ABSTRACT
The development of China's maritime economy in the 1971-1983 period went unheralded in many Western writings. The Chinese-flag international merchant shipping fleet was one of the world's great growth stories during the first half of the 1970s, as the number of ships under the People's Republic of China flag more than doubled, and carrying capacity multiplied three and one-half times. The radical faction was largely in control of economic policy until well into 1972, when Deng Xiaoping and the other rationalist modemizers resumed positions of power. The radicals went public in August 1974, running press articles critical of the rationalists. A major purpose of the expansion of the Chinese merchant marine was to free China from dependence upon the international charter market. China bought its first semisubmersible rig from Norway in 1977, and began building one of its own in Shanghai in 1980. The Cultural Revolution, however, brought most serious oceanographic work to a standstill from 1966 until 1976.
