China's Reforms and Changing Ways of Thinking
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Authors
Zhao, Jinglun
Issue Date
1985-03-13
Type
Other
Language
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Abstract
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE|Born in Suzhou, China, in 1923, Mr. Zhao was a student and teacher of economics in China before doing graduate work at Vanderbilt and Harvard between 1948 and 1950. Between 1951 and 1980 he was a journalist in China, with stints on People's China, Bejing Review, and as editor on Reference for Editors and Translators. Since then he has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Research Associate at the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, and a Fellow of the National Humanities Center in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle. He has also lectured at Harvard, the Asia Society, US Foreign Service Institute, and at the Rockefeller Foundation.
SUMMARY| China is making structural changes to its policy-making centers, increasing transparency, and shifing the balance of roles of party and state. It also has rethought some of its ideology with implications in China's foreign policy. The government has moved to the market about half of the prices it used to regulate; still holds energy, some raw materials, and transportation; subsidies on food and other essentials phasing out. Ideology moving from class struggle to modernization. Local governments and state enterprises are now autonomous and party is moving away from government line functions; this means the tradition of virtuous leader that gave the party head too much authority is falling away and rule of law is rising with the institutionalizing of authority. But ultimate authority resides in the military, which is getting much new attention; leaders know to keep it happy.
SUMMARY| China is making structural changes to its policy-making centers, increasing transparency, and shifing the balance of roles of party and state. It also has rethought some of its ideology with implications in China's foreign policy. The government has moved to the market about half of the prices it used to regulate; still holds energy, some raw materials, and transportation; subsidies on food and other essentials phasing out. Ideology moving from class struggle to modernization. Local governments and state enterprises are now autonomous and party is moving away from government line functions; this means the tradition of virtuous leader that gave the party head too much authority is falling away and rule of law is rising with the institutionalizing of authority. But ultimate authority resides in the military, which is getting much new attention; leaders know to keep it happy.