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GLOBAL UNIVERSITY FOR SUSTAINABILITY BOOK SERIES Ten Crises The Political Economy of China’s Development (1949–2020) Wen Tiejun Global University for Sustainability Book Series Series Editors Lau Kin Chi, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China Sit Tsui, Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China, Southwest University, Chongqing, China 全球大学堂官网:https://our-global-u.org/oguorg/ 国仁全球大学堂:https://space.bilibili.com/679619486 微信公众号:Global U The book series aims to publish books and monographs drawing on the expertise of the Global U Founding Members by offering a succinct analysis of global crises affecting the ecological, social, political, and economic aspects, as well as to explore transformative visions and praxis for sustainability. Some books may be translated from their original language into English. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16706 Wen Tiejun Ten Crises The Political Economy of China’s Development (1949–2020) WenTiejun Beijing, China With Contrib. by Lau Kin Chi SitTsui Hong Kong, China Chongqing, China Global University for Sustainability Book Series ISBN 978-981-16-0454-6 ISBN 978-981-16-0455-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0455-3 ©The Editor(s) (if applicable) andThe Author(s) 2021.This book is an open access publication. OpenAccessThisbookislicensedunderthetermsoftheCreativeCommonsAttribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives4.0InternationalLicense(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/),whichpermits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this book or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license,unlessindicatedotherwiseinacreditlinetothematerial.Ifmaterialisnotincludedinthebook’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. This work is subject to copyright. All commercial rights are reserved by the author(s), whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped.Regardingthesecommercialrightsanon-exclusivelicense has been granted to the publisher. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication doesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfromtherelevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinformationinthisbook are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Alex Linch shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:152BeachRoad,#21-01/04GatewayEast,Singapore189721,Singapore Foreword ThisbookisthefirstoneoftheGlobalUniversityforSustainabilityBook Series published with Palgrave Macmillan. Global University for Sustainability (Global U) is an international network of around 200 renowned scholars/activists, with a substan- tial number from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, apart from those from Europe and North America. They are academic scholars, peace activists, community workers, food producers, and rural reconstruction promoters,amongothers(pleaseseehttps://our-global-u.org/oguorg/en/ founding-members/).The book series aims to publish books and mono- graphs drawing on the expertise of Global U Founding Members by offeringasuccinctanalysisofglobalcrisesaffectingtheecological,social, political, and economic aspects, as well as to explore transformative visions and praxis for sustainability. The three main categories falling under this series are: • General analysis (e.g., history of political economy of a country; issue ofsustainability; issue of nuclear disasters); with a focuson China but not only on China. v vi Foreword • Biographies or autobiographies of eminent thinkers from around the world,especiallyfromAsia,AfricaandLatinAmerica,connectingtheir personal trajectory to their thought and the larger context. • Analysisandinterpretationofon-the-groundexperienceshighlighting how local communities negotiate with economic and other forces impacting on them and organize in alternative ways. Professor Wen Tiejun, the author of this book, has a wide reader- ship across official institutions, academics, mass media, and grassroots communities. Apart from being a well-known expert of agrarian issues and policy advisor, he is a scholar/activist who has initiated the rural reconstruction movement in contemporary China (2000—the present), particularly promoting agro-ecology, sustainability, and rural regenera- tion. He is deeply involved in defending the livelihoods of small peas- antryinhiswholelife.In1968,whenhewas17yearsold,hewassentto mountainareasinShanxiProvincetoworkasapeasant.Thenheworked as a truck driver for 2 years and later as service worker for 4 years. He entered university when he turned 28 years old. His world vision has beenshapedby11yearsofworkingwithandlearningfrompeasantsand workers. These grassroots experiences have great influence on his rural sustainabilityexperimentsandpolicyresearch.Heisnamedbythemedia as an expert of sannong issues (three agrarian issues: peasant, village, and agriculture),whois“doingstudiesbyfoot”.Hehasdeliveredlecturesand provided training programs to tens of thousands of students, peasants, peasantworkers,andgovernmentofficers.Hehasalsodelivereddozensof lectures and interviews overseas. Recently, ProfessorWen won the award of FAO-China food hero (one of five winners) through online popular voting. One live-streamed lecture he delivered in August 2020 attracted 550,000 online watchers. Global U is organizing the English translation project of his biography: A Life with No Regrets: Life andThought ofWen Tiejun, translated by Alice Chan. The book, Ten Crises: The Political Economy of China’s Development (1949–2020), that presents itself to the readers here is a collective endeavour,theculminationofover12yearsofresearch,discussion,trans- lation,andwriting.Soonafterthe2008globalfinancialcrisis,theproject team headed by ProfessorWenTiejun and Professor Lau Kin Chi began Foreword vii a comparative study of the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries, which included empirical trips to a dozen countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, apart from Europe and North America, as well as many academic conferences and forums to discuss and debate the theme. In February 2011, a project on comparing Seven Emerging Countries, namely China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa and Turkey, was launched, which had the support of UNDP- China, Renmin University of China, Lingnan University, along with a couple of institutions. In December of the same year, the first South South Forum on Sustainability was organized, inviting most of the 100 participants from over 40 countries to one of the four 10-day field trips to different regions of China before or after the Forum which was held in Lingnan University in Hong Kong. (see https://our-global-u.org/ogu org/en/the-first-south-south-forum-on-sustainability/) The South South Forum on Sustainability has become an annual activity since 2016, and the Seventh Forum was convened in July 2020. The Global U, fermenting since 2008 and officially launched in 2015, has been the keyinstitutioncoordinatingtheseforumsandresearchprojects.Through the Global U network, Professor Wen and his team have continuously presented new insights and new findings on China’s development. In the comparative study of Seven Emerging Countries, we had a country research team for each country. For China, the core research team members were Professor Wen Tiejun, Professor Dong Xiaodan, Professor Lau Kin Chi, Professor Sit Tsui, and Dr. Erebus Wong. A basic framework and ample materials were taken from a project that ProfessorWenTiejun began in 1998–2000.At that time, he returned to researchworkintheMinistryofAgricultureafterbeingtransferredfrom his on-the-ground work to promote institutional changes in rural areas in China, and after the completion of his Ph.D. on “A Research on the Basic Economic System of Rural China”. He received a grant from the deputy director of a Chinese state-owned financial corporation to take up research and writing of the part on Economic History of a four-part “History of 20th Century China” project. After three years of research, the outline of the research report that he presented was considered inap- propriateforcontinuationandpublicationduetoitbeingtoofrankand blunt as regards the presentation of this history. The entire project was viii Foreword shelved. A short paper on the findings of this project was published in the Chinese journal Dushu, no. 3, 2001, titled “China’s Century-Long Quest for Industrialization: Four Bends in a River”. Thus, when the country report on China was initiated for the Seven Emerging Countries project, the research team based itself on these materials, conducted further research, and produced the Chinese book EightCrises:TheRealExperienceofChina’sEconomicHistory1949–2009. Published in January 2013, this became a bestseller, rather rare for an academic book, and had 25 prints as of June 2020. English translation of the book Eight Crises began in 2013, and was planned to be completed by 2016. However, on further discussion amongtheresearchteam,itwasfeltthatpresentationofthecrisis1949– 1950 would be necessary for it gives an analysis on how new China responded to the economic problems inherited from the Nationalist Party regime.The first crisis written in Chinese, a lengthy book version, was published in 2019 entitled Delinking: The True Experiences of How China Resolved the First Economic Crisis 1949–1952.With the first crisis being added to the original eight crises, and the global and domestic conditions taking a new turn towards crisis, it was then decided that the post-2013 period should be added as the tenth crisis. To support the team’s research and articulation, Professor Wen Tiejun came to Hong Kong in 2017 to video record, initially in English, and subsequently in Chinese (in 2017–2019), ten lectures of the ten crises, plus an overall introduction. (see https://our-global-u.org/oguorg/en/series-no-5-chi nas-real-experiences-professor-wen-tiejun-on-ten-cyclical-economic-cri ses-in-china-1949-2016/) The English subtitled edition of the lecture series will accompany the publication of this book. The book sets to debunk a highly simplistic but prevalent method- ologicalorideologicalperspectiveofreadingChina’sdevelopment,which generally divides the nation’s economic development by 1978 or the so- called Reform and Opening Up. By this view, before the Reform, China was caught up with the idea of socialism and was underdeveloped. After the Reform, economic vitality was unleashed by the force of market and hence the legacy of its dazzling development. Contradicting this view, thisbookcontextualizesChina’s70yearsofcontemporaryhistoryagainst one coherent backdrop: a late developing country endeavouring at all Foreword ix coststoindustrialize,beitnamedsocialismorcapitalism.China’sdefacto ideology is indeed developmentalism. We can see a red thread running through China’s torrential path of development: a series of crises arising out of its developmentalist effort. This path is complicated by China getting caught in the geo-political confrontation of two superpowers in the twentieth century: The Soviet Union and the USA. It illuminates howChinahasdealtwiththecrisesbyresolvingthemordeferringtothe next ones. Unlike developed countries which transferred their costs of development to others in less favourable status, China, the book argues, could only cope with these costs by internalizing them. As Professor Wen has been one of the leading researchers of the agrarian problem in China,heemphasizestheroleoftheruralsectorbeingasourceofsurplus extractionforindustrializationandreceptorofcostofdevelopmentbeing transferred by the urban sector. Ten Crises: A Summary Some mainstream grand narrative would divide China’s development into two periods marked by the year 1978. According to this narra- tive, the Chinese economy before 1978 had been strangled by insti- tutional constraints; afterwards, China took off because of the Reform and Open Up as its developmental momentum was released.This book does not take this mainstream narrative, but instead looks into China’s development as a process with various disruptions. As a late developing country with below average per capita resources, China has taken the path of introvert accumulation whereas the western model of expan- sionary and predatory development could not be followed. Under a condition of capital scarcity, China has relied on foreign investment in different periods with varied manners and therefore had to bear the cost, both financial and institutional, including foreign debts and insti- tutional contradictions (urban-rural dual structure, conflicts of interests between central and local governments, institutional adaption and tran- sitioninordertoaccommodateforeigninvestment, beitsovietisationin the 1950s or Americanization since the 1980s).These costs and contra- dictionswereexpressedassocial,economicandsocialtensions,aswellas

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