IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-4039-1860-4_6.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

China’s Puzzle Game: Four Spatial Shifts of Development

In: China’s Transition to a Global Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Wang
  • Michael Webber
  • Zhu Ying

Abstract

The Chinese policy makers should be perhaps the best chess players for they have been entitled to set up regional development priorities for different regions at different times. Mao Zedong and the founders of the PRC could directly move any chessman without much hesitation under the centrally planned economy of 1949-76. Deng Xiaoping made every move of his chessmen using two hands. His visible hand, like Mao’s, was the central control mechanism; the other was his invisible hand — the market mechanism. Deng gradually introduced a market economic system into China but his visible hand guaranteed that every move of the chessmen was accomplished, because of his seniority and reputation in the CCP and powerful personality. This may be the beauty of a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. Deng’s successor, Jiang Zemin, has a weak visible hand and a strong invisible hand. After over 20 years of economic reform and political change, local governments have tasted the benefits of freedom and autonomy and frequently bargain with the central government. The current political system does not allow Jiang directly to intervene in too many economic development issues. He has to use market forces to fulfil his regional development goals. However, for these three generations of Chinese leaders, it matters less whether the hand is visible or invisible, than that it translates their ideas about strategic regional development into action.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Wang & Michael Webber & Zhu Ying, 2002. "China’s Puzzle Game: Four Spatial Shifts of Development," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Michael Webber & Mark Wang & Zhu Ying (ed.), China’s Transition to a Global Economy, chapter 6, pages 113-142, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-1860-4_6
    DOI: 10.1057/9781403918604_6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-1860-4_6. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    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.