Efficiency, Planning, and Economic Interactions in China: A Visitor's Report

Having carried out studies on Chinese economic development and organization for some time before visiting China in August 1972, I was concerned with clarifying a number of issues concerning how the economy functioned. Traveling with the first group of American Radical Political Economists, I had ample opportunity to visit production and distribution organizations â factories of various types, communes, a coal mine, a department store, a produce and meat market, cooperative workshops, and so forth. Besides engaging in lengthy discussions with responsible personnel at each of these places, the members of our group were also able to talk at length with academic economists from Peking and Futan (Shanghai) Universities, and with officials from the Ministry of Commerce and the People's Bank of China. In talking with the Chinese and in making observations, I was particularly concerned with grasping principal relationships and interactions within the economy, and with understanding the rationale for the patterns of economic organization that have emerged.