ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the historical backgrounds of the developments in the establishment of centrally planned economy in Asia and defines the pre-reform socialist models that constitute the points of departure from state socialism or centrally planned command economy across these countries, in order to define the beginning and the end of transition from state socialism and conduct a sensible assessment of political economic change across these countries. All the Asian countries under study adopted the Soviet model of central planning, collectivized agriculture, and state ownership in initial phases of their socialist transformation after the communist party took over power. All market reforms in these countries carried different name tags, such as doi moi in Vietnam, NEM in Lao PDR, and "socialist market economy" in China, and all initially started with agricultural reform, trade liberalization, controlled opening of the previously closed economy, and then expanded to the areas of prices, finance, taxation, ownership, and legal systems.
