5 - The Chinese State in the Post-Mao Era

Summary

If we do not institute a reform of our political structure, it will be difficult to carry out the reform of our economic structure.

The Chinese state evolved greatly during the post-Mao era. Deng Xiaoping left his successors a state (and society) very different from that which he inherited from Mao, while the post-Deng regime continues to restructure the state and reform its relationship with society. As Frederick Teiwes elucidates in the preceding chapter, Mao bequeathed to Deng a “totalistic” state characterized by highly personalized and concentrated power; an expansive and intrusive Leninist organizational apparatus that employed commandist, coercive, and mobilizational techniques of rule; with autarkic approaches to development and foreign affairs. The Chinese state under Mao was all-inclusive, playing multiple roles normally left to the private sector in many countries: employer, saver, investor, manager, economic planner, price setter, social provider, and redistributor of social and economic resources. All of these formerly totalistic functions performed by the Maoist state changed fundamentally under Deng, and are further devolving to subnational and nonstate actors in the post-Deng era.

The declining role of the state is best seen through the lens of the economy. Consider a few examples. When Mao died in 1976 the state was the monopolistic owner and employer of the means of production. By 1998 the state sector accounted for only 45 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employed only 18 percent of the work force (those employed in the service sector have risen from less than 5 percent to nearly 30 percent today). As an investor in the economy, the share of central state appropriation has declined substantially, from 36 percent in 1982 to a mere 3 percent today.