ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Debate on China’s modernization of 1933
Author: Borokh Olga
In July 1933 Shanghai-based Shenbao yuekan (Shenbao monthly) published the special issue on the perspectives of economic modernization of China. Questions from Shenbao yuekan encouraged scholars to choose between “individualist” (capitalist) and socialist paths of China’s modernization. Accompanying questions asked about the difficulties in and obstacles to modernization in China, and whether this modernization should be spurred by foreign investment or by domestic capital. This debate was greatly impacted by international developments of that time, most of all by rapid industrialization in the USSR, growth of Japanese military threat and deepening economic crisis in the West. This controversy was driven by disappointment with liberal market economy and growing hopes for the state-led model of modernization. Tang Qingzeng was the only supporter of “individualism” among 26 respondents of Shenbao yuekan. The overwhelming majority has rejected the path of free market economy, many scholars expressed sympathy for socialism and planned economy and supported state regulation as main tool of China’s modernization. The debate of 1933 contributed to the searches for the model of China’s modernization by excluding the problem of Sino-Western cultural comparisons that dominated the intellectual sphere in the 1920s. Participants of the discussion have focused their attention on social and economic issues, they compared planned economy of the Soviet type, controlled economy of German or Italian type, and free market economy. This shift of approach helped to create theoretical preconditions for the debates of 1934–1935 about controlled economy in China. Discussion of 1933 had strengthened the conviction of Chinese scholars that China’s modernization should take into consideration national specifics and existing institutions. Some of their ideas could be properly assessed in the context of reforms in contemporary China. For example, Gu Chunfan envisaged parallel existence of capitalist and socialist economies in different regions of China. This model was implemented in the late 1990s after the re-integration of Hong Kong and Macao. Tang Qingzeng underlined that backward nations, including China, should concentrate on producing wealth instead of its redistribution, these nations should rely on private initiative of profit-seeking individuals to speed up economic development. He also supported gradual path of China’s modernization. These ideas have evident parallels in gradualist market reforms policy in the PRC. This is also applicable to Zhu Qinglai’s suggestions to create mixed economy with a space for development of state-owned and private enterprises.
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