1. DISCUSSION.
- Author
-
Holizman, Franklyn D., Klein, Sidney, Berliner, Joseph S., Ta-Chung Liu, and Yeh, K. C.
- Subjects
ECONOMIC conditions in China ,ECONOMIC conditions in China -- 1949-1976 ,ECONOMIC development ,SOVIET economy ,LABOR productivity ,ECONOMIC expansion ,ECONOMISTS ,NATIONAL income ,INDUSTRIAL productivity - Abstract
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.
- Published
- 1961