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)
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.