Introduction

China's economic performance – based on the criteria of growth and stability – and the elements shaping it were appraised in the preceding chapters. The role of the past in conditioning ideological pre-dispositions, in imposing resource constraints, and in shaping institutional arrangements was explored in Chapter 1. This legacy combined with the prevailing ideology defined the goals and to some extent the policy and institutional instruments chosen for their implementation. This in turn required a far-reaching transformation of economic institutions to assure a high rate of resource mobilization and control over resource allocation. The latter issues were explored in Chapters 3 and 4.

To what extent can the combination of ends and means, objectives and instruments, used by the Chinese in the course of their economic development during the last quarter of a century be characterized as a distinct development model? What are the key elements of this model and is it transferable either as a whole or in part to other underdeveloped areas? These are the questions to be explored here based on the different strands of analysis in the earlier chapters.

It would be misleading to think of the Chinese development model as a static, frozen, unchanging system. On the contrary, as was indicated in Chapter 2, the Chinese have experimented with three or possibly four models since 1949. The original First Five-Year Plan strategy based on a more or less Stalinist development pattern was gradually modified through a process of trial and error until it evolved into the model associated with the 1970s, that is, the period since the Cultural Revolution.