Editor's Introduction

This issue of >i>The Chinese Economy>/i> presents two research reports on the development of the private economy in Zhejiang province and on efforts to define the phenomenon in Marxist terms and bring it under party control. The first is a two-part investigation study done by researchers at the Central Party School in Beijing. The report, which is based on a survey into the Zhejiang economy done in June 2001, appears to be one of many research reports that were done on the basis of Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents" (>i>sange daibiao>/i>) and in preparation of the Sixteenth Party Congress (convened in November 2002). Part I of the report describes the rapid development of the private economy in Zhejiang, noting that the proportion of economic output provided by the province's non-state (>i>minjian>/i>) enterprises grew from less than 1 percent in 1980 to 40 percent in 2000. The report reviews the different stages the development of the private economy has gone through in the past two decades, including the repression it suffered during the "strike hard" campaign of 1981.