Kornai János - Qian, Yingyi: Market and Socialism. In the Light of the Experiences of China and Vietnam - IEA Conference 146. (New York, 2009) / angol nyelven

4 Louis Putterman: Chia's Encounter with Market Socialism: Approaching Managed Capitalism by Indirect Means

4 China's Encounter with Market Socialism: Approaching Managed Capitalism by Indirect Means* Louis Putterman Introduction In this chapter, I shall argue that although the Chinese Communist Party officially adopted the phrase 'socialist market economy' (shehuizhuyi shichang jingji) to describe China's economic model in 1993, China had actually completed its closest rendezvous with 'market socialism' by that year and was taking off in the direction of a predominantly capitalist economy. The years since 1992 have seen China deepen not market socialism but, instead, a managed market capitalism with only dwindling remnants of the socialist past. For China's brush with market socialism, I propose the image of a 'fly-by', a close encounter on the path to a very different destina­tion. A metaphor from space exploration might make the idea more vivid. In July 2004, the world was thrilled by images beamed back from the rings and moons of Saturn by the European-built, American­­launched Cassini spacecraft. To put Cassini into orbit around Saturn, the US National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) launched it atop a Titan IV rocket in October 1997 on a trajectory that, early on, included two 'gravity-assist' fly-bys of our 'sister' planet, Venus. I shall argue that China's fly-by of 'market socialism' was of a similar character: in order to put its once Soviet-style planned economy on a path toward a managed form of market capitalism1 during an early reform period in which the Communist Party leadership still contained diverse elements that made socialism's gravity hard to escape, China's reformers first put the economy on what seemed to be a course towards planned socialism's sister economic system, 'market socialism'. Only later, with the help of the momentum gained during the market socialism 47

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