Chapter 3 The First Decades of the People’s Republic: The Soviet Model … and Worse
Lacking both vitality and incentive.
—Gao Shangquan, a senior Chinese government official commenting, shortly after the reforms began, on the impact of Soviet-style planning on Chinese enterprises.
Chaos under heaven is a good thing.
—A slogan plastered on the wall of a Chinese factory visited by the author in 1974 during the Cultural Revolution.
The period 1949–1978, from the CCP’s takeover to the beginning of the reforms following Mao’s death, was marked by wave upon wave of revolutionary change that left China’s economy severely damaged. Through understanding the depths of the social and economic dysfunction and the institutional cruelty meted out to intellectuals, ...
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