Following the Beijing Olympics, widely-viewed as a coming-out party for China, curiosity has been piqued across the world over China''s development mode marked by an economy growing at double the world annual average for more than a decade.
The journey of China''s rising from poverty, as the writer Chen recalled, however, is quite bumpy, strewn with disputes, advances and retreats, successes and setbacks.
In his memoir, the former director of the State Commission for Restructuring the Economy and later head of the State Planning Commission, the top economic planner in the 1990s, poured out his first-hand impression of the Party governance and high-profile decision-making on thorny issues, especially macro-economic control.
When the retail price index surged to 18.5 percent in 1988, touching off quite serious inflation and great panic in cities, detractors said to go in for the market economy was to ditch public ownership, the Party leadership and the Socialist system for Capitalism.
More than 100 economists, well-known enterprise figures and senior government officials gathered in Beijing in October 1990 ata forum to discuss theories of Socialist economic reform, calling for the finding of precise theoretical and practical answers as soon as possible, he noted.
The disputes ended two years later after Deng Xiaoping, mastermind of China''s economic reform and opening-up drive, made a southern China inspection tour, stating his famous conclusion that "planning and market are both economic means".
Chen minced no words in his admission of the government''s inexperience and inadequate preparation in carrying on with the reform of price and the wage systems in the late 1990s.
Two phenomena having direct bearing on the tossing and turning of the local economy or what local economists termed "Zhe Teng", were investment thirst and political performance effect at the changeover of governments, Chen noted.
"Economic overheating, investment expansion and changes of government have a positive correlation," he said. "Once excessive thirst is translated into government action or becomes the objective of government driven by personal gain without correct guidance by the market and rational thinking for development, its negative effect will rapidly swell, thus touching off run-away overheated development."
Thirty years into the economic reform, there is still some truth in this perspective as fixed-assets investment remains the strongest economic engine in comparison to foreign trade and domestic consumption.
By Chen''s own admission, in doing business in China, the key lies with the leadership, first of all, leadership above provincial and ministerial levels. "Without unanimity of thinking among officials at these levels, work would not be done well."
Being the director of the State Planning Commission, Chen''s daily routine was to deal with local governments. When it came to the controlling of the overheated macro-economy, however, Chen said it was often "the question of economic overheating in the other guy''s back yard".
Considering the widening regional disparity in China and the country''s closer integration with the global market, the mission of striking a balance between inflation and growth now would be tougher.
The Memoirs having its Japanese edition released last August also devoted chapters to the inner-Party political struggles following the downfall of the Gang of Four in Shanghai, a potential risk that might have changed China''s history without being properly handled.
Source:Xinhua
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