The return of the people’s economy?
A note for Weekly newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader,
In the weeks before the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th congress, a video circulated showing Wēn Tiějūn 温铁军, a professor of agricultural economics at Renmin University, talking up the idea of a “people’s economy,” which he proposed should replace the current “socialist market economy.”
Rénmín 人民 means “people,” but no one interpreted the professor’s remarks to be about his school. Rather, the fact that the university has close ties to the Party and state caused observers to question if the phrase was yet another signal that the government was turning against the market.
In the last few weeks, a similar discussion has arisen after a provincial newspaper reported “1,373 grassroots supply and marketing cooperatives (供销社 gōngxiāoshè) had been restored with basic coverage across the whole province.” Widespread in China until the 1980s, supply and marketing cooperatives were a state-run system of supplying essential goods and products to people in rural areas of the country. They were the retail storefronts of the planned economy.
But how much weight should we give to one professor’s remarks, or one article in a small newspaper? Not much. But we’ve already heard all we need to know from Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, the man at the top, a long time ago. To name just two examples:
- In December 2012, Xi gave a speech that was leaked, in which he bemoaned the fall of the Soviet Union, memorably noting, “Proportionally, the Soviet Communist Party had more members than we do, but nobody was man enough to stand up and resist.”
- Document No. 9, the internal Party directive circulated in 2012 and 2013, warned of seven dangerous Western values and prohibited their teaching.
The market economy has worked out very well for China and its ruling party. But there is no question that Xi is a man of ideology, and that we will be hearing a lot more about concepts like “the people’s economy” — if not that particular phrase — in the months and years to come.
Our phrase of the week is: Totally reborn (脱胎换骨 tuōtāi huàngǔ). Click through to read more about the recent conversation in China about supply and marketing cooperatives.
