ABSTRACT
The accumulation of economic problems in the People’s Republic of China during the decades of Mao Zedong’s rule, ranging from sluggish agricultural growth to monumental allocative inefficiencies, presented the post-Mao leadership with the urgent necessity to tackle those problems and set them right. Adjustment means intrasystemic change: repairs and alterations carried out within the existing economic system of institutions and values. If the decision is made to reform the economy, the change must be carried through to its logical end of complete systemic transformation. Radical surgery is what is involved in economic reform. Reform means transubstantiation of the system — that is, complete changeover from one system to another. During the first phase of economic changes —the Hua Guofeng interlude, 1976—1978 — the emphasis was on adjustment. The second post-Mao stage was a mixture of policy adjustments and the beginnings of structural reform in agriculture. An expansion of the industrial “commodity economy” would be brought about.
