Economic System Reform Research Articles

The rise and decline of the Cooperative Medical System in rural China.

The Cooperative Medical System (CMS) in China is an established medical system that serves the rural areas and provides treatment and prevention of disease, immunization, family planning, and maternal and child health care services. Past experience suggests that the CMS benefited the peasants in rural China. During the 1980s, following reform of China's economic system, the CMS underwent major changes. In some places, CMS stations evolved into various other types of medical and health care systems; in other places, CMS stations ceased operation altogether. This article attempts to analyze the causes and meaning of these changes, and examines the conditions for continuation of this system.

Editors' Introduction

This volume is the second issue of our two-issue series of translations selected from a document collection, Programs of China's Economic System Reform, 1979-1987.1 The first issue covered those programs drafted before the Special Conference of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee on the Overall Economic System Reform, held in October 1984, while this issue selects those programs drafted after that conference. It is clear that the 1984 conference marked the ascendance of the reformers within the party. The conference resolution, which itself represented a comprehensive outline for urban economic system reform, bore the unmistakable imprint of the prior research done in the service of economic system reform.

Preliminary Plan for Deepening Economic System Reform in 1988 (Draft for Solicitation of Opinions)

Abstract Since the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee, economic system reform in China has gained great success. Eight years of reform have not only promoted the sustained and stable growth of the economy, the coordinated development of agriculture, light and heavy industry and the first, second, and third industries, improved economic results, substantially increased the country's economic strength, and speeded up the pace of improvement of urban and rural living standards, but these years of reform have also enriched and developed Marxist economic theory.

The Plan for Implementing the Economic System Reform in 1987 (October 20, 1986)

In economic system reform in 1986, the policy of consolidation, assimilation, rounding out, and improvement was implemented. Macroeconomic control was enhanced and improved. The contradiction between total social supply and demand has been alleviated. Factors for instability in national economic growth were reduced.

Outline of a Report on Our Studies for an Overall Program for Economic System Reform (July 2, 1985)

Outline of a Report on Our Studies for an Overall Program for Economic System Reform (July 2, 1985)

Preliminary 1986 Plan for Economic System Reform (November 26, 1985)

Preliminary 1986 Plan for Economic System Reform (November 26, 1985)

Preliminary Summary of Measures for Economic System Reform in 1987 (March 15, 1987)

Preliminary Summary of Measures for Economic System Reform in 1987 (March 15, 1987)

Outline of the Report on Economic System Reform During the Sixth Five-Year Plan Period and for the Year 1983 (October 29, 1982)

Outline of the Report on Economic System Reform During the Sixth Five-Year Plan Period and for the Year 1983 (October 29, 1982)

Preliminary Opinions on Economic System Reform (September 8, 1980)

Preliminary Opinions on Economic System Reform (September 8, 1980)

Editors' Introduction

This volume is the first issue of our two-issue series of translations selected from a document collection, Programs of China's Economic System Reform, 1979-1987. 1 The original collection contains fourteen documents from 1979 to 1987. Regrettably, owing to space limitations, only ten documents have been selected for translation. According to the preface of this book, written by the former first deputy chairman of the State Economic System Reform Commission, An Zhiwen, none of these documents had been openly published before 1988.2 Indeed, these documents were written by official think tanks as reform policy proposals for the State Council exclusively.

Opinions on Economic System Reform in the Period of Readjustment (June 12, 1981)

Opinions on Economic System Reform in the Period of Readjustment (June 12, 1981)

Can Plan and Market Coexist in a Socialist Economy?

The reform of the socialist economic system, viewed from the perspective of economic mechanisms, must be market-oriented reform. The past several decades in China have proven that trying to encompass all economic activities within a single plan designed to manage and control everything, will only end in failure. With such planning, the range and variety of commodities supplied by the market are reduced to a minimum. Thus, although people feel differently about the market, as long as they admit that the socialist economic system must be reformed, the contents of reform always move more or less toward the market, and attempt to accommodate both the plan and the market.

Comprehensive Outline of the Report on the Plan for Economic System Reform (February 14, 1984)

On August 6 last year at the Sixth Standing Committee meeting of the State Council, Comrade [Zhao] Ziyang instructed us to set up six groups to conduct research into system reforms in the following areas: improvement of the quality of enterprises, changing from the present system of enterprises giving all profits to the state into a tax system, planning, foreign trade, pricing, and labor and wages.

Labor System Reform in China and its Unexpected Consequences

This paper traces the basic reforms in China's labor system and discusses the unexpected changes resulting from those reforms. Labor system reform in China was initiated in the late 1970s. The reform focused on relaxing direct control by various governmental departments and making better use of the market mechanisms in the labor market. Since the reform, people have more opportunities and freedom with respect to job selection and enterprise managers have more autonomy regarding hiring, rewarding and firing employees. Income differences are also becoming more significant. However, due to the simultaneous functioning of the dual system government control and market forces coupled with the lack of a well-established system, some people are distinctly more advantaged than others since the reform. Corruption has increased drastically, the majority of people are deeply frustrated and angered, something which contributed to the mass participation in the latest democratic movement in mid-1989. Based on research on China's labor system reform and comparison between China and the Soviet Union, our conclusions are that economic system reform and political system reform should be conducted simultaneously.

PRIVATIZATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Part 1 Conceptual issues: theoretical issues, Saul Estrin privatization in comparative perspective - an overview of the emerging issues, Paul Hare political dimensions of privatization in Eastern Europe, Judy Batt corporate governance in mass privatization programmes, Enrico Perotti privatization, distribution and economic justice - efficiency in transition, Amos Witztum privatization and regulation of utilities in economies in transition, Martin Cave and Pal Valentiny. Part 2 Country studies: privatization and deindustrialization in East Germany, Wendy Carlin and Colin Mayer the relationship between privatization and reform of the banking sector - the case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Lina Takla the privatization process - economic and political aspects of the Hungarian approach, Paul Hare and Anna Ravenka privatization in Poland, 1989-1993 - policies, methods and results, Stanislaw Gomulka and Piotr Janinki privatization in the former Soviet Union and the New Russia, Alexander Bim et al economic system reforms and privatization in Romania, Avner Ben-Ner and John M. Montias privatization in Bulgaria, Derek Jones et al.

The Progress and Coordination Between Economic and Political System Reform

In the process of reform, 1985 was a fruitful year. The urban economic reform that had just taken its first strides was met with much interference; the crises brought about by the loss of macroeconomic control touched a sensitive nerve in society. People came to realize that they must carry out economic reform against a background of overall social reform, and, therefore, they realized that the vision of their study must extend to the noneconomic spheres.

Project Research Team, Chinese People's University The Plan for the Reform of China's Economic System, 1988-95

Project Research Team, Chinese People's University The Plan for the Reform of China's Economic System, 1988-95

The Wu Jinglian Project Research Team, Research Center for Technological, Social, And Economic Development of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Outline of the Plan for Reform of the Chinese Economic System in the Intermediate Period

The Wu Jinglian Project Research Team, Research Center for Technological, Social, And Economic Development of the State Council of the People's Republic of China Outline of the Plan for Reform of the Chinese Economic System in the Intermediate Period

Project Research Team, Central Party School An Outline of the Reform of the Chinese Economic System, 1988-95

1. Carry out fiscal management by separate accounts; experiment with implementing the system of having two levels of budgets, one at the center, the other at the locality; formulate related laws and regulations; and prepare for the reform of the taxation system.

Project Research Team, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences An Outline of the Reform of the Chinese Economic System: Intermediate Stage, 1988-95

Abstract Fiscal instability is one of the primary reasons for the instability of the economy as a whole. In the first three years, therefore, we must do our best to create the conditions that would allow the fiscal situation to "pick itself up from the floor." In this stage, we can no longer promote reform measures that reduce taxes and concede profits in such a way that the ratio of the national budget to the national income is reduced. Nor can we promote reforms that concede profits to the localities so that the central government's revenues are lowered. To enhance the transparency of the budget, we must have multiple budgeting. According to the nature of different aspects of fiscal revenues and expenses, we must compile, respectively, the government's operational incomes-expenses budget, the capital incomes-expenses budget, the capital financing budget, and the social security fund incomes-expenses budget. When there is a budget deficit, the government may no longer overdraw from the bank, but must in all cases make up the deficit by issuing bonds. At the same time, we can no longer list loans as income; in this way, we can better reflect the real conditions of the fiscal deficit. We will change the traditional system of operating unified and centralized revenue and unified and centralized expenditure; instead, we will implement a budgeting system at every level of government. The central budget forecast and accounts must be separately organized from those of the localities; each will be responsible to the legislative bodies at its own level.