System Design and Transformation: From Marx to China's Market-Oriented Reform

Author: Xue Hanwei
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: This book examines the theory and practice of socialism from the perspective of institutional design and transformation, focusing on describing four shifts in thinking and institutional changes in the formation and development of the socialist economic system. Institutional design is crucial, but due to the limited knowledge and capabilities of humans, any institutional design will inevitably have flaws, and its implementation will inevitably be constrained and corrected by spontaneous development. Therefore, space must be left for spontaneous development. The New Economic Policy and China's market-oriented reforms demonstrate that a good socialist economic system is the result of the interaction between institutional design aimed at achieving value goals and spontaneous development. Deviating from value goals and rejecting spontaneous development are important lessons from the history of institutional transformation in the socialist economic system. In the institutional innovation of socialism with Chinese characteristics, a benign interaction between institutional design and spontaneous evolution has been formed.