Chinese Lessons or Chinese Puzzles?

In this book we have undertaken a quite detailed examination of the economic reforms which have been taking place in China, a process that has been ongoing now for almost 20 years. It is time to summarise what we have found and to assess both the impact of the economic reform process upon the Chinese people and the lessons which can be applied to other transitional economies. As a result, this chapter will focus upon issues such as how much progress there has been in China over the period and how much of it can be directly attributed to the reforms themselves. We will also consider what remains to be done and the scope for further economic reform in China over the next few decades. Finally, we will assess what lessons the Chinese experience of economic reform offers to our understanding of the process of transition from a communist/centrally planned economy to a socialist market economy/capitalist economy. In this, we will be led to compare the reform experiences of the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union with that of China. On the surface, at least, the process of transition followed by the countries of Eastern Europe has been quite different from that followed by China and the outcomes, too, look to be dissimilar. As we will see, there is a great deal of controversy concerning the lessons which the Chinese experience offers to other command economies undergoing the process of economic transformation.