ABSTRACT
It is not difficult to argue that the death of Deng Xiaoping in February 1997 was a climacteric in Chinese economic policy. His death, one might argue, removed the last check on the growing authority of Jiang Zemin and resulted in the abandonment of the market socialist vision articulated by Deng for so long.1 Whether one dates the change from the articulation of the policy of radical industrial restructuring (zhuada fangxiao) at the 14th Party Congress (1995), the start of the Ninth Five Year Plan period (1996) or from the death of Deng himself, there is little doubt that economic policy changed significantly in the mid-1990s. Most obviously, China has joined the WTO, privatized many of its SOEs and TVEs and abandoned its attempts to control internal labour migration. The rhetoric of socialism may have been retained, but the true goal of the CCP over the last decade has been to effect a rapid transition to a full-blown capitalist economy; the decision to allow private-sector capitalists to become Party members in 2001 at the urging of Jiang Zemin was the most symbolic step.2
