The Chinese Reassessment Of Socialism, 1976-1992

A momentous debate has been unfolding in China over the last fifteen yearsonly intermittently in public view concerning the merits of socialism as aphilosophy o... » 

A momentous debate has been unfolding in China over the last fifteen yearsonly intermittently in public view concerning the merits of socialism as aphilosophy of social justice and as a program for national development. Just asDeng Xiaopings better advertised experiment with market based reforms haschallenged MarxistLeninist dogma on economic policy the years since the deathof Mao Zedong have seen a profound reexamination of a more basic question towhat extent are the root problems of the system due to Chinese socialism andMarxism generally? Here Yan Sun gathers a remarkable group of primarymaterials drawn from an unusual range of sources to present the mostsystematic and comprehensive study of postMao reappraisal of Chinas socialisttheory and practice.Rejecting an assumption often made in the West that Chinese socialist thoughthas little bearing on politics and policymaking Sun takes the arguments of thepostMao era seriously on their own terms. She identifies the major factions inthe debate reveals the interplay among official and unofficial forces andcharts the development of the debate from an initially parochial concern withproblems raised by Chinese practice to a grand critique of the theory ofsocialism itself. She concludes with an enlightening comparison of thereassessments undertaken by Deng Xiaoping with those of Gorbachev linking themto the divergent outcomes of reform and revolution in their respectivecountries. «