IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aka/aoecon/v70y2020isp15-45.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Transition to a market economy: A retrospective comparison of China with countries of the former Soviet block

Author

Listed:
  • Marek Dabrowski

    (Non-Resident Fellow at Bruegel, Brussels, Belgium
    Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
    Center for Social and Economic Research, Warsaw, Poland)

Abstract

In the 1990s and early 2000s, comparison of transition strategies of China versus those in Central and Eastern Europe raised controversies in the economic and political science literature. However, differences between China and the countries of the former Soviet bloc in their transition strategies resulted not necessarily from a deliberate political choice but from different initial conditions. Low-income and largely rural China, after its first radical step (de-collectivisation of agriculture in 1978), could move more gradually due to its underindustrialisation and retaining administrative control over the economy. The over-industrialised Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and former Soviet Union (FSU) countries where the previous command system of economic management spontaneously collapsed at the end of 1980s, did not have such an option. They had to conduct market-oriented reforms as quickly as they could, with all the associated economic and social pain. Regardless of speed and strategy of transition, almost all previously centrally-planned economies, including China, completed building basic foundations of a market system by the early 2000s although the quality of economic and political institutions and policies differ between the sub-regional groups and individual countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Marek Dabrowski, 2020. "Transition to a market economy: A retrospective comparison of China with countries of the former Soviet block," Acta Oeconomica, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 70(s), pages 15-45, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:aka:aoecon:v:70:y:2020:i:s:p:15-45
    DOI: 10.1556/032.2020.00024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1556/032.2020.00024
    Download Restriction: subscription

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1556/032.2020.00024?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ikhtiyor Rasulov & Jin-I Ha & Aidana Zhumagulova & Nindya Dhaneswara, 2024. "Commonwealth of Independent States Transformation: Moving from Stagnation to Semi-Periphery," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 8(3), pages 294-299, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    post-communist transition; initial conditions; industrialisation; public sector; economic freedom; political freedom; democracy; business climate; political economy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • H63 - Public Economics - - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt - - - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt
    • P24 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - National Income, Product, and Expenditure; Money; Inflation
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights
    • P51 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems
    • P52 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Studies of Particular Economies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aka:aoecon:v:70:y:2020:i:s:p:15-45. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kriston, Orsolya (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://akademiai.hu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.