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The article presents authors' comments on two research papers on economic development of China by economists Ta-Chung Liu, Kung-Chia Yeh and Alexander Eckstein. In his paper Eckstein has argued that the Chinese followed in Soviet footsteps of concentrating on capital-intensive industrial projects during their First Five Year Plan. During the Second Five Year Plan, however, they opened up a second front of labor-intensive investments in both industry and agriculture, thereby embracing technological dualism. The article discusses in brief Eckstein's underestimation of the Soviet rate of investment, the extent of "technological dualism" in underdeveloped areas and the reason for disparities between China and the Soviet Union in labor productivity growth rates. Moreover, the article asserts that paper of professors Liu and Yeh is a major contribution to the literature on Communist China. It is a study, which is a short-run contribution sheds light on specific economic developments in China from 1949 to present, and in a long-run contribution pointedly reminds that there is nothing so basic or central to economics as its' principles.

This paper discusses the stability of prices and the condition of economic development in Mainland China from 1951 to 1963. Information is provided on the extent of inflation since 1951 and its significance to the economy of the country. The government has two basic approach form maintaining a balance between aggregate supply and demand on the consumers' good market. The urban wage bill and state and co-operative purchases of farm products are two principal sources of purchasing power over which the authorities exercise control. Consumer taxes are the most important measure for closing the inflationary gap.

For the past fifteen years, comparisons of the economic organization and development of India and Communist China have had a strong fascination for analysts in many parts of the world. The similarities of the economic structures of and problems faced by the two most populous nations on earth and the sharp contrast offered by their economic doctrines have been grist for numerous articles in many languages. The functions of this paper are to: briefly review the years 1950-57 so as to take into account recent scholarship by others; evaluate selected major developments since 1957; and offer some conclusions on the subject of Indian vis-a-vis Mainland Chinese economic progress since 1950. The performance of China's economy and particularly her industrial growth rate vis-a-vis that of India since 1950 has been grossly exaggerated. This is as true of 1957 and earlier years as it is of "The Great Leap Forward" and the subsequent period of distress. The extent of the exaggeration over the last fourteen years and the extent of whatever differences in performance may actually exist are impossible to determine, at present, given the statistical impasse which prevails. In both cases, the statistical association between the amount and kind of foreign aid received on one hand and the industrial progress registered on the other was self-evidently very high.

The article focuses on economic development of China. During 1952-57, the average annual rate of growth of net domestic product was 6 per cent per year in constant 1932 prices. Regulation and control of economic activities were progressively and drastically tightened during the period 1952-57. The severity of the control measures introduced during those years, however, was mild indeed when compared with the developments in 1958. Communes were introduced in 1958. Within a few months, the entire rural population was organized into 26,000 communes, most of which were almost indistinguishable from army camps. In addition to providing an instrument for total political control of the population, the communes afforded a means of integrating agriculture and industry into one gigantic machine that could utilize all human labor resources to the maximum. On top of the continued emphasis on modern and capital intensive industrial development, a massive effort was made to increase production by using labor-intensive techniques on crude equipment. Backyard blast furnaces were built to produce steel in cities and in villages, and such techniques as deep ploughing and close planting were employed in agriculture. All these efforts, in industry and in agriculture, were to bring about a great leap forward in 1958, generally aiming at a doubling of output in one year from 1957 to 1958.

A number of official and Western estimates of China's national income for the period since 1949 are at present available. The official estimates are based on the Marxian production concept while the Western estimates are, in the main, based on the comprehensive production concept. The periods covered by the estimates vary; and even in cases where the periods covered are the same, the estimates vary in magnitude and, in most cases, in the implied rate of economic growth. Apart from differences arising from the different national income concepts and definitions employed in individual estimates, sources of discrepancies between series of estimates can be traced to the particular sets of primary data employed and also to the particular procedures followed in estimating the national income components. The present paper brings together the various estimates available to date and indicates for each, as far as possible, the basic production concept adopted, the particular national income aggregates estimated, the basic estimation approach employed, and the special procedures used for estimating some of the components of national income. Comparisons of the major series of estimates for the period 1952-1959 are made and the sources of disrepancies between the series are discussed. Finally, some problems are described which a researcher in the West has to contend with in working on China's national income accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the economic development of Manchuria, China between 1860 and 1960. Types of development patterns; Economic benefits of industrialization.

The article highlights that during the first five-year plan period from 1953-57, Chinese Communist policymakers pursued the Soviet Union strategy as practiced by general secretary of the communist party Joseph Stalin for economic development with local adaptations. However, given the vastly different factor endowments of Mainland China in the fifties as compared to the Soviet Union of the twenties, Chinese planners were forced to modify significantly their original approach. They thus evolved a new strategy for the second five-year plan from 1958-62, based on intensive utilization of underemployed labor combined with promotion of technological dualism, as a means of maximizing the rate of economic growth. The new model comprised of communes that extended to incorporate the notion of rapid development of a national economy. According to this concept, the state would concentrate the preponderant bulk of its investment resources on the development of the modern sector. This is a sector with a high reinvestment quotient, with practically all of this reinvestment to be channeled into continuing growth of itself. At the same time, the diversion of output from the modern to the rural sector is to be minimized. Therefore, the expansion of the rural sector was to be made a function of its own output and investment.

The article deals with the statistical system of Communist China. It will not concern itself with statistical definitions and concepts, nor will it enter into an examination of official statistics. Rather, it will attempt to appraise the quality of official statistics through a study of the development and the inner working of the system. This will involve an investigation and going through a mass of significant details without which conclusions cannot be justifiably drawn. Because of the length of the study, it is necessary to divide it into two parts. It covers the period from 1949 to 1957 and the other from 1958 to 1960. This study relies heavily on the information given in the complete set of official journals of the State Statistical Bureau of Peiping, published between April 1954 and February 1959. Designed primarily for communicational and training purposes within the national statistical services, they were not made available to the public until after the free discussion period in late 1957, when current issues were allowed to be exported. Since February 1959, they have again been withdrawn completely from public circulation.

The article discusses problems of economic growth in the poorer nations that became a major foreign policy concern of the wealthy and powerful nations of the world. The relative progress in the development of the two countries, India and China, is of great significance. There were strong parallels in their preplan structure and strong contrasts between China's totalitarian and India's democratic programs. Their performance relative to one another may influence the programs adopted by other, now less advanced, countries. It will certainly bear upon the United States and Soviet foreign policies. Furthermore, the record of the course of development in these two lands provides a unique opportunity for examining the process of development as such. Structural unemployment, underutilized resources, overurbanization, nonmonetized savings and investment flows-these are illustrative of the types of problems that must be understood and treated if there are to be steady output gains in most of today's underdeveloped areas.

The opening manu militari of the ports of China and Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century was followed by different political and economic developments, which caused different patterns of financial relations to be established by the two countries with foreign countries. In the course of over half a century, Japan concentrated her financial resources on strengthening her industrial power at home and expanding her economic interests abroad. China's financial resources, on the contrary, were dispersed in individual commercial and speculative ventures; the treaty ports, which drew to themselves a disproportionately large part of the national wealth, remained detached from the traditional economy of the country and developed as commercial entrepots for the Far Eastern area. The outbreak of war with Japan in July 1937 found China engaged in a long-term policy of unification and stabilization. The National Government had gradually expanded its budget, with expenditures reaching a little over one billion national yuan in 1936-37; of this about four-fifths were covered by fiscal revenues and the balance by loans.

The article discusses economic aspects relating to China and India from 1952-1970, as well as the stability of their newly industrialized governments. The article focuses on the two countries' growth in terms of their foodgrains output, industrial production, and national income. Also included is an appendix on the comparison of the estimated growth rate with alternative estimates, as well as a summary of the findings. The article lists the tables, charts, and indexes that are included for easy reference.

The article focuses on communist China's economic growth. The purpose of this article is to throw light on communist China's asserted economic growth by comparing it with that of the Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Japan. This is not to minimize in any way the Indian development, which has been rapid during the Nineteen Fifties and which has given very encouraging evidence to Asia of what can be accomplished with free institutions. It is merely an attempt to put Communist China's claimed economic progress back into focus. It should be emphasized that this article does not intend to analyze how effective the Chinese communists have been in improving their military potential even though this appears to be a primary aim of their economic policy. Instead this report intends to outline an approach for analyzing the relative effectiveness of the Chinese communist system in promoting economic growth; it is this latter question that appears to be most hotly debated. It appears that many analysts are convinced that just because a regime can hold down consumption, theoretically it should, therefore, be promoting a large volume of sound investment and a huge growth potential.

Compares two approaches to national development in China. Economic and social histories of China; Characteristics of technical bureaucratization and mass mobilization; Legitimation of policy; Implications of political leadership; Progress towards social integration; Process of economic construction.