Economic System and Transition Mode : A Comparative Research on Transition Economies

This passage mainly deals with the problem of why different transition countries have different transition mode and different economic performance. According to this research, it has been found that the economic system of the traditional socialist countries played an important role in their process of reform and transition. The socialist countries with their different economic systems had determined the economic performance, the space, as well as the environment of the transition. All of this jointly formed the initial conditions of the transition, which further determined the different transition mode of the (post) socialist countries. The success or failure of internal reform on planned economies profoundly affected their later transition. On this occasion, it was not the different countries chose the specific transition mode, but was the transition mode had already been determined in the process of institutional change. If we concentrate on the process of the whole institutional change in these (post) socialist countries, the preconceptions of "radicalism" or "gradualism" will not lead the problems to the wrong path. By making the comparative research on different transition countries, an institutional reason was provided in order to better illustrate the China’s catch-up development after her reform and opening compared with other transition economies in their process of system transition and institutional change.