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This paper examines the question of China’s compliance with market economy principles. China has reformed away from central planning in the past four decades, but has it achieved a fully-fledged market economy? The paper sheds new light on the contested nature of China’s market economy status from a political economy perspective. It draws on the Varieties of Capitalism analytical framework. The paper explains China’s status as a market economy as the product of a national model of state-dominated institutional complementarities between high levels of trade openness and domestic regulation, including nonmarket principles for the deployment of financial resources and labour.

The economic reform started in 1986 has transformed Vietnam from one of the world’s poorest countries 35 years ago to a lower middle-income country (MIC) in 2010. Poverty rates dropped from 70% in 1986 to below 2% in 2021. The transition from a central planning system to a socialist market economy is the fundamental underlying factor of Vietnam's success. Using the historical institutional framework that Lee (2018) [1] developed, this study aims to explore the country’s transition from a central planning system to a socialist market economy over the past three decades. The findings demonstrate that the country’s transition to a socialist market economy has been taking a gradualism and dualism path like China. In addition, the study also illustrates how the economic reform and globalization processes pushed the institutional transformation in Vietnam to meet the demands of multiple economic sectors and ownerships as well as accommodate international commitments that the country entered. Finally, Vietnam has been cautious in its political reform over the past few decades. Yet, this is inevitable as a result of the country’s socio-economic development process as well as the global and regional rapid changing context. The implications for Vietnam include: (i) Vietnam needs to transform its growth model toward a knowledge-based, higher-added-value, and more environmentally-friendly pattern; (ii) while there is significant progress in institutional transformation, bottlenecks and challenges remain. This should be addressed effectively to unlock the country’s potential; (iii) political system reform is inevitable as conditions are mature. Domestic demands and international requirements are putting increasing pressure on the changes. However, this process will likely move forward and take place within the political system rather than by civil society or outsiders. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2022-06-05-03 Full Text: PDF

This article aims to show that the Chinese development process over the past four decades is not a self-explanatory fact. It is a process that may have revealed the ultimate limitation of the current capacities for interpretation represented by both orthodox and heterodox approaches. This limitation is due to two objective facts: 1) the transformation of the "socialist market economy" into a new socioeconomic formation (NSEF), a process that has accelerated since the financial crisis of 2008—the emergence of this NSEF results from a series of institutional innovations designed to accommodate a myriad of modes of production, all of them under the leadership of the public (socialist) sector; and 2) the continuous technical progress achieved by the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Following the successful implementation of proactive industrial policies, the above-mentioned developments led to the appearance in China of new and superior forms of economic planning. This process can be understood as the re-emergence of Ignacio Rangel's "project economy," now under the title of the "new projectment economy." In our view, perceiving and understanding this change in the mode of production in China, and the theoretical resources involved in it, represents the greatest challenge before today's social science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the influence of the ideological and political frameworks and changes in the physiognomy of social, economic and internal political relations, as well as the foreign policy orientation, on the structure of the banking sector in socialist Yugoslavia, The attempt is to determine the appearance and the important features of the banking sector, the sequence of reforms that marked this field of economic life in the second half of the 20th century, as well as the effectiveness of the observed changes. The overview is provided of the characteristics of the different phases that the Yugoslav banking system, starting with the development of the socialist banking system, planned organization and rigid centralization, through various phases of decentralization, central plan weakening and introduction of market elements, to the shaping (and reshaping) of the self-management banking system and its repercussions on the country's economic unity.

Purpose. To substantiate an alternative investment system that would meet the needs of the further development of the modern economy and at the same time solve the problem of combining the planned development of the economy with its market functioning. Methodology. The study is based on the methodology of modern postclassical science, represented primarily by synergy, the theory of complex systems and the theory of chaos, and tends to sharpen the opposition between equilibrium functioning and nonequilibrium development of complex systems. The use of analytical tools of the post-classical methodology for analyzing the potential opposite of the mechanism of functioning and the mechanism of development of the economy in the conditions of the transition to the socialist market economy. Findings. Theoretical substantiation of the possibility of combining opposite mechanisms of functioning and development in a single economic system in the transition to the socialist market economy. This study proposes a theoretical scheme for a new investment system that includes two levels as a closed cycle of circulation of systemic capital. At the top level, there is a systematically organized process of creating new enterprises. These enterprises are created with the aim of selling them and creating new enterprises in the respective market in order to increase competitive activity. Such an investment system is able to provide a deep technological modernization of the economy “from above” through the constant creation of more and more “green” and energysaving enterprises. However, the creation of such an investment system requires special historical conditions, since its formation is historically inaccessible to either capitalism or socialism and the system can only be created under the conditions of the socialist market economy. Originality. The originality is associated with the substantiation of the hidden opposition of the mechanisms of functioning and development of the economy, as well as the formation of an investment system that includes two levels as a closed cycle of circulation of systemic capital in the conditions of the development of the socialist market economy. Practical value. The scientifi c contribution is associated with the ability to practically use the methods for forming a two-level investment system in a closed cycle of circulation of systemic capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese economic development has been driven, among other factors, by the gradual expansion of the private economy and the establishment of Chinese-based multinational corporations recognized as "champions" of the Chinese economy. At the same time, the Chinese Communist Party strives to maintain proper coordination mechanisms over the Chinese private economy, in order to ensure the harmonization between private and public interests. Does such policy direction, pursued by the Chinese leadership, rely on legal mechanisms? Does the Chinese Communist Party have legal instruments at its disposal in order to carry out coordinative functions concerning the private economy? The issue, although acknowledged by several scholars, has been rarely the object of a comprehensive legal analysis, taking into account the interactions between the different legal formants of the Chinese system. The purpose of this paper is to sketch an outline of the main legal mechanisms empowering the Chinese Communist Party to supervise and coordinate the activity of private economic operators. Starting from the assessment of some recent developments, embodied in «Opinions on Strengthening the United Front Work in the Private Economy in the New Era» issued in September 2020, the analysis will try to identify some of the most relevant legal provisions aimed at ensuring Party supervision over the private economy, in particular Art. 19 of the Company Law. Such provisions will be analyzed not only within the context of the recent developments of Chinese economic law, but also with regard to its practical applications by courts, in order to define the scope, in concrete, of Party activities in the private economy. The information gathered and analyzed will then be taken as conceptual basis to draw some conclusions regarding the structural role of the Chinese Communist Party in the development of Chinese commercial and economic law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent economic experience of countries such as China, Vietnam, Laos, etc., has invoked some interest in the economic system in these countries. This economic system which is often characterised as the socialist market economy is first conceptually distinguished from a centrally planned socialist economy as well as from a market socialist economy. Then a simple macroeconomic framework of a stylised socialist market economy is set out and its principal properties are highlighted. The paper concludes with a brief examination of the political economy of the socialist market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 70-year history of the People's Republic of China can be divided into two historical periods, before the reform and opening up and after it, with the line of demarcation coinciding with the third plenary session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC in 1978. These two periods are interrelated, but are also different from one another. In essence, they both embody the CPC's practice in leading the people in socialist construction, and the Party's exploration of methods for improving that practice. Correctly interpreting the relationship between socialist practice and exploration during the periods before the reform and opening up and after it is not only a historical issue, but also a political one. We therefore need to make a correct evaluation of the historical period before the reform and opening up. We should not use the period following the reform and opening up to negate the period before it, and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the question of China's compliance with market economy principles. China has reformed away from central planning in the past four decades, but has it achieved a fully-fledged market economy? The paper sheds new light on the contested nature of China's market economy status from a political economy perspective. It draws on the Varieties of Capitalism analytical framework to posit China's market economy status as the product of its national model of state-dominated institutional complementarities between high levels of trade openness and domestic regulation, including nonmarket principles for the deployment of financial resources and labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since China implemented its reform and opening up policy in the late 1970s, it has engaged in theoretical and practice-based innovations in the development of its private sector. China has experienced four evolutionary stages of private sector development and theoretical innovation: from proposing that the private sector was "subsidiary and complementary to the socialist public sector," to elevating it to the heights of China's "basic economic system"; from adhering to the principle of "the two unwaverings," i.e., unwaveringly consolidating and developing the public sector on the one hand, and unwaveringly encouraging, supporting, and guiding the development of the non-public sector on the other; and thence to further stating explicitly that "private enterprises and private sector entrepreneurs are one of us; they are socialist." New theories of private sector development have been created in response to the inherent requirements of the primary stage of socialism, to the choice of the correct path to common prosperity, and to the human behavioral rationality and the laws governing people's interest claims. The private sector is an important achievement of the development of the socialist market economy; an important force promoting the development of the socialist market economy; and an important actor in the building of the modern economic system. Creating new theories of private sector development has opened up a new realm for Marxist political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the influence of the ideological and political frameworks and changes in the physiognomy of social, economic and internal political relations, as well as the foreign policy orientation, on the structure of the banking sector in socialist Yugoslavia, The attempt is to determine the appearance and the important features of the banking sector, the sequence of reforms that marked this field of economic life in the second half of the 20th century, as well as the effectiveness of the observed changes. The overview is provided of the characteristics of the different phases that the Yugoslav banking system, starting with the development of the socialist banking system, planned organization and rigid centralization, through various phases of decentralization, central plan weakening and introduction of market elements, to the shaping (and reshaping) of the self-management banking system and its repercussions on the country's economic unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between institutional environments and individual artists' artistic creativity to provide an understanding of the 'creative city', using urban sculpture planning in Shanghai as a case study. I argue that political censorship alone will not stifle artist's creativity: when authoritarian power interacts with elite social networks and permits a certain form of market economy, artistic creativity becomes concentrated on the technical aspects of artistic representation and can be channeled towards utilitarian projects in service of the community and the creative economy. A less open or tolerant institutional setting results in a type of 'structured creativity'—this refers to novel ideas and artistic expressions that emerge in the process of seeking valuable alternative outlets when facing political constraints. 'Structured creativity' characterizes the 'creative city' in countries such as China. The implication is that such 'structured creativity' contributes to the economy in terms of traditional statistical indicators, but is problematic in other ways. Richard Florida's 'creative city' thesis simplified the relationship between social conditions, creativity and economy; similarly, the complexity of this relationship has been overlooked in the critical literature about this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates China's recent reform to adopt accrual accounting in its public sector. It aims to offer an understanding of the sociopolitical influences that have shaped the reform by contextualising it against a history of Chinese government accounting practice and its surrounding discourses. Based on archival and published materials from the PRC between 1949 and 2019, this article examines antecedent discourses on government accounting from academic, government and news media sources. It uses the accounting discourse as a vantage point to understand the intellectual developments and discursive shifts that have since come to explain the recent Chinese government accounting reforms in connection to the Chinese context. While discourses leading up to the reforms seem to echo Western concerns of New Public Management on the surface, the analysis of this article demonstrates how the reforms respond to distinctly local pressures, ideas and objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the sustained growth of the state sector in the Chinese economy shows that Chinese model is very different from state capitalism, even more from liberal capitalism. In our view, China's market socialist system can be interpreted as classified as a "New Socioeconomic Formation" (NSEF). The most important attribute of the NSEF is complexity, as it is marked by the coexistence of different modes of production. China's market socialism is still in its embryonic stage, and is governed by an ever-evolving combination of different modes and relations of production. In this framework, some basic laws of motion of China's socialist market economy can be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The national system, with its unique political and institutional advantages of concentrating forces to do major tasks, has encountered problems of the "national" difficulties and "common" difficulties in practice. It is examined that competition is greater than collaboration, which makes it hard to give the advantages full play. Also the basic system is imperfect, and the decisive role of the market in resource allocation has not been fully presented. The new national system therefore is needed, which is to gather the forces together to do major tasks under the conditions of a market economy. Compared with the traditional national system, the new one has changed in target objects, environmental backgrounds, participants, values, and function mechanisms. For the purpose of building a sports power, it is necessary to make use of the advantages of the new system to solve the problems of "integration of sports and education", "inconvenient fitness", "rough training", as well as the successful holding of competitions, and promote the better integration of effective market and capable governments. As an important policy tool in China, the new national system should be rationally selected to solve these problems above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism has rapidly developed in Vietnam over the past three decades. Sustainable tourism has received increasing attention from researchers and practitioners. This study synthesizes literature outlining both social and ecological sustainability aspects in the utilization of natural and cultural resources for tourism development. Along with the ecological realm of governing marine and forest resources in tourism, the authors also discuss the social aspects of sustainability concerning cultural heritage conservation, community engagement, and visitor management. The analysis results in a call for a systemic approach to tourism development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article: The economic aspect of the superpower status of the People’s Republic of China, including its transformation process focuses on the key events in Chinese economic modern history that led it to become superpower in its region and worldwide. The world order prevailing for several centuries was based on the domination of the European civilization. Nowadays, we have the opportunity to observe the birth of a new order based on the dominance of Asian civilization, in which China has a leadership position. That superpower has the greatest impact in the Asia-Pacific region. This is due to the unique features of Chinese civilization, as well as the success of the economic transformation that has been going on for almost 40 years, which can set an example for developing countries. The Chinese way to economic success is unique on a global scale. In addition to centrally planned and free market systems, there are also so-called hybrids that combine features from both systems. In the case of the People’s Republic of China, this system is defined as a socialist market economy. Under this system, state ownership still dominates, but state-owned enterprises have relative independence in operational planning. There are also companies with mixed capital and entirely based on foreign capital and the private sector is playing an increasing role. It is worth paying attention to how China created its own system, because the way it did is completely different than in the West.

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This essay joins in the international controversy about the nature and sustainability of the economic system in China. While official ideology continues to stick to the concept of 'socialist market economy,' albeit with changing contents, international observers are split. One group considers China as a de facto market economy, which is in line with the top-down tradition of ruling in the region. Others consider it as a sui generis system. And a third line takes it as yet another case of hybrid regime which proliferated globally in the new millennium. I try to create a link between these readings and the empirics of Chinese growth. This may help interpret the slowdown, exacerbated by the COVID-19 epidemics on Chinese output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a comprehensive review of the progressive institutional change (PIC) literature, I first discuss four possible trajectories of PIC by considering the forces of societal reaction that might frame the path, as well as the scale and scope of the changes. Thus, I pose four questions that need to be asked when related policies are formulated for PIC. To illustrate this method, I scrutinize the evidence from the construction of a socialist market economy by the Chinese government since the 1980s and argue that related policies have successfully promoted PIC from three dimensions: (1) curbing potential conflicts with power groups; (2) promoting a sense of awareness among stakeholders; and (3) minimizing disturbances to the community. Actually, the related changes demonstrate a dynamic "displacement process" for PICs. Despite the success of this sociosystem, it is found that the sustaining of PIC which requires policy factors that enhance instrumental efficiency in the Chinese context will serve as a challenge to the Chinese government ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 70 years since its founding and the 40 years since its reform and opening-up, modern China has recorded a series of remarkable historic achievements, especially its miracle of high-speed economic growth over a long period. Socialism with Chinese characteristics, under which these achievements have been registered, is unquestionably a socialist system, and has entered a new era of national prosperity and greatness. We should attach particular importance to the socialist factors involved here, since the superiority of the socialist system has lent a unique support to the economic miracle and to the development achievements. A number of these socialist factors, and their unique advantages, deserve especially close attention. These include the achievements of China's economic development and of the socialist system itself; China's socialist economy and politics; its socialist market and government; the socialist market economy and the planning that is inherently involved in it; the public and non-public economy at the primary stage of socialism; socialist modernization and the world economy; China's internal and external markets; the goals of socialist production and its driving forces; socialist workers and human resources; socialist economic theory and practice; and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since China's reform and opening up four decades ago, the establishment and healthy development of the socialist market economy has been closely linked to the forward-looking theoretical analysis and policy suggestions given by representatives from the School of New Marxist Economics. By comparative analysis of a variety of cited literature, the author argues that the School of New Marxist Economics scholars Guoguang Liu, Enfu Cheng, and Zuyao Yu, have made an outstanding contribution not only to the construction of the socialist market economy theory and socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics academically, but also to the comprehensive deepening of reform and the strengthening of technology power building in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I analyse the historical origins of China's distinctive tiered economy by employing the analytic framework of a complex adaptive system to examine how the process of change involves selection, interaction among elements, and variation in types, which ultimately lead to adaptation. I argue that the rise of China's tiered economy can be traced back to the Mao era and that it was enhanced throughout Deng's economic reforms. To elaborate on this argument, I first describe how Mao's invisible hand planted the seeds of the tiered economy. Selection at the strategy level and the resulting variation are examined as Mao's adaptive tactics for nurturing the industrial sector. This mechanism of selection was also maintained to partially embrace market forces in Deng's early era of reform. I then closely examine how Deng's vision of the socialist market economy provided the party-state with raw materials for adaptation, deepening its tiered economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China entered the modern epoch in the nineteenth century with a production system incapable of achieving its modernization. Only the Communist Revolution made it possible to emancipate the country from its previous structures. Since then the Chinese economy has followed new trajectories in the area of actual practice and in the ideological and theoretical fields. The first part of the book describes China's present-day trajectories—demographic, agricultural, industrial and commercial. These trajectories reflect the transformation of the country's structural heritage, along with the rise of the forms that succeeded it and opened the way for China's subsequent achievements. The second part deals principally with the new theoretical trajectories that have appeared in China. The focus is on the evolution undergone by the Marxist ideas and theories that led the modernization process as a whole. The author Jean-Claude Delaunay, who was born in 1938, is an honorary professor of French universities who now lives in Nanning, Guangxi Province, China. He has published a dozen books and many articles. He is currently Vice-President of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) and co-editor of the association's journal World Review of Political Economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]