This title was first published in 1978. This volume brings together translations of a series of fundamental articles that are of special value for those who seek to understand ChinaTs system of economic planning. These materials, which were intended to provide a basic introduction to the principles and techniques of economic planning being introduced during the First Five-Year Plan, originally appeared in two series in the journal Chi-hua ching-chi (Economic Planning), the official organ of the State Planning Commission and the State Economic Commission.
The Economic Transformation of China is a collection of essays written by an eminent observer of the Chinese economy. The book covers the Chinese transformation beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the second decade of the twenty-first century. It includes an analysis of the forces that held China back before 1949, the nature of the economy as it operated under the Soviet model of development, and the transformation since 1978 into a “socialist market economy.” The essays of the post-1978 era reflect the author's view of the state of the reform effort at the time the essay was written and carries the story up to the 2012-2013 slowdown in economic growth.
Coal mining is one of China’s largest industries, and provides an excellent case study through which to consider the broader issues of China’s transition from socialism to capitalism, focussing on the shift to a market economy, the rise of rural industry and the situation of China’s working class. Coal was one of the pillars of the planned economy but, the author argues, its shift to market-based operations has been protracted and difficult, particularly in moving from the artificially low prices of the planned economy to market prescribed prices - a change that had a major impact on the industry’s financial performance. The book goes on to considers the growth of small rural coal mines as part of the Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) programme; these small mines have brought prosperity to areas where small manufacturing enterprises are not competitive, but at the same time have been the cause of many social and environmental problems. It also examines the situation of coal miners - arguably one the most vulnerable segments of the Chinese working class - under socialism and under capitalism, paying particular attention to the issue of work safety and coal mine disasters. The book provides a comprehensive and coherent treatment of these issues from the establishment of the People’s Republic up to 2010.
This book explores the key ideas and the key people who were responsible for the development of China’s economy from 1949 through 2016. It discusses how economic policy evolved, how economic policy was formulated and how the role of economists in decision making evolved. It considers the interplay between ideological and practical questions, provides biographical details of key economists and includes a clear annotated chronology of events. The book is especially valuable because the author, as a senior World Bank official, was a close observer of the situation and to some extent a key participant.
Throughout its history as a social science, demography has been associated with an exclusively quantitative orientation for studying social problems. As a result, demographers tend to analyse population issues scientifically through sets of fixed social categories that are divorced from dynamic relationships and local contexts and processes. This volume questions these fixed categories in two ways. First, it examines the historical and political circumstances in which suchcategories had their provenance, and, second, it reassesses their uncritical applications over space and time in a diverse range of empirical case studies, encouraging throughout a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue involving anthropologists, demographers, historians, and sociologists.This volume seeks to examine the political complexities that lie at the heart of population studies by focusing on category formation, category use, and category critique. It shows that this takes the form of a dialectic between the needs for clarity of scientific and administrative analysis and the recalcitrant diversity of the social contexts and human processes that generate population change. The critical reflections of each chapter are enriched by meticulous ethnographic fieldwork andhistorical research drawn from every continent. This volume, therefore, exemplifies a new methodology for research in population studies, one that does not simply accept and re-use the established categories of population science but seeks critically and reflexively to explore, test, and re-evaluatetheir meanings in diverse contexts. It shows that for demography to realise its full potential it must urgently re-examine and contextualize the social categories used today in population research.
