ABSTRACT
Chinas official attitude toward the private economy was, however, ambiguous, and was characterized by a hate-and-love mixture. The Chinese government relaxed its policy toward the private economy not because the government liked it, but due to real economic pressure. After nearly 30 years of socialist development, China suddenly found itself still a less developed country in 1978. China hesitated to recognize the private-owned enterprises that developed spontaneously in the early 1980s. The private economy development in China started after 1992 when Deng Xiaoping reconfirmed the friendly policy to the private economy in his tour to Southern China. Determined by communist ideology, China has never called for privatization, and has repeatedly claimed that public ownership should be dominant in the whole economy in the sense that public assets dominate in the total assets in society. Discriminations against the private economy prevailed in many areas, such as legislation, finance, taxation, business entry and market entry.
