Seven Policies that Opened China, 1979-1990
By 2030, some experts predict that China will replace the United States as the world's most important economy.
This transformation began in the early 1980s, when the party-state adopted seven key policies that promoted greater integration between the global and coastal economies, while protecting the less competitive interior. By establishing the special economic zones and decentralizing economic powers, party leaders hoped to use the international marketplace and foreign investors to act as dynamos of domestic development.
By the late 1980s, party leaders successfully confronted objections from ideological foes and bureaucratic Stalinists, prosecuted officials engaged in smuggling and corruption, as well as trampled demands for fundamental political change.
These seven policies thus heralded a fundamental transformation to an outward-oriented development strategy, provided financing for China’s military modernization, but also preserved the hegemonic political power of the party-state.
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