Os mercados têm desempenhado um papel central no desenvolvimento explosivo do país desde a década de 1980. Mas, à medida que o PIB aumentou, a desigualdade disparou - um grande afastamento dos ideais socialistas anteriores.
Macabe Keliher
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| Imagem: Flickr / david_hwang |
Como a China Escapou da Terapia de Choque: O Debate da Reforma de Mercado
Isabella M. Weber
Isabella M. Weber
Boitempo, R$ 97,00 (impresso)
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/china-and-the-lure-of-global-capitalism/
Em setembro de 1793, o enviado britânico Lord Macartney fez um tour pelo palácio de verão Qing ao norte de Pequim. No início de sua viagem, ele presenteou o imperador Qianlong com dois relógios esmaltados de "trabalho muito fino", um telescópio, lâminas de espada de Birmingham e roupas britânicas finas, entre outros itens destinados a impressionar o monarca envelhecido com a superioridade da indústria e tecnologia britânica e convencê-lo a assinar um acordo comercial.
Quando o assistente pessoal do imperador e dois dos generais mais condecorados dos Qing o conduziram por edifícios cheios de tesouros e dispositivos mecânicos, Macartney ficou horrorizado. "Os pavilhões são todos mobiliados da maneira mais rica", escreveu ele, "com esferas, planetários, relógios e autômatos musicais de acabamento tão requintado e em tal profusão que nossos presentes devem encolher diante da comparação e 'esconder suas cabeças diminuídas'." Tampouco o imperador ficou impressionado: ele enviou Macartney de volta com uma resposta severa ao rei George: "Como seu embaixador pode ver por si mesmo, possuímos todas as coisas... e não temos utilidade para as manufaturas de seu país."
Na época da missão Macartney, a China era o centro da economia mundial. A população já havia embarcado em um crescimento exponencial para atingir cerca de 350 milhões em 1800, e as duas maiores cidades portuárias do sul, Guangzhou e Foshan, tinham mais de 1,5 milhão de pessoas, aproximadamente a população urbana de toda a Europa Ocidental. A especialização regional ocorreu há muito tempo, com artesanato extensivo e produção de colheitas comerciais contribuindo para a expansão dos mercados nacionais e internacionais, enquanto os comerciantes chineses se estabeleceram no Mar da China Meridional criando redes comerciais vibrantes em toda a Ásia. A Europa só conseguiu acessar esse mercado lucrativo tarde com a descoberta da prata das Américas, que por sua vez lhes deu acesso à porcelana, seda e chá chineses: um diagrama dos fluxos comerciais no início do mundo moderno mostraria bens de consumo fluindo para fora da China e toda a prata fluindo para dentro. De fato, as melhores estimativas mostram que a China responde por um terço do PIB mundial em 1820, mais do que toda a Europa combinada e, de longe, a maior economia do mundo. Adam Smith colocou isso de forma mais sucinta em Wealth of Nations (1776): "A China é um país muito mais rico do que qualquer parte da Europa".
O domínio da China na economia global não duraria. A Grã-Bretanha, determinada a criar um regime de comércio global à sua imagem, entrou em guerra com a China em 1839 e novamente no final da década de 1850 em nome do ópio, impondo o “livre comércio” do consumo de drogas e uma série de tratados desiguais, que, entre outras coisas, sobrecarregou o governo Qing com enormes indenizações e a perda de controle sobre suas exportações. Em 1870, a participação da China no PIB mundial caiu para 17% e continuou em declínio vertiginoso após novos atos de imperialismo estrangeiro e exploração econômica. Revolucionários e reformadores dos séculos XIX e XX buscaram reconstruir a China política, social e economicamente, mas a incapacidade de investir na economia e modernizar a indústria e a agricultura fez da China um dos países mais pobres do mundo moderno. A queda dos Qing em 1912 e a ascensão da República da China levaram à instabilidade política e econômica, e a agressão e exploração japonesas na Segunda Guerra Mundial devastaram ainda mais a nação em dificuldades. Quando o Partido Comunista Chinês (PCC) chegou ao poder em 1949, no final de uma guerra civil, a participação da China no PIB mundial era inferior a 5%.
Hoje, é claro, esse destino se inverteu mais uma vez. A China tem agora a segunda maior economia do mundo em termos de PIB, atrás apenas dos Estados Unidos, e o Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) prevê que dentro de alguns anos representará mais de um quinto do PIB mundial. A China é o maior fabricante e exportador do mundo e abriga o maior número de empresas da Fortune 500. Em 2019, o PIB per capita foi cinquenta vezes maior do que na década de 1970.
Como a China recuperou o domínio econômico é uma questão de debate. No Ocidente, muitos estudiosos e comentaristas foram rápidos em creditar a fenomenal recuperação dos mercados à adoção dos mercados por Pequim, colocando a China dentro da tendência neoliberal do capitalismo do final do século XX - uma análise que alimenta acusações políticas da intervenção injusta de Pequim na economia e impulsiona políticas comerciais dos EUA de condenação e punição econômica. Enquanto isso, na China, nacionalistas fervorosos e linha-dura conservadora veem a transformação econômica como o triunfo de uma estratégia doméstica - um "modelo chinês" distinto. Em vez de permanecer aberto a ideias internacionais e se engajar em uma política externa cooperativa, a posição nacionalista conservadora denuncia "forças estrangeiras hostis" e defende a hegemonia partidária em ideias e práticas. Enquadrando o debate como uma luta entre "forças ocidentais anti-China" e uma China autossuficiente, os proponentes oferecem argumentos virulentos para projetar poder internacionalmente em uma busca para recapturar a glória da próspera era de Qianlong.
Um novo livro da economista política Isabella Weber, Como a China Escapou da Terapia de Choque: O Debate da Reforma de Mercado, questiona essas duas posições ao traçar as raízes intelectuais das reformas chinesas em precedentes históricos, intercâmbio e experimentação. Segundo ela, os reformadores transformaram a economia centralmente planejada da China em um sistema orientado para o mercado, evitando a prescrição neoliberal de "terapia de choque" que condenou a Rússia e a Europa Oriental à turbulência econômica e à instabilidade política. Em vez disso, mostra Weber, os reformadores enfatizaram uma estratégia de desenvolvimento nacional que valoriza o crescimento econômico acima de tudo, incluindo os ideais políticos anteriores. Essa estratégia continua a orientar as políticas de Pequim hoje em tudo, desde demissões de trabalhadores e vendas de terras camponesas até Made in China 2025 e o desastre do IPO da Ant Financial.
O livro de Weber é sobre o envolvimento do Estado no mercado, mais imediatamente por meio do controle de preços. Ela se concentra nos debates entre economistas chineses na década de 1980 sob o líder do PCC Deng Xiaoping, que afastou a economia da China da liberalização radical de preços e ajudou a construir uma economia política que facilita relações produtivas entre o mercado e o estado. Weber detalha o processo pelo qual as reformas e os líderes chineses lutaram – e finalmente resistiram – à prescrição neoliberal de uma súbita liberação de preços com o objetivo de "chocar" a economia para fora do planejamento. Ela mostra que, em vez de adotar o conselho de reforma do Banco Mundial e dos economistas ocidentais, os reformadores seguiram um caminho de mudança gradual liberalizando lentamente os mercados e a propriedade e relaxando os controles de preços em etapas.
Esse processo se desenrolou ao longo da década de 1980 e foi semelhante a “procurar pedras para atravessar um rio”, como disse o reformador-chave Chen Yun na época. Os reformadores trabalharam para identificar as melhores práticas para o crescimento econômico e seguiram em frente “buscando a verdade dos fatos”, nas palavras de Deng Xiaoping, em vez de seguir a teoria econômica ortodoxa sobre mercantilização. Embora as reformas tenham começado com o simples objetivo de melhorar a economia e as condições de vida dos camponeses chineses, a abordagem pouco a pouco e gradual — em oposição a uma revisão completa de todas as instituições e práticas econômicas, como recomendavam organizações internacionais e economistas neoclássicos como Milton Friedman — resultou em uma transformação dramática da economia chinesa. Em 1978, a China tinha uma economia de comando centralizado com preços controlados, mercados estatais e nenhuma iniciativa privada; em 1993, os mercados estavam abertos, os preços liberalizados, o empreendedorismo explodiu e Deng Xiaoping viajou pelo sul da China, divulgando Shenzhen como uma das zonas de livre comércio mais bem-sucedidas do mundo.
A economia política resultante certamente não é neoliberal, no entanto – pelo menos não em um sentido simples. Como aponta Weber, a orientação econômica não é uma “convergência institucional plena com o neoliberalismo”, mas sim um arranjo misto pelo qual o Estado se engaja ativamente no mercado para cumprir as metas de desenvolvimento. Como as economias em industrialização do século XIX e os estados desenvolvimentistas do Leste Asiático e da América Latina após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, o estado chinês participa do mercado criando condições favoráveis para suas empresas por meio de incentivos ao investimento e práticas de desenvolvimento. A recente intervenção de Pequim no mercado de commodities é uma exibição do legado contínuo desse modelo econômico, em que o estado envolve o mercado por meio da liberação de estoques de commodities acumulados e da redução de preços entre as empresas estatais, em vez de subsumir o mercado e forçar os controles de preços desejados. A economia neoclássica quer nos fazer acreditar que a ação do Estado no mercado é uma aberração e quase sempre prejudicial. Mas há um precedente histórico significativo para as relações estado-mercado – inclusive nos Estados Unidos – e Weber nos lembra que o envolvimento do estado nos mercados tem sido a norma e não a exceção em grande parte da história humana.
O livro abre com um capítulo sobre o Guanzi, um tratado dos Reinos Combatentes (475-221 aC) aconselhando um governante sobre como administrar seu estado em uma era de guerra e transição econômica. A mensagem é gerenciar ativamente as condições de oferta e demanda, controlando os bens essenciais "pesados" ou importantes e liberando os bens "leves" ou sem importância e não essenciais. Este conselho foi posto em prática no mercado de grãos, pelo qual o estado comprava grãos excedentes dos camponeses na época da colheita de outono, quando os preços eram baixos, ou leves, e o dinheiro era pesado, sustentando assim o preço do grão no mercado e protegendo os camponeses de vender muito baixo para os comerciantes. Na primavera, quando os suprimentos diminuíram e os preços dos grãos subiram, o estado liberou grãos e equilibrou o mercado. Institucionalizada nos "celeiros sempre normais", a prática foi utilizada com mais eficácia pelo estado Qing, facilitando a prosperidade do período Qianlong.
Um exemplo mais recente é o dos Estados Unidos durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Desenhando o caráter universal do envolvimento do mercado para fins identificados pelo estado, Weber mostra como os Estados Unidos instituíram controles de preços para equilibrar as necessidades de produção em tempo de guerra com a demanda do consumidor. Em 1941, o recém-criado Escritório de Administração de Preços impôs restrições a 40% dos produtos no atacado e depois estabeleceu um teto para os preços. Ao mesmo tempo, os salários foram congelados e os estoques públicos de grãos e algodão foram colocados no mercado para estabilizar os preços agrícolas. O resultado foi inflação baixa, preços estáveis e produção exponencialmente alta. Essa prática foi tão bem-sucedida que os Estados Unidos instituíram um sistema semelhante de controle de preços durante a Guerra da Coréia e a Guerra do Vietnã. Claro, nada disso era específico para os Estados Unidos. Como disse o economista e político John Kenneth Galbraith, "controles sobre preços e salários eram a regra".
Não está claro se os reformadores chineses no centro do livro de Weber estavam cientes dessas práticas e história, mas serve como pano de fundo. Em 1949, por exemplo, muitas das pessoas que se tornariam atores-chave nas reformas da década de 1980 começaram a lutar contra o problema da inflação descontrolada na nova República Popular da China. Tendo herdado uma economia em frangalhos, onde a população não confiava na moeda e era propensa a comprar e acumular em pânico, os formuladores de políticas do PCCh agiram não para impor o comando político sobre a economia, mas para intervir no mercado para sustentar os preços e restaurar a confiança financeira. Com base nos arquivos da CIA da época, Weber mostra que eles fizeram isso emitindo listas de preços para varejistas estatais de bens essenciais, mas não impondo esses preços a empresas privadas ou outros vendedores. Os comerciantes estatais, então, distribuíam mercadorias a preços de tabela por meio dos varejistas estatais. Uma vez que o público começou a ver uma estabilidade de preços consistente e a ter fé na moeda, o governo gradualmente liberou os preços de volta ao mercado. "Essa prática prefigurava o sistema de preços dual-track da década de 1980", escreve Weber.
A terapia de choque é o oposto dessas abordagens medidas para administrar a economia. Emerging out of Bretton Woods and what would come to be known as the Washington Consensus, the doctrine aimed to move an economy from plan to market very quickly through the immediate implementation of prescribed reforms. The current articulation of the concept in its economic form is usually traced to Jeffrey Sachs in discussion of Poland in 1990—although he used “big bang” and repudiates the term “shock”—and has more recently been popularized by Naomi Klein as the “shock doctrine.”
In theory, the prescription consists of four “package” parts: price liberalization, privatization, trade liberalization, and austerity. In practice, however, only the first and fourth parts are emphasized. As a 1990 International Monetary Fund report on the Russian economy put it, “Nothing will be more important to the achievement of a successful transition to a market economy than the freeing of prices to guide the allocation of resources.” On this view, the market is reduced to a singular idea of free prices. As Weber argues, “the bias toward price liberalization lies in the neoclassical concept of the market as a price mechanism that abstracts from institutional realities.”Because the market relies on free prices, the logic goes, the removal of price controls will enable markets to take their natural form and operate as they should in the facilitation of exchange and creation of equilibriums.
Russia followed this prescription in the early 1990s, and it resulted in disaster. The “shock” in shock therapy lived up to its name and has continued to reverberate throughout the society and economy. Distrustful of planners and bureaucrats, and eager to distance themselves from the Communist Party and its era, newly elected leaders sought a quick transition and integration with the markets of Western Europe. Freeing prices and wages from all controls, the economy quickly ground to a halt and inflation shot through the roof—“If the units were in context the chart would put the inflation line above the building,” Weber said in a recent presentation when showing a slide of the Russian GDP to inflation index. This was only the beginning. Russian share of world GDP nearly halved from 3.7 percent in 1990 to 2 percent in 2017; the average income of 99 percent of the population declined, and mortality rose beyond all prior rates of industrialized countries.
In retrospect, this result is not surprising. Weber notes that shock therapy aimed less at creating markets than conditions out of which they were supposed to emerge automatically: once the market had been “shocked to death,” the invisible hand was expected to intervene and begin to operate on prices and goods. What actually happened was less magical: the jump in prices absorbed all liquidity in the economy, not just the excess, and sucked all savings into the exponentially increasing cost of goods. In theory, this state of affairs would impose short-term austerity and curb excess demand, but because the elite held their wealth in fixed, non-monetary assets, it resulted in a massive distribution of assets from the bottom to the top. “Forcing market relations on society overnight hinged upon imposing greater inequality,” Weber writes.
China nearly followed the advice of the shock therapists, once in 1986 and again in 1988. Both times, leaders were poised to liberalize prices and quickly push China’s state-controlled economy into a market economy. Both times, however, they pulled back at the last moment and instead trod a path of gradual reforms that eased the Chinese economy into the market through a slower process of price reform, privatization, and market openings that were guided by experimentation. As scholars have long emphasized, the goal of China’s reforms was economic growth and stability, not marketization. Contrary to the historical context in Russia, the CCP still held power, and leaders were wary of social and political disruption, especially after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Reformers did not need to distance themselves from the past politically and move closer to the West economically; rather, they needed to create the conditions for China to prosper and the nation as a whole to grow economically. Como disse Deng Xiaoping, a frase mais famosa: "Não importa se o gato é preto ou branco, desde que pegue ratos".
In theory, the prescription consists of four “package” parts: price liberalization, privatization, trade liberalization, and austerity. In practice, however, only the first and fourth parts are emphasized. As a 1990 International Monetary Fund report on the Russian economy put it, “Nothing will be more important to the achievement of a successful transition to a market economy than the freeing of prices to guide the allocation of resources.” On this view, the market is reduced to a singular idea of free prices. As Weber argues, “the bias toward price liberalization lies in the neoclassical concept of the market as a price mechanism that abstracts from institutional realities.”Because the market relies on free prices, the logic goes, the removal of price controls will enable markets to take their natural form and operate as they should in the facilitation of exchange and creation of equilibriums.
Russia followed this prescription in the early 1990s, and it resulted in disaster. The “shock” in shock therapy lived up to its name and has continued to reverberate throughout the society and economy. Distrustful of planners and bureaucrats, and eager to distance themselves from the Communist Party and its era, newly elected leaders sought a quick transition and integration with the markets of Western Europe. Freeing prices and wages from all controls, the economy quickly ground to a halt and inflation shot through the roof—“If the units were in context the chart would put the inflation line above the building,” Weber said in a recent presentation when showing a slide of the Russian GDP to inflation index. This was only the beginning. Russian share of world GDP nearly halved from 3.7 percent in 1990 to 2 percent in 2017; the average income of 99 percent of the population declined, and mortality rose beyond all prior rates of industrialized countries.
In retrospect, this result is not surprising. Weber notes that shock therapy aimed less at creating markets than conditions out of which they were supposed to emerge automatically: once the market had been “shocked to death,” the invisible hand was expected to intervene and begin to operate on prices and goods. What actually happened was less magical: the jump in prices absorbed all liquidity in the economy, not just the excess, and sucked all savings into the exponentially increasing cost of goods. In theory, this state of affairs would impose short-term austerity and curb excess demand, but because the elite held their wealth in fixed, non-monetary assets, it resulted in a massive distribution of assets from the bottom to the top. “Forcing market relations on society overnight hinged upon imposing greater inequality,” Weber writes.
China nearly followed the advice of the shock therapists, once in 1986 and again in 1988. Both times, leaders were poised to liberalize prices and quickly push China’s state-controlled economy into a market economy. Both times, however, they pulled back at the last moment and instead trod a path of gradual reforms that eased the Chinese economy into the market through a slower process of price reform, privatization, and market openings that were guided by experimentation. As scholars have long emphasized, the goal of China’s reforms was economic growth and stability, not marketization. Contrary to the historical context in Russia, the CCP still held power, and leaders were wary of social and political disruption, especially after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Reformers did not need to distance themselves from the past politically and move closer to the West economically; rather, they needed to create the conditions for China to prosper and the nation as a whole to grow economically. Como disse Deng Xiaoping, a frase mais famosa: "Não importa se o gato é preto ou branco, desde que pegue ratos".
Grande parte dos acontecimentos e trajetória das reformas já conhecemos graças a muitos estudos excelentes do processo. By all accounts, the reform period was initiated in December 1978 at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (often referred to simply as the third plenum). Recognizing the shortcomings of the command economy to realize the goals of modernizing the country, and overtly concerned with widespread poverty in the countryside, leaders decided to undertake a series of initial steps on economic reform. This included loosening prices and allowing limited markets, as well as granting greater autonomy to firms over their operations, investments, and production.
The efforts began with agriculture. Under the command economy, planners had set prices low and limited investments in order to focus resources in the development of industry. The imbalance meant that peasants paid for the rapid industrialization of China’s economy (which saw annual output growth of 9.7 percent from 1957 to 1978) but suffered deprivation and falling living standards. Moreover, the prices of manufactured goods and agricultural inputs remained high, limiting agricultural growth. The third plenum sought to reverse these trends. Calling agriculture “seriously damaged” and “gasping for breath,” the meeting’s resolution argued that the first priority of development was to increase agricultural production, which required funneling more resources to agriculture. Leaders thus loosened production quotas on the peasant communes and raised prices on agricultural goods. Furthermore, and perhaps most consequentially in the long term, they allowed private production in the countryside for exchange on non-state markets. This was the beginning of what would be known as the “household responsibility system,” where peasants were turned into farmers who would sink or swim on their own.
Price reform was key to making these reforms work, for only the market would be able to hold firms and producers accountable, improve efficiency, and enable them to incur profits and losses. Under the command economy, producers had been responsible for production quotas but received all inputs from the state, so that no matter how much they produced, they would receive the same returns; they thus had little incentive to increase production or efficiency. Overall, firms and communes operated more like bureaucratic departments rather than enterprises. By lifting price controls and allowing markets to determine profits and losses, and making managers responsible for their costs, firms would either increase their productivity and make profit or fail.
Through exchanges with Eastern European economists, however, Chinese reformers opted not to follow the shock prescription and quickly liberalize prices, but rather to institute a dual-track pricing system. The dual-track framework instructed firms to meet production quotas for the state, as before, but quotas were lower and all production over quota could be sold on the market at market prices. Dual-track began in agriculture and a select number of industries in 1979; it was then expanded and became national policy in 1984.
Neoclassical followers found much to fault in dual-track pricing. Not only did they decry it for delaying the goal of freeing prices and fully opening markets, but they also claimed that it created imbalances and friction in the economy. Most immediately, a two-tier price system enabled illicit dealings, where entrepreneurial individuals could buy cheap and sell dear. In this case, one could purchase a good at the low, state-set price and then turn around and sell it at the higher market price, pocketing the difference as profit. To take an example from the mid-1980s, a peasant might purchase a truck for the plan price of Rmb20,000, as he was entitled to do according to his allotted inputs, then sell it at the market price of Rmb35,000, for a profit fifteen times the average annual urban wage. This scheme spread beyond just the individual peasant, of course, penetrating the factories as declining managerial oversight lead to widespread corruption and graft. Neoclassical economists saw frictions in the two-tiered pricing system as hindering growth and dooming the reforms. Far better, they claimed, to quickly liberalize prices.
Weber has dug up some illuminating sources to illustrate how these arguments were thwarted. Instrumental in countering the neoclassical leading economists, or “package reformers,” were a group of young economists close to key leaders she calls “dual-track reformers.” (Maurice Meisner refers to these two groups as marketeers and adjusters, respectively; others speak of reformers and conservatives.) These economists were born between 1940 and 1960, and as young urban intellectuals most were caught in the Cultural Revolution and sent down to the countryside to be “re-educated” by the peasants, where they experienced what they viewed as the poverty and backwardness of the Chinese countryside, which left deep impressions. With the rehabilitations after the death of Mao in 1976, these young economists returned to Beijing and formed the Rural Developmental Group (RDG) on economic conditions and development. Weber finds that one of the key projects of this group was to investigate the changing conditions of the countryside and develop an economics in accordance with the ongoing agriculture price and markets experiments.
An important intervention from this group involved decisions on dual-track pricing. Heeding arguments that dual-track pricing not only created economic frictions but also amounted to a tax on peasants by forcing them to sell a portion of their produce to the state below market prices, RDG researchers designed an experiment in Hebei to test the system. Headed by Song Guoqing, the son of a peasant and former production brigade leader in a rural commune who went on to study microeconomics at Peking University, the researchers were initially sympathetic to the neoclassical argument and proposed a monetary tax in place of quotas. The design and process of the experiments are a little unclear from Weber’s telling, but it appears that when grain supply boomed and prices fell, peasants rushed to sell at the higher state prices. The group thus concluded that rather than acting like a tax upon peasants, dual-track pricing actually protected peasants from price fluctuations and market uncertainties.
That was in 1984, the same year that the dual-track pricing system was nationalized and the economy was redefined as a “planned commodity economy.” Production was strong and growth was rapid; market reforms continued apace, so that most goods were traded as commodities on the open market but important production materials—like coal, oil, steel, and chemicals—were regulated. That year Deng Xiaoping toured the developmental zones in Guangdong and made his famous pronouncement of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Industrial restructuring was expanded, giving state firms greater autonomy in investment and production decisions, and in 1986 contracts replaced quotas and targets. In the countryside, the communes were dismantled and local enterprises and manufacturing excelled beyond imagination. By 1987 annual output growth was well within double digits.
As growth soared and prices liberalized, however, inflation mounted. Prices had begun to rise in 1985 to a height of 8.8 percent on the consumer price index (CPI) before falling thanks to retrenchment policies. But as reforms picked up again with the contract responsibility system—according to which firms keep all profits and only pay a tax—inflation rose again with a 9.1 percent CPI increase. Furthermore, bank credit had grown annually at a rate of 20 to 25 percent since 1986, far outpacing growth. Concerned about the impact on reforms, leaders sent a delegation to Brazil in 1988 to study the Latin America development trajectory, where they learned, “In every country, in the period of high-speed development, there will be inflation,” according to their report to Zhao Ziyang. This finding, along with another visit by Friedman, led reformers and especially Deng Xiaoping to push forward and prepare to implement shock therapy despite rising prices.
On August 19, 1988, state media announced a plan for price and wage reforms. The simple report that shock therapy would begin sparked fears of financial upheaval, rising costs, and economic disruption among the public. Panic buying, bank runs, and worker protests spread, and inflation rose dramatically over the course of mere months, shooting from 12 percent in July to 23 percent in August and peaking around 28 percent in April 1989. For the first time in China’s reform period the rise in the CPI had outpaced GDP growth, leading Deng to call a halt the reforms, rolling back the program, recentralizing power, and reintroducing price controls. It took a year to bring inflation under control, but by that time discontent had mounted and students and workers were out on the streets calling for political reforms.
Weber notes that though her sources and interviewees were not necessarily in agreement over the causes of the inflationary crisis of 1988, "they agreed that the disastrous failure of the push of price reform in 1988 was critical for the political crisis that culminated on June 4, 1989." Em suma, a quase implementação da terapia de choque levou a um tipo diferente de choque: o Exército Popular de Libertação abatendo trabalhadores e estudantes na Praça da Paz Celestial.
The efforts began with agriculture. Under the command economy, planners had set prices low and limited investments in order to focus resources in the development of industry. The imbalance meant that peasants paid for the rapid industrialization of China’s economy (which saw annual output growth of 9.7 percent from 1957 to 1978) but suffered deprivation and falling living standards. Moreover, the prices of manufactured goods and agricultural inputs remained high, limiting agricultural growth. The third plenum sought to reverse these trends. Calling agriculture “seriously damaged” and “gasping for breath,” the meeting’s resolution argued that the first priority of development was to increase agricultural production, which required funneling more resources to agriculture. Leaders thus loosened production quotas on the peasant communes and raised prices on agricultural goods. Furthermore, and perhaps most consequentially in the long term, they allowed private production in the countryside for exchange on non-state markets. This was the beginning of what would be known as the “household responsibility system,” where peasants were turned into farmers who would sink or swim on their own.
Price reform was key to making these reforms work, for only the market would be able to hold firms and producers accountable, improve efficiency, and enable them to incur profits and losses. Under the command economy, producers had been responsible for production quotas but received all inputs from the state, so that no matter how much they produced, they would receive the same returns; they thus had little incentive to increase production or efficiency. Overall, firms and communes operated more like bureaucratic departments rather than enterprises. By lifting price controls and allowing markets to determine profits and losses, and making managers responsible for their costs, firms would either increase their productivity and make profit or fail.
Through exchanges with Eastern European economists, however, Chinese reformers opted not to follow the shock prescription and quickly liberalize prices, but rather to institute a dual-track pricing system. The dual-track framework instructed firms to meet production quotas for the state, as before, but quotas were lower and all production over quota could be sold on the market at market prices. Dual-track began in agriculture and a select number of industries in 1979; it was then expanded and became national policy in 1984.
Neoclassical followers found much to fault in dual-track pricing. Not only did they decry it for delaying the goal of freeing prices and fully opening markets, but they also claimed that it created imbalances and friction in the economy. Most immediately, a two-tier price system enabled illicit dealings, where entrepreneurial individuals could buy cheap and sell dear. In this case, one could purchase a good at the low, state-set price and then turn around and sell it at the higher market price, pocketing the difference as profit. To take an example from the mid-1980s, a peasant might purchase a truck for the plan price of Rmb20,000, as he was entitled to do according to his allotted inputs, then sell it at the market price of Rmb35,000, for a profit fifteen times the average annual urban wage. This scheme spread beyond just the individual peasant, of course, penetrating the factories as declining managerial oversight lead to widespread corruption and graft. Neoclassical economists saw frictions in the two-tiered pricing system as hindering growth and dooming the reforms. Far better, they claimed, to quickly liberalize prices.
Weber has dug up some illuminating sources to illustrate how these arguments were thwarted. Instrumental in countering the neoclassical leading economists, or “package reformers,” were a group of young economists close to key leaders she calls “dual-track reformers.” (Maurice Meisner refers to these two groups as marketeers and adjusters, respectively; others speak of reformers and conservatives.) These economists were born between 1940 and 1960, and as young urban intellectuals most were caught in the Cultural Revolution and sent down to the countryside to be “re-educated” by the peasants, where they experienced what they viewed as the poverty and backwardness of the Chinese countryside, which left deep impressions. With the rehabilitations after the death of Mao in 1976, these young economists returned to Beijing and formed the Rural Developmental Group (RDG) on economic conditions and development. Weber finds that one of the key projects of this group was to investigate the changing conditions of the countryside and develop an economics in accordance with the ongoing agriculture price and markets experiments.
An important intervention from this group involved decisions on dual-track pricing. Heeding arguments that dual-track pricing not only created economic frictions but also amounted to a tax on peasants by forcing them to sell a portion of their produce to the state below market prices, RDG researchers designed an experiment in Hebei to test the system. Headed by Song Guoqing, the son of a peasant and former production brigade leader in a rural commune who went on to study microeconomics at Peking University, the researchers were initially sympathetic to the neoclassical argument and proposed a monetary tax in place of quotas. The design and process of the experiments are a little unclear from Weber’s telling, but it appears that when grain supply boomed and prices fell, peasants rushed to sell at the higher state prices. The group thus concluded that rather than acting like a tax upon peasants, dual-track pricing actually protected peasants from price fluctuations and market uncertainties.
That was in 1984, the same year that the dual-track pricing system was nationalized and the economy was redefined as a “planned commodity economy.” Production was strong and growth was rapid; market reforms continued apace, so that most goods were traded as commodities on the open market but important production materials—like coal, oil, steel, and chemicals—were regulated. That year Deng Xiaoping toured the developmental zones in Guangdong and made his famous pronouncement of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Industrial restructuring was expanded, giving state firms greater autonomy in investment and production decisions, and in 1986 contracts replaced quotas and targets. In the countryside, the communes were dismantled and local enterprises and manufacturing excelled beyond imagination. By 1987 annual output growth was well within double digits.
As growth soared and prices liberalized, however, inflation mounted. Prices had begun to rise in 1985 to a height of 8.8 percent on the consumer price index (CPI) before falling thanks to retrenchment policies. But as reforms picked up again with the contract responsibility system—according to which firms keep all profits and only pay a tax—inflation rose again with a 9.1 percent CPI increase. Furthermore, bank credit had grown annually at a rate of 20 to 25 percent since 1986, far outpacing growth. Concerned about the impact on reforms, leaders sent a delegation to Brazil in 1988 to study the Latin America development trajectory, where they learned, “In every country, in the period of high-speed development, there will be inflation,” according to their report to Zhao Ziyang. This finding, along with another visit by Friedman, led reformers and especially Deng Xiaoping to push forward and prepare to implement shock therapy despite rising prices.
On August 19, 1988, state media announced a plan for price and wage reforms. The simple report that shock therapy would begin sparked fears of financial upheaval, rising costs, and economic disruption among the public. Panic buying, bank runs, and worker protests spread, and inflation rose dramatically over the course of mere months, shooting from 12 percent in July to 23 percent in August and peaking around 28 percent in April 1989. For the first time in China’s reform period the rise in the CPI had outpaced GDP growth, leading Deng to call a halt the reforms, rolling back the program, recentralizing power, and reintroducing price controls. It took a year to bring inflation under control, but by that time discontent had mounted and students and workers were out on the streets calling for political reforms.
Weber notes that though her sources and interviewees were not necessarily in agreement over the causes of the inflationary crisis of 1988, "they agreed that the disastrous failure of the push of price reform in 1988 was critical for the political crisis that culminated on June 4, 1989." Em suma, a quase implementação da terapia de choque levou a um tipo diferente de choque: o Exército Popular de Libertação abatendo trabalhadores e estudantes na Praça da Paz Celestial.
Nos relatos da transição econômica da China, é difícil não se impressionar com o compromisso impiedoso dos atores com o crescimento econômico. Across the political hierarchy and among the various economic circles, from Deng Xiaoping to Song Guoqing, all spoke about development not only as their foremost concern but also as the ultimate goal of the reform program. Package reformers and dual-track gradualists—the two antagonistic camps in Weber’s study—may have disputed implementation and institutions, but both agreed on the bottom line of constructing conditions for rapid economic growth. All sides, Weber writes, “shared one common goal above all others: economic progress.” They further agreed, despite their differences, that markets and various degrees of marketization were necessary in pursuit of this end. Deng Xiaoping best articulated the collective sentiment in a 1978 speech framing the national goals: “To rid our country of poverty and backwardness . . . to catch up with [or] surpass the advanced countries.”
It is clear enough why China’s leaders and reformers were so concerned about the economy, for the collapse of the command economy and persistent rural poverty loomed large. But why settle on this particular form of the market and its embrace of global capitalism? Weber’s study greatly illuminates the stakes of debates about how best to achieve growth, but it does not approach this larger question. Her protagonists constantly speak about the problem of the economy, the poverty of the peasants, or the need for growth and development, but they never manage to link these limited frames to larger visions of emancipation. All their actions and ideas are guided by a single-minded pursuit of the economy and a search for the best economic practices to modernize the nation. In the late 1980s, Weber notes, Deng Xiaoping could be deterred neither by social protests nor by inflation as he pushed forward with reforms to achieve even higher rates of output and growth.
Lost to the economic ambitions of the leadership were the larger ideals of the revolutionary project. The relentless focus on development subordinated earlier revolutionary visions pointing not to the smallness of wealth but to the “greatness” of individual freedom and the capacity to collectively determine the future of society. In the wake of the Qing unraveling through internal rebellions and foreign imperialism, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutionaries and reformers pursued national projects to realize not the economic imperatives of global capitalism but the aspirations of ordinary people to lead larger lives. “If we wish the nation to be secure, rich, and honored,” wrote Liang Qichao in the late Qing, “we must first renew the people.” His contemporary He-Yin Zhen echoed this view in her discussion of women’s liberation, noting that economic freedom is not separate but complimentary to the primacy of shared liberty and collective freedom. Sun Yat-Sen had roused the nation to revolution in 1911 on the principles of democracy, nationalism, and peasant livelihood, not economic growth. On his deathbed he emphasized his devotion to the national revolution aimed at “winning freedom and equality for China.”
Further sacrificed on the altar of economic growth were the aspirations of Chinese workers and peasants. In 1980 workers were denied control of the factories, as CCP leaders—and specifically Deng Xiaoping—favored turning over command to management. As managers obtained greater autonomy, workers were further reduced to wage earners, to be hired and fired at will; they eventually revolted in the late 1980s and 1990s over issues of economic uncertainty and workplace belittlement. Similarly, peasants were decollectivized in 1982, often against their will, creating vast inequalities as they were atomized and left to struggle on the cyclical waves of the market and suffer deprivations by local officials. Rather than empowering people to shape the economy through alternative institutions such as peasant-run cooperatives, worker-controlled factories, and independent labor unions and community organizations, leaders subordinated workers and peasants to the totalizing goal of growth. Although GDP rose and wages increased, inequality has soared, working conditions have deteriorated, millions have been thrown out of work or lost their land, and industrial pollution and environmental degradation have destroyed communities and left countless dead. China’s leaders may have escaped shock therapy, but in the course of doing so they have exposed the nation to the brutal logic of capitalism.
China’s transition from plan to market aligns with the onset of neoliberalism the world over, articulated most forcefully in the political projects of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. With this book Weber has given a convincing narrative of how China avoided the neoliberal fate of shock therapy that felled Russia and other economies. Yet, as Weber has argued elsewhere, China still integrated very readily into the global capitalist system and has become a fundamental part of the international economy today. A form of marketization that prioritized state guidance of the market and resisted privatization, she writes, “reintegrated China into neoliberal globalization without pursuing a wholesale adaptation of neoliberal economic policies.”
Esta é a outra história, sempre presente, mas ainda escondida em Como a China Escapou da Terapia de Choque, conectando a traição de visões revolucionárias mundiais da humanidade à adoção de mercados e desenvolvimento acima de tudo. Visto sob esta luz, o projeto de reforma da China não é simplesmente a rejeição de um aspecto-chave do neoliberalismo, mas também uma concessão a ele como um estágio do capitalismo do final do século XX, parte de uma mudança global do estatismo e da solidariedade social para o fundamentalismo de mercado. Weber escreveu um livro esclarecedor sobre a resistência da China ao pensamento econômico neoliberal. Ao mesmo tempo, a disposição de seus protagonistas de sacrificar a igualdade pelo crescimento -sua prontidão, em todos os lados do debate, de tomar alguma forma de capitalismo mais ou menos como certa- nos lembra que precisamos de um relato não apenas de como a China escapou terapia de choque, mas por que seus líderes, reformadores e até mesmo a população abandonaram os ideais de emancipação humana em troca de fluxos de capital liberalizados, zonas de livre comércio e flexibilidade do mercado de trabalho. Tal interpretação não apenas esvaziaria a falácia de um "modelo chinês" sui generis, mas também, como Adam Przeworski escreveu recentemente nestas páginas sobre uma mudança semelhante na esquerda europeia, ajudaria a ressuscitar uma linguagem de revolução para guiar a criação e a imaginação coletivas. de nossos mundos sociais.
It is clear enough why China’s leaders and reformers were so concerned about the economy, for the collapse of the command economy and persistent rural poverty loomed large. But why settle on this particular form of the market and its embrace of global capitalism? Weber’s study greatly illuminates the stakes of debates about how best to achieve growth, but it does not approach this larger question. Her protagonists constantly speak about the problem of the economy, the poverty of the peasants, or the need for growth and development, but they never manage to link these limited frames to larger visions of emancipation. All their actions and ideas are guided by a single-minded pursuit of the economy and a search for the best economic practices to modernize the nation. In the late 1980s, Weber notes, Deng Xiaoping could be deterred neither by social protests nor by inflation as he pushed forward with reforms to achieve even higher rates of output and growth.
Lost to the economic ambitions of the leadership were the larger ideals of the revolutionary project. The relentless focus on development subordinated earlier revolutionary visions pointing not to the smallness of wealth but to the “greatness” of individual freedom and the capacity to collectively determine the future of society. In the wake of the Qing unraveling through internal rebellions and foreign imperialism, late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century revolutionaries and reformers pursued national projects to realize not the economic imperatives of global capitalism but the aspirations of ordinary people to lead larger lives. “If we wish the nation to be secure, rich, and honored,” wrote Liang Qichao in the late Qing, “we must first renew the people.” His contemporary He-Yin Zhen echoed this view in her discussion of women’s liberation, noting that economic freedom is not separate but complimentary to the primacy of shared liberty and collective freedom. Sun Yat-Sen had roused the nation to revolution in 1911 on the principles of democracy, nationalism, and peasant livelihood, not economic growth. On his deathbed he emphasized his devotion to the national revolution aimed at “winning freedom and equality for China.”
Further sacrificed on the altar of economic growth were the aspirations of Chinese workers and peasants. In 1980 workers were denied control of the factories, as CCP leaders—and specifically Deng Xiaoping—favored turning over command to management. As managers obtained greater autonomy, workers were further reduced to wage earners, to be hired and fired at will; they eventually revolted in the late 1980s and 1990s over issues of economic uncertainty and workplace belittlement. Similarly, peasants were decollectivized in 1982, often against their will, creating vast inequalities as they were atomized and left to struggle on the cyclical waves of the market and suffer deprivations by local officials. Rather than empowering people to shape the economy through alternative institutions such as peasant-run cooperatives, worker-controlled factories, and independent labor unions and community organizations, leaders subordinated workers and peasants to the totalizing goal of growth. Although GDP rose and wages increased, inequality has soared, working conditions have deteriorated, millions have been thrown out of work or lost their land, and industrial pollution and environmental degradation have destroyed communities and left countless dead. China’s leaders may have escaped shock therapy, but in the course of doing so they have exposed the nation to the brutal logic of capitalism.
China’s transition from plan to market aligns with the onset of neoliberalism the world over, articulated most forcefully in the political projects of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. With this book Weber has given a convincing narrative of how China avoided the neoliberal fate of shock therapy that felled Russia and other economies. Yet, as Weber has argued elsewhere, China still integrated very readily into the global capitalist system and has become a fundamental part of the international economy today. A form of marketization that prioritized state guidance of the market and resisted privatization, she writes, “reintegrated China into neoliberal globalization without pursuing a wholesale adaptation of neoliberal economic policies.”
Esta é a outra história, sempre presente, mas ainda escondida em Como a China Escapou da Terapia de Choque, conectando a traição de visões revolucionárias mundiais da humanidade à adoção de mercados e desenvolvimento acima de tudo. Visto sob esta luz, o projeto de reforma da China não é simplesmente a rejeição de um aspecto-chave do neoliberalismo, mas também uma concessão a ele como um estágio do capitalismo do final do século XX, parte de uma mudança global do estatismo e da solidariedade social para o fundamentalismo de mercado. Weber escreveu um livro esclarecedor sobre a resistência da China ao pensamento econômico neoliberal. Ao mesmo tempo, a disposição de seus protagonistas de sacrificar a igualdade pelo crescimento -sua prontidão, em todos os lados do debate, de tomar alguma forma de capitalismo mais ou menos como certa- nos lembra que precisamos de um relato não apenas de como a China escapou terapia de choque, mas por que seus líderes, reformadores e até mesmo a população abandonaram os ideais de emancipação humana em troca de fluxos de capital liberalizados, zonas de livre comércio e flexibilidade do mercado de trabalho. Tal interpretação não apenas esvaziaria a falácia de um "modelo chinês" sui generis, mas também, como Adam Przeworski escreveu recentemente nestas páginas sobre uma mudança semelhante na esquerda europeia, ajudaria a ressuscitar uma linguagem de revolução para guiar a criação e a imaginação coletivas. de nossos mundos sociais.
Macabe Keliher é professor assistente de história na Southern Methodist University. Sua pesquisa se concentra na construção do Estado e na economia política na China no início da era moderna e moderna. Ele é o autor de The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China (University of California Press, 2019) e está trabalhando em três partes da história do capitalismo na China, explorando desenvolvimentos de 1400 até o presente.
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