Jim Craven paper on China

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(This paper was delivered at a conference on economic development in China.)

The Evolving Concept of Social Capital, Markets, Market-Based Processes 
and Socialist Construction

By James M. Craven (Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi)

Professor, Economics; Chairman, Business Division, Clark College, 
Vancouver, WA.

“Every nation in the world has its own history and its own strengths and 
weaknesses. Since earliest times excellent things and rotten things have 
mingled together and accumulated over long periods.  To sort them out 
and distinguish the essence from the dregs is a difficult task…Of course 
this does not mean that we do not need to learn from foreign countries. 
We must learn many things from foreign countries and master them…We 
learn foreign things because we want to study and develop Chinese 
things…We must not be like the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi who blindly 
rejected all foreign things. Blindly rejecting foreign things is like 
blindly worshipping them. Both are incorrect and harmful…In learning 
from foreign countries we must oppose both conservatism and dogmatism…To 
study foreign things does not mean importing everything, lock, stock and 
barrel…We must give our attention to the critical acceptance of foreign 
things, and especially to the introduction of things from the socialist 
world and from the progressive people of the capitalist world…”

(Chairman Mao Zedong, “Talk to Music Workers”, pp. 85-88, in Chairman 
Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters 1956-1971, Stuart Schram ed., 
Pantheon Books, N.Y. 1974)

Introduction

The People’s Republic of China stands as one of the major 
political-economic powers and social formations in the world today; it 
ranks about sixth place in terms of most economic aggregates commonly 
used to rank-order different economies in size and influence in the 
global economy. For a nation that had been kept backward, fragmented, 
feudal and colonized by foreign imperial powers and internal 
contradictions until the People’s Revolution in 1949, and, for a nation 
that has been subject to imperial encirclement, threats of nuclear 
annihilation, destabilization campaigns and demonization and 
ostracization in the global economy for many years, with a large 
population of 1.4 billion people with myriad wants and needs awaiting 
fulfillment, the present level of development and standing of China is 
no small achievement And there is no doubt, in the opinions of many 
observers, that “socialist values and consciousness”, created and 
reinforced by the developing “social capital” of  Chinese socialism, 
have constituted a significant and material force in those 
achievements—often against overwhelming odds and against 
technologically-sophisticated and vicious foreign forces bent on 
isolating, demonizing, destabilizing and sabotaging socialist 
construction in China.

Yet despite the tremendous advances made by the Chinese people, much 
work remains to be done and many wants and needs remain unfulfilled 
causing China to explore, at various periods of Chinese history, diverse 
approaches, models, instruments, measures and paths of growth and 
development. According to the 16th Congress of the Communist Party of 
China in 2002:

“We must be aware that China is in the primary stage of socialism and 
will remain so, for a long time to come. The well-off life we are 
leading is still at a low level; it is not all-inclusive and is very 
uneven. The principal contradiction in our society is still one between 
the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and the 
backwardness of social production. Our productive forces, science, 
technology and education are still relatively backward, so there is a 
long way to go before we achieve industrialization and modernization.” 1

Since 1978, China has experienced the progressive widening of markets, 
market relationships and categories along with some changes in 
political, economic, cultural, legal and social institutions and 
superstructure necessary to facilitate widening and deepening market 
involvement in socialist construction. Some of these policies and 
initiatives have included: export-led growth; increasing reliance on 
long-term  foreign direct investment (FDI both into and originating from 
China); increasing privatization; lowering of trade barriers; 
decentralization of planning; increased authority for (and 
responsibilities on) local governments; increasing integration into 
global networks of manufacturing, finance, trade; critical technology 
transfers; new forms of enterprise organization (e.g. Individual Family 
Contracts (IFCs) in agriculture, Township and Village Enterprises 
(TVEs), privatization and self-financing of state-owned 
enterprises(SOEs) and SBCs or share-based cooperatives); labor market 
reforms; currency exchange-rate stabilization; etc.

But the debates, inside and outside of China, have continued to rage: 
Does this emerging market socialism model represent simply a 
necessary—and necessarily hybrid—model that is based upon, and is 
addressing, the myriad real-world legacies, constraints, conditions and 
forces with which China has to deal, and that will, or can possibly, 
result in using markets and capitalism to build socialism in China?. Or, 
as some would argue, does this hybrid model represent the reverse of 
using socialism (real or nominal) to build and extend markets, 
market-based processes and wholesale capitalism thus subjectively or 
objectively sabotaging long-run conditions and prospects for ongoing 
socialist construction throughout China?

full: http://www.marxmail.org/CravenChina.htm

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