Between Markets and Mandarins

In the last twenty years of reform under Deng Xiaoping, and now continuing under his successor Jiang Zemin, Chinese people have been party to the implementation of far-reaching economic reform policies which have dramatically affected their lives in diverse and often contradictory ways (Davis and Vogel 1990; Davis and Harrell 1993; Davis et al. 1995; Feuchtwang et al. 1988). ¹ Central to these reforms has been the introduction of market competition to many areas of economic activity and the new rhetoric of the market has been accompanied by the rhetoric of transition: transition from a state-controlled, planned economy aimed at the elimination of class struggle to the establishment of a socialist market economy implemented in accordance with the rhetoric of Deng Xiaoping’s ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. This transition has been marked by the juxtaposition of continued state planning and control alongside, or in conjunction with, the development of capitalist market competition; a juxtaposition which has come to dominate the running of state and collective enterprises and manifested itself in numerous and diverse contradictions and conflicts of interests (Smith 1993).