The Chinese Reassessment of Socialism, 1976-1992

by Sun, Yan

• ISBN13: 9780691029986
• ISBN10: 0691029989
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-08-21
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

A momentous debate has been unfolding in China over the last fifteen years, only intermittently in public view, concerning the merits of socialism as a philosophy of social justice and as a program for national development. Just as Deng Xiaoping's better advertised experiment with market- based reforms has challenged Marxist-Leninist dogma on economic policy, the years since the death of Mao Zedong have seen a profound reexamination of a more basic question: to what extent are the root problems of the system due to Chinese socialism and Marxism generally? Here Yan Sun gathers a remarkable group of primary materials, drawn from an unusual range of sources, to present the most systematic and comprehensive study of post-Mao reappraisal of China's socialist theory and practice. Rejecting an assumption often made in the West, that Chinese socialist thought has little bearing on politics and policymaking, Sun takes the arguments of the post-Mao era seriously on their own terms. She identifies the major factions in the debate, reveals the interplay among official and unofficial forces, and charts the development of the debate from an initially parochial concern with problems raised by Chinese practice to a grand critique of the theory of socialism itself. She concludes with an enlightening comparison of the reassessments undertaken by Deng Xiaoping with those of Gorbachev, linking them to the divergent outcomes of reform and revolution in their respective countries.

Author Biography

Yan Sun is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Queens College of the City University of New York.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
The Affirmation, Development, and Negation of Marxism	p. 3
From the Whatever to the Dialectical Materialist Approach	p. 22
Competing Models of the Socialist Economy	p. 52
The Reassessment of the Socialist Economic System	p. 85
The Noncompeting Nature of the Socialist Political System	p. 121
The Reassessment of the Socialist Political System	p. 153
The Reconceptualization of Socialism	p. 183
The Response to the "Liberal" Reassessment of Socialism	p. 214
The Chinese and Soviet Reassessments of Socialism: A Comparison	p. 237
The Post-Mao Reassessment of Socialism and the Chinese Socialist Experience	p. 258
Notes	p. 277
References	p. 329
Index	p. 341
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