ABSTRACT
Urban industrial reforms got off to a considerably slower start than rural reforms. Reforms in the urban sector have had four major characteristics: decentralization, marketization, intensification of incentives, and internationalization. The reform decade brought unprecedented growth to the Chinese economy, probably far surpassing what any of the reform leaders had initially dared to hope for. In the Chinese socialist system in particular, reform would affect both an urban sector dominated by state-owned industry and a rural sector in which collectively owned and managed farms organized production and controlled output. The reform process began with the rural areas, partly because failures in the agricultural system under Mao were seen as underlying causes of China’s general economic problems at the end of the 1970s, and partly because the rural sector was easier to reform. Despite the collectivized agricultural system, there was a minimum of bureaucratic opposition and a promising maximum of political support.
