ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the fundamental Chinese policies at various stages, inquiring into the causes and consequences of those policy changes, and examines the implications of those strategies for China’s development prospects. The question confronting the leadership was what kind of development model to pursue. At that juncture, at least two models seemed to be relevant to Chinese development. The Chinese economy of 1952 was at a stage of development roughly comparable to that of Meiji Japan but was much more underdeveloped than the Soviet economy on the eve of its first five-year plan in 1928. A new policy of “readjustment of the pace of development, consolidation of existing plants, reinforcement of the weak links, and improvement of the quality of products” was decided upon at the Ninth Plenum of the Eighth chinese communist party Central Committee in January 1961. Hua Guofeng submitted a Ten-Year Plan of development for the 1976–1985 periods.
