What were the material differences such that the USSR was able to use central planning to develop their economy into a superpower, while the Chinese economy struggled to alleviate poverty without seeking foreign investment?
(I get that the question presupposes legitimacy of the Deng reforms and I am too much of an ignoramus to argue one or the other, so if you think the question is a fundamentally incorrect one I'm interested to know why too)
USSR was far, far wealthier than PRC as they were coming from a strong Russian empire while the PRC was coming from a colonized, occupied, and heavily imperialized China
When the PRC was just founded, China's GDP per capita was lower than most African countries
One thing that’s worth noting here is that China did make massively significant progress on things like life expectancy, literacy, health outcomes and hunger (except for during the famine during GLF) while Mao was still alive and prior to Deng’s reforms. I believe there’s a UN report out there somewhere that came out in the 90s which has a lot of data showing this.
No doubt - as I understand this is generally true for all AES states. I guess I was wondering mostly what prevented China from being able to use its internal resources to fully industrialize without external investment, whereas the USSR seemed able to do this.
It’s a good question and I don’t know enough to answer it articulately. Somebody else will have more useful insights for sure.
My idea is that nothing actually would have prevented China from industrializing without importing western capital, it just made the process faster and less toilsome. The options open to China were essentially industrializing solo, with incredible amounts of toiling, or importing capital from the USSR which began to be less appealing with the Sino-Soviet split, or import it from the west which is what they ended up doing . The USSR never really had an option to do that post WW2 even if they had wanted to, China had that opportunity precisely because the west found it politically acceptable to do business with China as part of winning the Cold War against Russia. China also pursued the first two options to various extents before the Sino-Soviet split and reproachment with the west.
Internal resource? Is China have that much natural resources to begin with. Like, there's a reason why they have to buy resources from Russia, Australia and middle east. Even then, they need outside investment since they just finished civil war and kind of backward, needing to catch up fast.
The Soviets had quite a lot of money come in from outside russia after the revolution tbf.
Would the Soviet Economy look more like China today if it had kept the NEP?
One example of the top of my dome is that during some of the big famines after the revolution there was a large aid movement from the West. I can try and find a source.
The Russian Empire up to its collapse did have a small developing industrial sector that was dragging it out of feudalism. Urban and industrial centers were developing along similar lines as the early British industrial revolution in terms of industrial capacity and bourgeois exploitation.
Contrary to the other industrialized nations, tsarist Russians capitalist class was quite small and not capable enough of sustaining the kind of industrialization that was happening and so relied heavily on Foreign investors and speculators to fund the industrialization of the Russian Empire. This meant there were British oil rigs in Baku, French coal mines in the donbass, American banks in petrograd, etc. It was a whole international financial capitalist garden of eden in terms of new markets opening up to parasite the peoples wealth out of their veins.
Contrary to that, China at the same period was rather too unstable for the major financial investment and industrialist development the tsarist empire experienced, as there were famines, opium crisis, civil wars, and the schisming of the Chinese empire altogether into regional warlords. Throw in as well how China was seen as a literal treasure chest to be looted by the imperialist powers up to ww2, and you can see why it's simpler if rather reductive to say that China was underdeveloped and overexploited.
I can't really comment on any of that since I've read nothing on the subject so I'll take your word on it.
I'd say your speculation and opinions are based off of your own studies in that area, so it would stand on much firmer ground than any assertion I could make on the PRC's economic history.
Chinese economy pre-evolution inherited and hyperinflated currency from the KMT government that is pegged onto the US dollars.
They needed to stabilize the currency by going back to a mostly agrarian economy where the RMB are pegged to the agrarian economy (a more tangible economy sector at the time). Once the money is stabilized, the country seeks to find foreign countries to developed (50s: USSR, 70s France,Canada,France, 80s-90s USA). This usually leads to Economy downturn due to weak currency and also overstaffing of people in urban industrial sector. And each time, they would delink with foreign country and go back to the agrarian economy to sponge up the economy loss. This back and forth is done until it reached the point where in the 90s there was the liberalization era where China integrated itself onto the global system and have to navigate and adapt the countries policies to the global market fluctuation.
There is a very interesting book on this subject by Wen TieJun called "ten crises"
Thank you for the book recommendation - I found your comment quite confusing (due to my ignorance, not your communication), do you think I'd be able to read that book with a layperson's understanding of basic economics?
The book is interesting and easy to read. I think i still have some difficulties gasping the era started from the 80s where there are more technical terms used.
