What strikes me is who is saying it. A man who sat inside the rural policy apparatus in the 1980s is arguing that the reform era's founding success came from below, from competition between approaches, not from design at the top. That reads differently today, when top-level design is the official vocabulary.
My question is practical. The experimentation Zhao describes rode on real local room, including fiscal room. Land sales revenue has roughly halved from its 2021 peak. Where does a province now find the space to try something different?
I think we need to get away from thinking that progress either occurs top down through central planning or bottom up through competitive markets. It occurs through a process of “coordinated adaptation”, where central authorities engage with independent agents to coordinate public and private investments. We need both top down coordination and bottom up adaptation.
"The decision-making process behind rural reform also shows that public policy cannot be scientifically engineered." Maybe not scientifically engineered, but rural reform can be scientifically determined. Science is experimentation to see what works. That's what the government seems to have done. Marxism, at root, is basing decisions on material reality. Theory or standardization follows. No master plan? Central plans are basically targets. The broad target is obvious: efficient production without gross inequality of benefits. There is no contradiction with Party ideology. As for 1958, different times and circumstances require different methodologies. The notion of continuous change and adaptation is fundamental to Marxism--in spite of the grotesque caricatures common in the West. Which is why China is beating the pants off of the US, stuck in the mythology of laissez-faire capitalism.
Good to have this in English.
What strikes me is who is saying it. A man who sat inside the rural policy apparatus in the 1980s is arguing that the reform era's founding success came from below, from competition between approaches, not from design at the top. That reads differently today, when top-level design is the official vocabulary.
My question is practical. The experimentation Zhao describes rode on real local room, including fiscal room. Land sales revenue has roughly halved from its 2021 peak. Where does a province now find the space to try something different?
I think we need to get away from thinking that progress either occurs top down through central planning or bottom up through competitive markets. It occurs through a process of “coordinated adaptation”, where central authorities engage with independent agents to coordinate public and private investments. We need both top down coordination and bottom up adaptation.
"The decision-making process behind rural reform also shows that public policy cannot be scientifically engineered." Maybe not scientifically engineered, but rural reform can be scientifically determined. Science is experimentation to see what works. That's what the government seems to have done. Marxism, at root, is basing decisions on material reality. Theory or standardization follows. No master plan? Central plans are basically targets. The broad target is obvious: efficient production without gross inequality of benefits. There is no contradiction with Party ideology. As for 1958, different times and circumstances require different methodologies. The notion of continuous change and adaptation is fundamental to Marxism--in spite of the grotesque caricatures common in the West. Which is why China is beating the pants off of the US, stuck in the mythology of laissez-faire capitalism.