The Private Economy (I). Guest Editor: Stanley Rosen

Among the many controversial economic initiatives introduced by China's reformers in the post-Mao period, the revival and expansion of private enterprise must rank near the top. Brought back as an adjunct to the "major" sectors of the socialist economy-state and collective enterprisesâthe private or individual economy was intended to be small-scale and to solve some acute problems facing the Chinese government after the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps most important, the private economy was expected to absorb many unemployed urban youth. The numbers of jobless young people had become a serious problem for at least two reasons. First, the new emphasis on educational quality dictated an abrupt reversal of the educational expansion that had marked the Cultural Revolution stress on equality. Thus, the number of secondary school students went from 68 million in 1977 down to 44 million by 1983. Second, the majority of the 17 million or so youth sent to the countryside during the 1960s and 1970s had already been able to return to China's cities.