ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the economic policy changes implemented since Mao Zedong's death in 1976 from the perspective of the criteria for socialist development and the contradictions inherent in the socialist transition. It presents the capitalist economic development, to demonstrate the class-specific nature of the development process and to provide the contrasting backdrop against which the discussion of socialist economic development can proceed most meaningfully. Assessing China's development experience in relation to a model of pure socialist development can provide the basis for understanding the transition to socialism in China. The chapter focuses on the exploitation of women and child workers in the early development of England, the United States, Japan, and China, in all of which they constituted the majority of the factory labor force. The growing systemic requirements of a developing capitalist economy eventually include a more educated labor force and a great increase in technical and professional manpower.
