The Economic Development of China: Studies Reviewed in Tranquillity

Abstract

NY account of the economy of mainland China gives rise to certain basic questions in the mind of the reader. He wants to know what things are being j done and why, and how they are being done and where. He wants to know previous conditions and present needs. And he wants some guide to the prospects the future, both China and the rest of the world as it touches or is touched by China. Such expectations are a large order. Facts are hard to obtain in a country where statisticll work is rudimentary and new products are appearing, where accurate reporting is often a novelty, where the concept of national income accounting and total economic planning is less than ten years old, where political and social pressures often lead to onesided reporting and underevaluation of difficulties, and, finally, where some information simply is not divulged. However, at least three important conclusions do emerge from the accounts of economic development now going on. First, there is impressive growth in all directions. Second, except using the large population as a reservoir of labor capital construction, there seems to be no long-range policy with respect to population planning. Third, there is a large measure of trial and error in the methods of achieving general goals. That this last demands drastic changes millions of people, both leaders and led, is part of the price of applying social theory on a large scale. The works reviewed here were published from late 1957 into early 1960. Six present observations by non-Chinese who visited China in that period; two are by mature Chinese economists living outside China; and the rest are by non-Chinese, two of whom lived in China before 1949 and worked with materials bearing on the economy. Since any expression about the People's Republic of China is controversial, these published works might easily be divided into proand anti-Peking. However, such a division would not help us much, especially when we are not sufficiently sure of the facts to be for or against. Instead, it is more useful to group the materials into three categories: (1) those which are mainly descriptive; (2) those which are descriptive but are heavily laced with interpretations according to the author's bias; and (3) those which in addition present analyses of the Chinese materials and methods of computation. Although the last category may seem closest to the truth, I am not satisfied that it necessarily is, I agree completely with one Chinese economist who writes:'