The Prospects for China's Economic Reforms

In China&s;s Soviet-style system of central planning, the authority to make most major decisions resides with those who draw up the plans and with the organs whose primary responsibility is to see that the plans are implemented. Just as a number of factors pushed China in the direction of a greater emphasis on consumer goods, similar forces pushed the country in the direction of greater involvement with the international economic and scientific system. Foreign trade reforms came first, in a sense, hut the reforms that have had the greatest impact on the majority of the Chinese people are those that were carried out in agriculture. Experiments with urban reform also began long before the major pronouncement on urban reform by the Twelfth Central Committee at its Third Plenum on October 20, 1984. The impact of rural reforms on the standard of living in the rural areas was immediate and dramatic.