The Communist Path of Developmental State: The Chinese Experience.

This paper will reexamine the familiar story of successful East Asian developmental states versus the failed Chinese communist state. It argues that both states are actually the historical products of the Cold War and U.S. hegemonic struggles in the East Asia. It further argues that although the Chinese communist state failed to promote economic growth, the revolutionary Maoist project had constructed a strong party-state, promoted an intensive nationalist ideology, built up local infrastructure and institutions, and incurred no foreign debt, thus laying the foundation for its metamorphosis into a developmental state in the post-1978 reform era. However, having a communist origin, the Chinese developmental state has faced a different set of developmental problems from those facing the East Asian development states. At the end, this paper contends that the prospect for the Chinese developmental state depends on how it resolves the problems of socialist transitions and the problems of reintegration into the capitalist world-economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]