ABSTRACT
For almost thirty years after taking power, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had worked to reduce the role of private enterprise in the Chinese economy, with the aim of eventually eradicating it. The exclusion of zhuanyehu from statistics on the individual economy enables many discussions of rural private industry and commerce to present it as much smaller than would otherwise have been possible. The policy of encouraging the recognized private economy, its implementation, and the debates are focused. Parallel to the growth of the urban and rural 'individual economy', however, an increasingly complex range of reforms were taking place in agriculture, rural industry and commerce, and eventually urban enterprises as well. The case in favor of reviving the individual economy rested on the reformist argument that the main task for China in the current stage was to promote the development of the productive forces.
