ABSTRACT
The Chinese Communist Party created an urban private business class virtually from scratch as an integral part of the post-Mao reforms. This chapter discusses urban private business within the post-Mao structural reforms, showing what its advocates hoped it could do, and examining various problems associated with it. It argues that the inherently contradictory position of urban private business in a socialist economy is symptomatic of deeper contradictions within the reform program itself. The chapter describes those reforms relevant to urban private business, emphasizing the economic liberalization that lay at their core. Deng Xiaoping and other leaders asserted that "socialism means eliminating poverty. Pauperism is not socialism, still less communism. The superiority of the socialist system lies above all in its ability to improve the people's material and cultural life." China's post-Mao leaders believed that private business could perform several positive functions within the reform program, and that the party and state could regulate its growth and activities.
