Thierry Pairault

La Chine en Algérie: quelle industrialisation ?

La desindustrialisation que l’on constaterait actuellement dans de nombreux pays trouverait sa « cause dans le grand bouleversement qui frappe les economies mondiales » – grands bouleversements dont la Chine pourrait etre responsable selon certains auteurs tels Gerard Lignac ou Alice Sindzingre. En revanche, Robert Lawrence et Lawrence Edwards ont montre que la Chine n’etait pas le facteur premier...

Economic relations between China and Maghreb countries

Relations between China and African countries are becoming better known, even if Sub-Saharan Africa is more often focused on than the Maghreb region. The organization of strikes by Algerian workers employed by Chinese firms or the repatriation of more than 30 000 Chinese workers from building sites in Libya has been widely reported. On the other hand, little is said about the role that China could actually play in the economy of Maghreb countries and about the diversity of these countries in their economic relations with China. Even less is said about whether the Chinese presence in Maghreb might foster the emergence of a new and more balanced partnership between European countries and Maghreb countries and promote new European co-operation governance. To address the issue the chapter brings together statistics published by international institutions (UNCTAD and Eurostat) and by Chinese statistical services. Successively, the question of the direct investment in Maghreb countries, the export of goods from Maghreb countries and the import of Chinese goods by Maghreb countries will be analysed. Finally, the question of whether China is currently contending with European Union Member States for influence in the Maghreb will be examined, along with the extent to which this could promote a new and more balanced partnership.

Chinese market mechanism: A controversial debate

The points made in works of Engels and Stalin on the ‘law of value’ under socialism remind us of the problem of the law of value’s relationship to commodity production under socialism, to market mechanisms, to planning. A useful bit of conceptual clarity was proposed by W. Brus who argued that the major economic decisions concerned with macroeconomics and economic growth need a degree of centralization; market forces can assist plan implementation in the circulation of agricultural and light industrial goods. Chen Yun stood for a wider role for market forces and decentralized decision-making. In the 1950s and again in 1979 he gained a good deal of support from the Deng faction. However the need for an adjustment policy of restricting the dominance of heavy industry and capital construction works led after December 1980, not to a deepening of economic reform but to the growing strength of centralizers like Li Xiannian supported by the military for their own ends.