Broad Implementation of the New Economic Strategy

Abstract

This chapter will focus on macro-implementation of the new economic strategy since the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Party Congress in late 1978. The period of major readjustment is near its completion. Restructuring, consolidation and improvement are being carried out simultaneously during the Sixth Five-year Plan (1981–5). The discovery of the impact from rural economic decontrol, relaxation of politics and the fresh start toward rapid economic diversification and expansion has generated additional optimism toward urban economic reform both in scope and depth. In a sense, pressure for rapid urban economic reform is to acommodate the rural expansion and to bridge the increasing mutual dependence between the rural and the urban sectors of the growing economy. Unlike the lock-up rural policy under Mao, Deng’s policy is to free 80 per cent of the population and let them follow their own destiny as being better for growth. The government has helped them recover from region to region, while the government itself has fully concentrated on urban heavy industrial reform for greater expansion. Today, partial economic freedom in rural China has brought new vitality and strength to the entire economy. This chapter will touch upon a few major reform documents as a means to implement broadly the new economic strategy.