The Problems Reflected by Deng’s Policy

Xiao Sheng

Chris Blankenship

EG 102

25 September, 2013

The Problems Reflected by Deng’s Policy

Deng xiaoping was a politician and reformist leader of China. He led China towards a market economy after Mao’s death. He enforced a policy called : “reform and opening up policy” in 1978. His comment about the policy is “When some people and some regions get rich first, others will be brought along and through this process, common prosperity of the entire population will be gradually achieved.”

Ironically, The rich get richer and the poor get poorer in China today. Moreover, the entire society is troubled by Business-Government Collusion, enormous waste of resources, human rights and a serious of issues. There is an common joke online “When some people and regions get rich first, others will be killed, common prosperity of the entire population will be gradually achieved ”.

No one understood why China needed to reform its economy better than Deng himself. In 1992, as in 1978, He knew that only market-oriented reforms could save the Communist Party of China. Although Deng was sure about the political objective of his reforms, he never explicitly endorsed a capitalist market economy as the end goal. Here lies the fundamental flaw of China’s reform project: as long as pro-market reforms are used as a means to preserve the political monopoly of the Communist Party of China, such reforms are doomed to fail(Minxin Pei). Even so, Deng is still regarded as the hero who saved China’s economic, due to CPC suppresses the freedom of the press . In fact, China’s recent years’ achievements in the economic are largely based on the property bubble. The government has built so many “ghost cities”- no one live in there. “Unlike our market driven economy, in China it's the government that has spent some $2 trillion to get these cities built - as a way of keeping the economy growing. The assumption is ‘if you build it, they'll come.’ But no one's coming.” Said by the Lesley Stahl, the famous journalist of CBS.  

Nevertheless, Deng’s policy leads China directly to the crony capitalism. Crony capitalism is just a phony capitalism. It is an economy that depends on intimate relationships between government officials and business people. The Chinese economy is not merely inefficient; it has also fallen victim to crony capitalism with Chinese characteristics- which was created by Deng xiaoping (Minxi Pei).

China’s GDP grows remarkably in recent years. Unfortunately, public companies do not make much contributions to the economic development scale, but large family enterprises do. Most of these large enterprises are operated by interest groups, such as “princelings”. They are the children or relatives of the senior leaders of Chinese Communist Party, resulting in corruption and looted in natural and economic resources. They control the economic arteries of the nation,the most important enterprises, the most critical industries, and even the military. They using their discretionary, unaccountable authority over allocating resources or bending regulations to favor those who bribe or otherwise enrich them and their families (Jeff Kingston). It is extremely unfair for the public. They makes it impossible for common people to succeed by fair competition.

On August, typhoon “Muifa” hit Dalian city, breached a chemical plant’s embankment and caused a breach on the storage tanks. The chemical plant was located in the suburb but had already threatened to the downtown. The visual artifact showed us a demonstration against pollution in Dalian, China. The city hall was surround by about twelve thousand of raging protesters. The protesters demanded the government to relocate the chemical plant that made poison gas. The armed police were sent to suppress. As a result, the mayor promised to shut down the chemical plant. A few months past, the chemical plant resume production. Shamelessly, the city officials refused to confirm the plant was active. This chemical plant is operated by a “princeling”. In China, the prerogative is above the law.