ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that a decisive shift in industrial policy occurred as early as October 1976 and that 1977-1978 was a period of gradual transition to policies of 'market socialism'. Events in China, since the demise of the 'Gang of Four' in October 1976, have given rise to a debate amongst scholars as intense as that which accompanied the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. In the 1970s, attacks made by the 'Gang of Four' on Confucianism were taken as a covert way of protesting about what was felt to be Premier Zhou Enlai's reversal of the policies of the Cultural Revolution. Within the context of China's 'market socialism', one sees a renewed interest in industrial democracy. Such democracy, however, is defined in a representative sense rather than in the participatory sense promoted during the Cultural Revolution.
