Progress of China
Jamal, On e-mail
Prior to socialism the private sector was the primary economic strength of China. In 1820 it made China the largest economy in the world and by 1860 Shanghai had become the financial and commercial hub of the East. Private enterprise was universal and vigorous and the private sector exercised considerable political power. In fact it was the attempt by Empress Dowager to nationalise the railroads that brought about the fall of the Qing Dynasty and ironically, by way of Sun Yat Sen's popular revolt, the ascent of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1949.At the time there were about half a million private enterprises in China active in a variety of sectors including mining, manufacturing, transportation, finance, and munitions. The private sector continued to drive the Chinese economy even under socialism but after the Korean War the CPC began to expropriate private sector assets citing ideological reasons. It is unacceptable in Maoist socialism for an individual to profit from the labour of another. By 1966 private enterprise had disappeared from China. An industrial structure consisting of state-owned enterprises with centrally planned capital allocation, production targets, wages, and prices was installed in its place. The system failed. The failure of the Communist economic system and the catastrophic impact of ill-conceived programs like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution drove the greatest entrepreneurial nation on earth back to the Stone Age. If apologies need to be made to the Chinese people one would imagine that the CPC has a lot more to apologise for than does anyone outside of China including Japan.
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