Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
- O53 Economywide Country Studies: Asia including Middle East
- P21 Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies: Planning, Coordination, and Reform
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