Chinese foreign economic policy before 1978 has been considered
isolationist and centered on Maoist self-reliance. In this
revisionist analysis, Lawrence Reardon argues that China was not
out of touch with the global marketplace during the 1949-78 period
and that Deng Xiaoping's heralded liberalizations in fact were
revisions and expansions of policies from the Maoist period.
The dramatic economic reforms initiated by China's leaders in
1978 boosted GDP by between 9 and 13 percent each year during the
1980s and 1990s, while the nation's foreign trade figures rose from
a trivial US$1.94 billion in 1952 to US$325 billion in 1997. By
opening to the outside world and liberalizing the domestic economic
infrastructure, China has become the third largest and one of the
fastest-growing economies in the world.
The story of China's on-again, off-again trade efforts provides
an important window on the cyclical struggle for power between Mao
Zedong's ideologically driven allies and more pragmatic leaders
such as Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, whose approach eventually
prevailed. Reardon relies on primary sources, including Chinese
Communist Party histories and other restricted-circulation
materials that have recently come to light, to show that China's
apparently sudden turn outward in 1978 was actually an extension of
previous experiments hobbled by bureaucratic infighting and
conflict among rival elites. He describes in unprecedented detail
the seemingly contradictory strategies used by Mao and other
leaders to assert China's absolute self-sufficiency while also
striving to modernize the economy and achieve maximum prosperity as
rapidly as possible. These latter goals required engagement with
global economic forces - even capitalist nations - but were
necessary to enhance national security in a hostile geopolitical
environment and to assure continued domestic stability.
Lawrence C. Reardon is associate professor of political science
at the University of New Hampshire.
"Far and away the most comprehensive and detailed account of
China's foreign economic policy making. . . . The range of primary
source materials discovered and used in this study is truly
incredible." - Nicholas R. Lardy, Brookings Institution
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