Alexander Eckstein

The Economic Development of Manchuria: The Rise of a Frontier Economy

The paper we are presenting here is in essence an interim research report, a summary and preliminary analysis of findings based on a larger study still under way. Thus both the findings and the interpretations are subject to revision as we continue and complete our investigation.

Population, Sovereignty, and the Share of Foreign Trade

What are the main influences on the share of international transactions in the total ensemble of economic activities of a country? Do national economies become more international in the course of time or of economic development? Do their international sectors grow or decline, relative to the rest, with the size of states, or with the growth of population, or with the increase of literacy, with the growth of per capita income, or with the shift from colonial status to national independence ? Or is the opposite the case ? Or do these conditions seem to have no appreciable effects on the relative share of foreign trade among the total economic activities in a country?

Misunderstanding the Chinese Economy--A Review Article@@@China's Republican Economy: An Introduction.@@@The Chinese Economy: Past and Present.@@@China's Economic Revolution.@@@China's Economy: A Basic Guide.

Four recent studies of the modern Chinese economy show how the disciplines of economics and history have produced different judgments about the economic changes of the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. These differences are overridden, however, by shared disciplinary concerns with problems of inequality and the growth of the modern state. Economists have demonstrated statistically that regional variations (particularly urban-rural differences), coupled with the size of the Chinese polity, continue to pose many of the same administrative problems for the modern state that they posed during the late empire and in turn have produced some similar strategies for ruling. These enduring problems are located squarely in the order of production in Chinas agrarian peasant communities and in the logistical problems of distributing what is produced there through an integrated political and economic system.

China's Economic Revolution.

Professor Ecksteins book is a study of Chinas efforts to achieve rapid modernization of its economy within a socialist framework. Eckstein begins with an examination of economic development in pre-Communist China, specifically focusing on the resources and liabilities inherited by the new regime in 1949 and their effects on development policies. He then analyses the economic objectives of the Communist leadership - narrowing income disparities, maintaining full employment without inflation, and achieving rapid industrialization - and argues that the implementation of these goals required a potent ideology capable of providing a strong faith and motivational force for the mass mobilization of resources. In discussing the methods used by the government to achieve its aims, Eckstein makes a thorough evaluation of Chinas general framework for economic planning, particularly in regard to the distribution and pricing of farm products and the allocation of resources in the industrial sector. The author also evaluates the radical institutional changes in property relations and in economic organization in the Peoples Republic of China.