ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the China’s industrial development in particular from the standpoint of its class basis. It argues that although China has generally adhered to the broad principles of socialist economic and industrial development, giving the development process there its unique quality, several notable deviations were present, deviations so serious as to threaten the entire socialist project. The decrease in the industrial growth rate during the 1978-1983 reform and readjustment period reflects the remedial measures that had to be undertaken following the Cultural Revolution period, which represented a classic case of unbalanced growth. The analysis that follows suggests that industrial development in China has in the main been socialist, but that in particular instances policies have been pursued that were nonsocialist in character, sometimes so much so that the socialist project would have been endangered had remedial action not been forthcoming.
