Chinese Debate on Economic Reform: can China create a socialist market economy?

Between 1978 and 1992 a pattern of reform and tightening, inflation and deflation developed in China. The CPC realised that limiting central planning and expanding the role of the market had not alleviated the economic problems. In 1990–91 it was decided that the socialist core of China's economy should be restructured as a ‘socialist market economy’. This article follows the Chinese debate on the content and structure of the reform process and its effects on China's economic institutions.