Consumption and the progress of social civilization

Bingxin Wu , in Consumption and Management, 2011

Building a harmonious society in China

As a socialist country with Chinese characteristics, the way for China to adjust the contradiction between consumers is to build a harmonious society. Since the implementation of the policy of reform and opening up in 1978, China has followed one focus and two basic points and followed the theory, line, and principle of allowing some people to become rich first and then driving the whole nation to become rich. China has followed the socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. With the reaction of state power, the three major consumptions have been pushed to develop rapidly. The development of the three major consumptions drives the rapid development of the entire social economy and the process of social civilization. However, imbalances of development have also occurred, which is natural and inevitable. It is totally different from the egalitarian distribution policy in a planned economy. The country of a communist party that represents the interests of the people has realized these problems and has been solving them reasonably and scientifically step by step:

1.

For the collection, management, and distribution of gross social wealth, China has established comprehensive and systematic tax policies, which are being designed and developed.

2.

A minimum income is guaranteed for laborers. According to the provisions of laws and regulation, the country has enhanced laborers' status during the process of production consumption and the labor process in management and service industries according to the laws and regulations. A system has been established for a regular minimum wage standard, which is developing.

3.

There is compulsory education. Among 1.3 billion Chinese people, a free education system has been implemented in primary schools and junior schools. As for vocational secondary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities, the basic expense for educational consumption and the allowances for poverty stricken students are implemented and guaranteed by the central government.

4.

For national university research and education and major scientific research units, the country has increased investment with the charge of social consumption.

5.

For consumption on utility and public welfare projects, the country has provided allowances.

6.

For regions of lower living consumption, the country has allocated special funds from national finance to provide help for the alleviation and elimination of poverty. The country has also formulated relevant policies, such as free training in labor skills, scientific support, and poverty elimination.

7.

For poor urban residents, the country has allocated salvation funds to guarantee their minimum living consumption.

8.

Every year, the country allocates considerable relief funds for border areas, helping them shake off poverty and guaranteeing a certain living consumption level for them.

9.

The country advocates charity, mobilizing social power to help poor and vulnerable groups.

The country adjusts the contradiction between social consumers and consumption through various tax policies and administrative means. Meanwhile, the country carries out civilization and cultural education in society, advocates mutual respect and love to solve contradictions, and creates social harmony.

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Fertility Trends in the Formerly Socialist Countries of Europe

A. Avdeev , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

2 Trends after World War II

Fertility in the FSCE in the second half of the twentieth century was marked by a notable deviation from the Western and Northern European pattern. While fertility rose throughout the West after the 1950s (see Baby Booms and Baby Busts in the Twentieth Century ), in the FSCE it continued to decline without interruption, reaching the then European low in the early 1960s (Sardon 1998). In Hungary, the TFR fell below 2 in 1961, in Romania in 1964, in the Czech Republic in 1967, in the Ukraine in 1965, and in Russia in 1968. The TFR level necessary for generation replacement (at least 2.1) was still maintained in Poland, the GDR, Belarus, Bulgaria, Moldova, and all of Yugoslavia, but this was mainly caused by a lowering of childbearing age, which fell by two years between 1950 and 1965 (see Fertility Change: Quantum and Tempo ), while cohort fertility continued to fall.

Furthermore, in Yugoslavia the relatively high national fertility level concealed strong regional and ethnic variance: while the TFR was about 3.5 in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1965, 3.7 in Macedonia, and 3.1 in Montenegro, it was approaching replacement level in the other Yugoslav republics: 2.02 in Croatia, 2.4 in Slovenia and Serbia. Within Serbia, again an enormous difference existed between Kosovo, where the TFR exceeded six births per woman in the mid-1960s (as it did in Albania), and the other two autonomous provinces, Central Serbia and Vojvodina, where it was 2.03 and 2.13, respectively.

From the mid-1960s, when the fertility decline took new speed in Western Europe (see Demographic Transition, Second ), the TFR stabilized for almost two decades at values of 2.0 to 2.5 in Central and Eastern Europe. Thus in the 1970s and 1980s the FSCE once again had the highest fertility levels in Europe. The stabilization of fertility in the FSCE might be explained by a particular 'socialist' type of family formation resulting from policies of social paternalism towards the family, especially toward the young family, applied throughout the FSCE since the beginning of the 1950s. Under the conditions generated by these policies, based on the principles of social egalitarianism and state guarantees of equal and universal access to education and health services, family formation (marriage and childbearing) became one of the first stages of an adult's social adaptation. It often was a condition for independent housing arrangements and it preceded a definitive choice of profession. This resulted in younger childbearing and in a strong compression of fertility around the modal age at childbearing. Furthermore, this policy stimulated the development of a two-child family system. Throughout the FSCE, the proportion of women who were childless at age 50 was very close to the natural level of sterility, i.e., about 10 percent. At the same time, families with four and more children were rare, especially in the countries that had a high level of industrialization in the pre-socialist period (the GDR, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia).

In the countries where economic modernization had not been achieved by World War II (those east of the 'Hajnal line'), the traditions of early and universal marriage as well as early childbearing persisted, because the 'gentle' socialist form of industrialization avoided the explosion of unemployment, a drop in living standards, and mass rural–urban exodus.

Another factor explaining the stabilization of (or even slight increase in) fertility was the special pronatalist policies implemented between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s throughout the FSCE, again with the exception of Albania (Henry and McIntyre 1981). Based on an array of incentives such as family allowances, birth payments, paid maternity and post-maternity leave, and subsidized credit, these policies aimed at stimulating second-, third- and fourth-order births (Klinger 1991). The most powerful pronatalist incentives were introduced in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and the GDR, where they substantially influenced period fertility indicators, and less strongly the fertility of female cohorts born around 1950 (±5 years). The strongest growth in cohort fertility was observed in Hungary, where CF rose from 1.9 for women born in 1942–45 to 2.03 in the cohort of 1961. In Czechoslovakia, CF gained less, from 2.03 in the cohort of 1943 to 2.1 in the cohort of 1952–58, while in the GDR and Bulgaria, the pronatalist measures only stopped the decline and stabilized cohort fertility (at around 1.8 in the former for the cohorts born in 1952–58 and 2.05 in the latter in the cohorts born in 1945–57. Thus, all these incentives were unable to raise cohort fertility to replacement level. In 1983–86, the USSR repeated this pronatalist policy experiment, but without any restrictions on abortion, and obtained the same result in its European republics, namely a short-term increase of the period TFR to 2.2 in 1984–87, followed by a rapid decline after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1988. In Romania and Poland, the pronatalist measures were more modest. Finally, in Yugoslavia, child allowance payments were decentralized and increased for lower-income families, which suggests a social policy orientation rather than a purely pronatalist policy (Henry and McIntyre 1981).

The availability of induced abortion was another key element of the family policies of a number of FSCE countries. Following the example of a Soviet abortion law passed in November 1955, all the FSCE except the GDR and Albania liberalized induced abortion during the late 1950s. Later, the abortion law became more restrictive again in Romania (1966), Bulgaria (1968), Czechoslovakia (1973), and Hungary (1974). These restrictions had little long-term effect on fertility because they were accompanied by an extension in contraceptive use, encouraged by the governments to protect women's reproductive health (see Fertility Control: Eastern Europe ). Only in Romania, where the level of modern contraceptive use was very low, did the strongest ban on abortion ever (implemented on 1 November, 1966 by Decree 770) result in the most spectacular rise in fertility in post-war Europe: the TFR increased from 1.92 in 1966 to 3.67 in 1967. Fertility fell quickly again, after 1969 however, and later amendments reinforcing Decree 770 (in 1974, in 1984, and in 1986) had only a very weak influence on trends in the TFR.

The main results of these fertility-stimulating and restrictive incentives were a strong shift in fertility to younger ages (the cohort MAC—mean age at childbearing—decreased to 25±1 years) and a greater compression of fertility spacing toward its natural limits within the frame of the two-child system, with a CF in the region of 1.9 births per woman (see Fig. 1). In the GDR, where fertility compression was relatively moderate by FSCE standards, about 60 percent of fertility was concentrated in the age range of 19–25 years in the mid-1970s. By the beginning of the 1980s, this pattern of reproductive behavior had spread throughout the FSCE except for Albania, the autonomous province of Kosovo and, probably, Macedonia.

Figure 1. Evolution of period and cohort fertility indicators in the formerly socialist countries of Europe

Source: Data Base of European Demographic Observatory communicated by G Calot and J P Sardon; the estimation of the TFR in the USSR republics for the period until 1975 was performed by Alain Blum. (Personal communication)

In the early 1980s, when the crisis of the socialist system emerged throughout the FSCE and was absolutely obvious in Poland and the former Yugoslavia, the first signs of a corrosion of the 'socialist' pattern of family formation also became visible. This showed up in an increase in the mean age at childbearing (Hungary, the GDR, Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia), followed by a decrease in TFR since the mid-1980s. In Central Serbia and the autonomous province of Vojvodina, where the economic crisis began earlier, the MAC started to rise in the early 1970s while fertility was below replacement level. Only in the European republics of the USSR, Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Kosovo was the fertility decrease accompanied by a reduction in the MAC until the mid-1990s.

With the collapse of the socialist system in Europe (1989–1991) and the disappearance of the social and economic support of the 'socialist' pattern of family formation, fertility plummeted in all FSCE countries. In the ex-GDR, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Romania, and the newly independent states of the former USSR, the first reaction of fertility to the social changes has been described as a paralyzing shock that led to an abrupt but brief fall in the mean age at childbearing due to a decrease in fertility rates at all ages. Subsequently MAC began to increase while the TFR decreased. The most spectacular fertility drop occurred in the former GDR, where the TFR fell from 1.56 in 1989 to 0.77 in 1993–1994. In the rest of the FSCE, fertility followed the trends of the late 1980s, except perhaps a little faster. It seems that the economic troubles definitively brought the fertility of women born in 1962–65 down below the level that would have been reached otherwise. The fertility of younger women has been checked too, but this may perhaps be made up later (Philipov and Kohler 1999). Moreover, a rapid rise in out-of-wedlock births is observed all over the FSCE and is especially remarkable in Estonia, where the proportion of births outside marriage rose from 20.7 percent in 1985 to 51.6 percent in 1997. In the former GDR, the increase was from 33.8 percent to 44 percent, in Slovenia from 19.1 percent to 32.7 percent, in Latvia from 14.4 percent to 34.8 percent and in Bulgaria from 11.7 percent to 30.1 percent.

In summary, it seems likely that a new pattern of family formation is now emerging in the FSCE, characterized by later marriage and by late and diversified fertility similar to that observed in Western Europe. This observation is supported by the stabilization of (or even a slight increase in) period fertility observed in the former GDR, Moldova, Romania, and the Czech Republic in the second half of the 1990s, in contrast to the fertility decline still going on elsewhere in the FSCE. At the present time it is, however, impossible to draw any definitive conclusions about the near future of fertility in the FSCE. What the future will bring depends in large part on the political stability and the economic situation in these countries.

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Section I. Challenges to Capitalism: The Analytical Structure

Kui-Wai Li , in Redefining Capitalism in Global Economic Development, 2017

Third, the emergence of the two socialist countries of Russia and China has opened up a new global phase. Due to the prolonged economic weakness under communism in competing with the Western world, the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991 ended the "Cold War." However, Russia has since built up its foreign reserve through the export of oil and gas and its regional interference in Ukraine in 2014 has shown a revival of the Russian ambition in territorial annexation. China since its economic reform in 1978 has built up a much stronger economy than Russia, claiming to be the largest socialist economy by the first decade of the 21st century. Being one of the poorest countries before the 1980s, China has over the years attracted much international aid, official assistance, foreign direct investment, and repatriation of investment funds by overseas Chinese. Assisted by the massive supply of workers, China has turned itself into a production house, generating massive exports and attaining the largest foreign reserve in the world. With its economic strength, China is building up alternative international relationships with countries from different continents, and a few Asian countries are worried as its military build-up could raise territorial and military uncertainties. While one is the political leader and the other is the economic leader in the socialist world, one concern is whether Russia and China would cooperate or compete in their different leading positions? Would Russia tolerate the economic power of China, or would China's economic power overtake Russia's political dominance? Their bilateral relationship would generate further dissemination to other issues in the world economy.

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Socialist Societies: Anthropological Aspects

K. Verdery , in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001

2.3 Labor Shortage and Rights in People

An additional resource subject to shortage was labor. Relatively underdeveloped socialist economies had initial problems mobilizing skilled workers where there was effectively no 'working class,' and they lacked the resources for either paying labor well or substituting capital-intensive methods. Moreover, the shortage economy encouraged firms to employ excess workers so they could complete monthly plans once sufficient materials were on hand (in a frenzied effort known as 'storming'); managers, therefore, padded their workforce, exacerbating shortage. Labor shortage, thus, had both macro and micro dimensions. Means for stabilizing the labor supply included making workplaces the locus of benefits such as daycare, housing, vacation permits, pensions, medical care, etc. Certain cities were closed to immigration and construction of urban infrastructures was limited (Szelényi 1983), thus compelling millions to become village-based 'peasant-workers.'

Within each industrial and agricultural workplace, managers had to ensure a labor supply adequate to both normal production and periods of 'storming.' Workers, for their part, might bargain for better conditions by withholding labor, through intentional slowdowns or time off for household tasks and moonlighting—that is, labor shortage gave workers structural leverage. Conflicting demands for labor put a premium on ways of accumulating rights in people. For managers, these included extending patronage and favors (e.g., access to schooling, houses, or building sites), overlooking petty illegalities, and securing loose plans that enabled them to produce a surplus they might use to create labor-securing debt and exchange relations (cf. Humphrey 1983). Both managers and others needing labor might appeal to kinship idioms, emphasize ethnic identities, participate in special rituals, and expand networks of reciprocity through gift-giving. Thus, the quest for labor further encouraged personal ties and reinforced particularistic identities.

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Consumption and surplus value

Bingxin Wu , in Consumption and Management, 2011

Production of investment and the law of surplus product value

In capitalist society, any investment project or factory investment aims to obtain surplus value, while in socialist countries, the investment aims to expand reproduction and increase the accumulation of surplus product value so as to meet people's increasing demands for material, spiritual, and cultural living consumption. However, before deciding to invest, any investor must first consider the necessity for investment, the source and capacity of the investment fund, the maximum and minimum benefit of the investment process, surplus product value after investment, and the overall benefit of total investment.

I put the laws regarding the saved or wasted amount of investment, the shortened or extended project time, over production or under production of surplus product value as the law of production of surplus product value in the stage of investment. Understanding this law is very useful for socialist investment and construction.

In the same investment, the higher the use efficiency of investment funds is, the more the surplus product value after investment will be; the shorter the investment period is, the earlier the commodity production will achieve the surplus product value, which means the reduction of the investment amount, so the more rapid the economic development will be. On the other hand, we can see that the means of investment is the determining factor of investment returns. The person under pressure has a strong sense of responsibility. On the contrary, the person without pressure doesn't have as much sense of responsibility. So pressure can promote commodity production speed and enhance efficiency. Therefore, there is a close internal relationship between investment benefit and production efficiency after investment.

The production of surplus product value is the production of surplus labor, and the capital of expanded reproduction mainly comes from the accumulation of surplus product value and transforms into capital. The realization of relative surplus product not only has ordinary law, but also has special law, which is produced from special conditions encountered in the exchange of commodities. The benefit of the special law differs from the ordinary law of surplus product value, but it is also included in the general law of surplus value. At the same time, we can also see that the higher the level of science and technology, the higher labor's skill and technique quality, the more the surplus product value will be, and the higher the accumulation of capital transferred into funds.

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The theoretical model of Asian capitalism and the varieties of cooperation

Anthony Jensen , in Waking the Asian Pacific Co-Operative Potential, 2020

Governance

•

Ownership and corporate governance:

It is typical of Asian economies that control rests predominantly with families or in socialist countries, the state. Corporate governance rules to protect minority shareholders are weak. The lack of institutionalized trust discourages delegation and hinders the separation of ownership from control, which is crucial in the modern firm (Witt & Redding, 2013). Cooperatives can become vehicles for state welfare in a predatory state where there is both political interference in governance and corruption. This became a feature of many Indian agricultural cooperatives.

•

Internal structures:

Decision making in Asian firms is predominantly hierarchical and top down, except for in Japan, which has a participatory mode of decision making. This model could lead to the abrogation of responsibility in cooperatives and lack of participation at governance level, especially at annual general meetings. Decisions at the top level are sometimes based on family relationships. However, we could also ask whether there is a lack of participation or conversely a respect for hierarchy.

•

Financial structure:

Financial structure and finance raising are related to corporate governance. As with control, finance is raised from banks owned by business groups on preferential terms. Major banks are state controlled and are involved in policy-driven directed lending. In a developmental state, certain sectors are targeted (Witt & Redding, 2013). Some economists argue that member-based organizations increase corporate risk, and subsequently, the ability to borrow is reduced and the cost of borrowing increases. However, local finance systems have played a key role. In India, there is a traditional microfinance system, Panam Payattu, a money gathering game that informally supported cooperatives such as uralungal labour contract co-operative society to get through the start-up phase (Isaac & Williams, 2017, p. 91).

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Advancing the Building of the Rule of Law in China

Lin Li , in Building the Rule of Law in China, 2017

6.4.8 Boost "Anticorruption and Power Governance" Through Law-based Thinking and Ways

Power corruption is a deadly enemy of democracy and the rule of law, the biggest obstacle for building a socialist country under the rule of law. To comprehensively advance the rule by law, build the rule of law in China, and deepen the legal system reform, there is a need to put powers in the cage of the legal system and to use law-based thinking and ways to promote anticorruption and power governance. First, we should admit the "evil human nature" when facing public powers, i.e., remember that no one is a saint before the great temptation of public powers. Everyone has weaknesses, shortcomings, and limits. They may make mistakes and abuse powers. Even great revolutionists and great Marxists like Mao Zedong made mistakes. To admit the "evil human nature" matter-of-factly, we should not blindly trust or indulge any subject of public powers. Instead, we should put in place an effective legal system and law-based mechanism and put all public powers in the cage of laws and systems for the sake of justice. We should supervise and restrict all public powers and every public power holder. Second, we should use laws to control powers, use systems to regulate powers, use democracy to supervise powers, use powers and rights to restrict powers, and use virtue to restrict powers in order to reduce the opportunity of power corruption, while increasing the cost of power corruption. The top priority is to practically address the issues—who will supervise the supervisors, who will supervise top leaders, and who will supervise and control the real controller of people's property. Proper mechanism and law are the best means. We should study the rationality of the internationally-recognized mechanism i.e., "separating legislation, administration, and judiciary and making them mutually check and balance." We should actively introduce the "Rock–Paper–Scissors" cyclic constraint mechanism. Third, we should not only prioritize the top design for anticorruption and power governance, but also emphasize the design of specific institutions, links, procedures, and mechanisms. We should not only focus on educating and punishing the subject of public powers and preventing public powers from committing corruptions, but also try to prevent corruption channels and conditions such as market behaviors, economic behaviors, and social behaviors from eroding public powers. We should fill the institutional, systematic, and mechanical gaps at all levels, all links, all areas, and all aspects, and eradicate corruption on its "soil and hotbed." We should integrate national anticorruption resources, merge the party and national anticorruption institutions, and set up a national anticorruption commission, comprised of members from the party, the government, and the justice. We should use law-based thinking and ways to solve issues related to the legitimacy of "double designation." Lastly, we should give full play to the role of justice in anticorruption and power governance, eliminate various kinds of interventions and interferences, and practically guarantee that judicial organs exercise powers independently within the framework of the law. Judicial organs should exercise power impartially, based on facts and law. All kinds of corruption crimes should be severely punished according to the law. We should adhere to the principle that all people are equal before the law, and implement the principle that all those violating the party disciplines and state laws would be severely punished, no matter who are involved, how powerful they are, or what position they hold.

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Vietnam, Status of Media in

Russell Hiang-Khng Heng , in Encyclopedia of International Media and Communications, 2003

II Attrition of the Socialist Legacy

Although the VCP leadership will not admit to it, the party's doi moi policy has chipped away at the country's socialist legacy. Media changes are also best understood from the perspective of this attrition process.

Socialism did away with private ownership in many areas, and the media were not spared. Under the VCP, private ownership of media was gradually phased out after 1954, and no private publication legally exists as of now (although since the early 1990s, a few papers have been published as joint ventures between state organs and foreign investors). The 1990 Press Law does not specifically prohibit private ownership of media but is worded in such a way as to remove this possibility that was allowed under the previous 1957 legislation. So, for all intents and purposes, the media in Vietnam are entirely state owned.

Although media style and content have clearly moved away from the old image of what socialist media are all about, it is hard not to run into periodic reminders of that ideological baggage. Doctrinaire tracts continue to mark some of Vietnamese media literature, whether they are in the form of training manuals for journalists or historical narratives about the development of the press.

The following tenets provide an official flavor of what media should be all about. For example, the media are a weapon for class struggle and should first and foremost represent the interests of the proletariat. VCP leaders and the party's appointed ideological custodians never pass up an opportunity to remind the editors that the liberties of doi moi expose the media to the ideological threat of "commercialization." Commercialization is a blanket term that refers to any market-driven media behavior that ideological custodians do not like (e.g., selling too many advertisements). To be fair, these concerns with media standards occur everywhere, but in Vietnam's residual socialist system, the VCP casts them within a framework of adhering to ideological principles.

As doi moi allows the country to drift away from socialist orthodoxy, a central factor is a shift in economic paradigm. Socialist Vietnam is prepared to change from a centrally planned, state-controlled economy to one where free market principles are given enough room to reorganize beyond recognition the means of production and consumption. Along with this change has come reform measures such as ending state subsidy for all forms of economic activity, including media production.

This imperative for market reforms is frequently traced to the late 1970s. This was a time when the VCP was introducing a new spate of socialism-inspired economic policies that intensified central planning and collectivization. That renewed emphasis on socialism was partly a result of the VCP's 1975 military victory over a U.S.-supported non-Communist government that had been running the southern half of the country. Having defeated a superpower and reunified the country, the VCP leaders were flushed with ideological rectitude. However, accelerating socialist economic policies led to grim economic shortages and rampant inflation. The media also suffered from the economic repercussions. Alongside the paucity of food and other basic necessities, the free newsprint supplied by the state for newspapers became irregular. Economic privations intensified into the 1980s, and under those circumstances, the VCP had to tolerate rudimentary market reforms at the local level even as it continued to affirm its intention to promote an overarching socialist economy. The media, like all other economic sectors, started to fend for themselves. Media organizations started to get involved in ways of making money outside their usual line of business. This early experience gave the media valuable lessons in economic self-reliance. It bred a level of business dynamism in media organizations that was put to good use when market reforms were given considerably more scope from the mid-1980s.

But it was not just an economic crisis with which the media had to grapple. Editors and journalists realized that they were fast losing credibility with the public because media had continued to present a party-sanctioned rosy picture, greatly at odds with the harsh reality. They started to ask questions of themselves. Can media that have to be a voice of the party also not reflect different opinions coming from the masses? Can the media criticize policy if it is wrong or expose corruption at whatever level of the leadership? The intellectual ferment found its way into public expression, which the state tolerated in increasing measures because the leadership knew the discontent needed some outlet to stave off a legitimacy crisis. In essence, that meant a softening of the media climate, allowing for greater editorial flexibility and initiative. As a result, media became more interesting and began to build up a real consumer base.

Corruption, bureaucracy, abuse of power, and straitened economic conditions deepened the VCP's legitimacy crisis into the 1980s. International events also forced Vietnam's leaders to seriously consider more radical political and economic reforms. China under Deng Xiaoping and the Soviet Union under Gorbachev had launched their own liberalization programs. These were the compelling circumstances that pushed the VCP leadership into endorsing the doi moi policy at the 1986 party congress.

For the media, the early doi moi years opened up unprecedented opportunities to practice a more aggressive and undeterred form of journalism. The VCP officially urged the media to help highlight and fight systemic shortcomings. Its 1986 congress also selected a new party chief, Nguyen Van Linh, who saw political advantage in pushing the liberal agenda. Linh went on to personally spearhead a media campaign That criticized official failings with unprecedented vigor. He wrote a regular press column titled "Things That Must Be Done Immediately." The years from 1986 to 1989 were to become the most liberal years for public discourse. The Vietnamese media fought and won many causes célèbre during those years. For example, in 1986–1987, a group of newspaper, television, and radio journalists combined efforts to expose the abuse of power by Ha Trong Hoa, a Central Committee member, and had him sacked after a long 18-month struggle against the man and his powerful mentors at the party apex. Such media engagements with the controversial issues of the day had the effect of making media activism against the powerful less unthinkable.

However, there should be no illusion that the entire leadership was united in pushing the liberal agenda. Belying the progressive reforms was a situation of ideological uncertainty among the political elite. Individual leaders, calculating their political gains and losses with each proposal for reforms, often could not agree on what policies to apply in many different sectors. Where things were not expressly endorsed or disallowed, the more adventurous intellectuals/media practitioners saw openings and exploited them. Thus, the media gained new liberties by a mixture of design and default.

The paring down of the socialist legacy was not always easy, and in some instances it had to proceed with a degree of caution that outsiders may find perplexing. For example, during the initial stage of doi moi in 1987 and 1988, newspapers could not mention terms such as "market economy" and had to instead use socialist terms such as "commodity economy."

However, once market had become a legitimate term, its true significance was not just in the use of the word but also in the way the term became recognized as a legitimate force that shaped society. Market reforms forced major changes onto the media, with the most evident ones being in the print press. As the state abandoned more of its socialist-oriented subsidy policies, newspapers had to adopt market-rationalized practices. Revenue became more closely linked with circulation. The desire to raise circulation meant putting out a competitive product. Once the need to compete was established, a corollary of other hitherto neglected concepts followed and became absorbed into the changing media culture—concepts such as news having to be timely, information content having to be raised, and journalists having to be paid differently according to productivity and quality of work. Thus, the notion of media as businesses responding to market forces began to make inroads into old socialist mind-sets that had always seen the media as a propaganda organ for the party.

However, the media have won only a qualified victory for the market. A central ideological issue continues to beset media development: should information be regarded as a commodity? Information as a product is still a capitalist concept—anathema to Vietnam's socialist legacy. Linked to this are important economic questions such as private ownership of media, the permissible quantity for advertisement, and whether or not the minimal foreign investment that has been allowed in the media should be encouraged or phased out.

The doi moi policy ran into an interregnum in 1989 when the collapse of socialist regimes in the Soviet bloc startled the Vietnamese leadership. A conservative backlash began. As part of an overall tightening of control, liberal tendencies in the media were reined in. However, officially, the VCP remains committed to its doi moi policy. The difference is that the emphasis has shifted to economic reforms.

Throughout the 1990s, the impact of the market continued to manifest itself within the media. The first half of the 1990s were boom years for the Vietnamese economy. During this time, economic realities demonstrated that politics could not be quarantined in this dynamic process. Old political ways of a fossilized party culture still obstructed economic developments in major ways. Foreign investors grew weary of the rent-seeking behavior of bureaucrats and lost interest. This and a pan-Asia financial crisis beginning in 1997 put a pall on the earlier dazzling expectations for Vietnam's economy. The Hanoi leadership realized that it has to mend many of its ways to rekindle foreign economic interest in the country and also to stimulate its own domestic sector. Furthermore, normalization of diplomatic and trade ties with the United States came with conditions that the country should fulfill American expectations of democratic and human rights standards. This added to the pressure for renewed vigor in liberalization. Thus, during the closing years of the 1990s, the Vietnamese state entered into another phase of enthusiasm for liberal reforms. Not unexpectedly, the willingness to liberalize in economic areas remained greater, but the VCP had also been talking up the need for governance to be more democratic and responsive. Nevertheless, this is a regime that is still committed to the principle that the VCP is the sole legal political force to run the country for all times. The kind of pluralism it is trying to fashion can tolerate the expansion of boundaries for public policy debate, but this must take place within the parameters of a one-party state.

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International Economic Engagement

Rongxing Guo , in Understanding the Chinese Economies, 2013

12.3.1 Foreign Trade Regime in Transition

During the early stages of the PRC, China's foreign trade reflected, to a large extent, the basic characteristics of a socialist economy. To bring about socialist modernization in its own way, China did not adopt the strategy of 'founding a nation on trade' used by many industrially developed nations; rather, it was based on the principle of 'independence and self-reliance' during the first decades of the PRC. As a result, China lagged far behind the advanced nations. In order to achieve rapid economic modernization, the Chinese government has clearly recognized the importance of seeking new technologies through foreign trade and international cooperation.

China's foreign economic affairs had not been guided by a laissez-faire approach before, and even during the early stage of, the reform era. Intervention in the form of trade restrictions such as tariffs and licensing, subsidies, tax incentives, and active contact with the world economy exists on the sides of both imports and exports. China used to manage its foreign trade through a policy of high tariff rates. This policy had effectively promoted the developments of China's immature, domestic industries. However, it also had a negative effect upon the Chinese economy. For example, under the system of high tariff rates, products made abroad do not have an equal opportunity to enter the Chinese market as those made in China, which will inevitably prevent the importation of high-quality and cheap commodities from advanced nations, harming the interests of Chinese consumers, and finally providing fewer incentives for Chinese producers to improve their competitiveness.

In the 1950s, because of a trade embargo imposed by the USA and other Western nations, most foreign trade was restricted to the countries of the Soviet bloc. Following the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, there was a dramatic decrease in the level of foreign trade. Guided by the principle of 'self-reliance and independence', China's foreign trade and economic relations were not improved significantly before the early 1970s. Since then, its trade with the capitalist market increased gradually, as a result of the rapprochement with Japan, the USA, and some EU countries. However, because the autarkic economic policy was still in operation before the late 1970s, both the volume of Chinese foreign trade and the ratio of it to GDP were still very small at that time (see Figure 12.2).

Figure 12.2. China's foreign trade as a percentage of GDP, 1950–2010.

 Source: NBS, various years.

Generally, China's foreign trade is facilitated by both geographical factors and also the fact that people on both sides of the border often belong to the same minority group and share many cultural characteristics. China's border development has mainly benefited from its 'open-door' policy and rapprochement with the neighboring countries since the mid-1980s. In 1984 the Chinese government promulgated the 'Provisional Regulations for the Management of "Small-volume" Border Trade' and opened up hundreds of frontier cities and towns. In contrast to the eastern coastal development, which was fueled principally by foreign direct investment (FDI), China's inland frontier development has been characterized by border trade with its foreign neighbors. Since the early 1990s, a series of favorable and flexible measures to manage cross-border trade and economic cooperation have been granted to those frontier provinces.

Prior to the early 1980s, the management of foreign economic affairs rested in the hands of one government ministry that maintained an overly rigid control of matters. In the first years of the implementation of China's outward development strategy, the reform of the foreign economic system was conducted via three aspects. First, under the unified control of the state, there was a closer relationship between production and marketing and between industry and trade, which enabled production units to participate directly in foreign trade. Secondly, the special policies and measures relating to foreign trade were handed to the local governments. A third type of reform was to expand the autonomy of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to act on their own initiatives and have direct links with foreign traders at meetings arranged by specialized export SOEs.

In 1982, the Ministry of Foreign Trade (MFT) was renamed the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade (MFERT). At the same time, trade bureaus were established at provincial and local levels to manage both foreign trade and FDI. The MFERT and local trade bureaus were, in principle, not allowed to interfere in the management of foreign trade enterprises. Many large SOEs received permission to engage in foreign trade. Local enterprises were also able to establish their own foreign trade companies. In 1988, foreign trade was reformed by a system of contracts under which the separation between ownership (state) and management (enterprise) was maintained and thus foreign trade enterprises were able to operate independently. Despite these reforms, the fundamental structure of central planning and state ownership has not been changed fundamentally, particularly in large and medium-sized SOEs.

Before the 1980s, international trade was in the hands of central government planning, which controlled China's foreign trade by monopolizing the imports and exports of more than thousands categories of commodities. These commodities can be classified into two categories: plan-commanded goods (in which both the value and the volume of trade are strictly controlled) and plan-guided goods (in which only the value of trade is controlled). In 1984, there was a reform of the trade management system, with foreign trade enterprises being given autonomy to deal with international trade. In 1985, the number of goods under these categories was cut to about 100 each. By 1991, almost all exports were deregulated, with only 15 percent controlled by specially appointed trading companies. Imports have also been deregulated. The proportion of plan-commanded imports in the total import volume was reduced from 40 percent in 1985 to 18.5 percent in 1991 (Wan et al., 2004).

In parallel with the gradual acceleration of its economic reforms, China has increasingly amplified its foreign-related legal system, steadily improved its trade and investment environment, and enforced the intellectual property rights protection system. With regard to the issue of trade system transparency, China has sorted out and publicized all management documents that used to be deemed confidential. In 1993, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MFTEC) was established to reform laws and regulations on the management of foreign trade and economic cooperation. Import restrictions were eased still further. By 1994, almost all planning on imports and exports were abolished, with only a few exceptions where extremely important goods were traded by specially appointed trading companies. One year later, by the end of 1995, China had rescinded import licensing and quota controls on 826 tariff lines.

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The Five Groups of World Economies

Kui-Wai Li , in Redefining Capitalism in Global Economic Development, 2017

Abstract

Instead of classifying the world simply into developed and developing countries, this chapter uses political economy criteria to group the world into five categories of fragile states, emerging states, oil exporting and Middle East countries, the two socialist countries of Russia and China, and the rest of industrialized countries. Such a classification is bold but contemporary, as the economic ingredients are taken into account in each of these groupings. The characteristics of each group, in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, are discussed, and their role in the world economy can then be analyzed. The five groupings also lay out the economic and political dichotomies in the global economy, showing the areas of growth and alliance, as well as areas of conflicts. The chapter ends by hypothesizing on the political economy among the five groups of countries, and makes some preliminary predictions as to how the groups would react in global development.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128041819000082