Chinese Economic Reform Under Communist Rule

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to some kind of generosity on the part of the Chinese Communist Party
to increase the populace's living standards. It had become clear to members of
the CCP that economic reform would fulfill a political purpose as well since the
party felt, properly it would seem, that it had suffered a loss of support. As
Susan L. Shirk describes the situation in The Political Logic of Economic Reform
in China, restoring the CCP's prestige required improving economic performance
and raising living standards. The traumatic experience of the Cultural
Revolution had eroded popular trust in the moral and political virtue of the CCP.
The party's leaders decided to shift the base of party legitimacy from virtue to
competence, and to do that they had to demonstrate that they could deliver the
goods. (23) This movement "from virtue to competence" seemed to mark a serious
departure from orthodox Chinese political theory. Confucius himself had posited
in the fifth century BCE that those individuals who ...

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(Xu 247). But Shirk feels
that, in those pre-Tienenmen days, such a move came about also as a result of an
attempt by CCP leaders to demonstrate, in a more practical and thus less
obviously ideological manner than Mao had done, their moral force. This is not
to say that the idea of economic reform was embraced enthusiastically by all
members of the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 1978. To a great
extent, the issue of economic reform became politicized as the issue was used as
a means by Deng Xiaoping to attain the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
Mao's successor, Hua Guofeng, had "tried to prove himself a worthy successor to
Mao by draping himself in the ...

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