World Economics

Author: Chief Editor: Zhang Bolin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-01-01
Features: Excerpt: Despite this, the analysis of international trade, international finance, and other aspects of international economics in the field of international economics holds significance for our research on the world economy. As an independent discipline within economics, world economics began to be established in China in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, world economy research guided by Marxism was already underway. However, in the 1950s, the focus was primarily on the economies of some important countries and significant world economic issues, without the proposal to establish a specialized discipline of world economics. In the early 1960s, some scholars proposed the establishment of Marxist world economics and published articles and conducted discussions on the subject, methods, and scope of this discipline. However, this exploration was interrupted by the "Cultural Revolution." In the late 1970s, following the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, China entered a new era of socialist modernization and implemented the reform and opening-up policy. Against this backdrop, research on the world economy gained increasing attention. In 1979, the National Conference on the Planning of World Economy Disciplines was held; in 1980, the China Society of World Economics was established to organize discipline teams; and in the same year, Qian Junrui published the article "Striving for the Creation and Development of Marxist World Economics," while many other scholars also published similar articles on the objectives, methods, and systems of establishing the discipline of world economics. The creation of world economics was put on the agenda. In the following decade, a large number of specialized works such as "World Economics" and "Principles of World Economics" were published across the country, systematically organized. It can be said that world economics, as a specialized discipline within economics, has been established and is continuously being refined and developed. The discipline of world economics at the Central Party School also began in the late 1970s and early 1980s, initially focusing on the study of contemporary capitalist economies, with achievements such as the 1982 publication of "The Economy of Modern Monopoly Capitalism" (edited by Qiu Qihua, deputy edited by Wu Jian). Since the mid-1980s, world economics has been taught and researched as a specialized discipline and independent major at the Central Party School. Its achievements include the 1989 publication of "World Economics" (edited by Qiu Qihua, deputy edited by Mao Rongfang) and the 1993 publication of "The International Environment for China's Development of a Market Economy" (edited by Mao Rongfang, Zhang Bolin, and Sun Zhongtao). This book is the third textbook and academic work on world economics collectively compiled by faculty members at the Central Party School engaged in teaching and research on world economics, following the two aforementioned books. The structure of the entire book and its chapters have been reorganized and updated based on new developments and the authors' current understanding of objective reality, building upon and drawing from previous achievements. Undoubtedly, the principles of world economics reflected in this book represent only the views of the authors and still await further maturation and refinement.
Section 2: The Object, Methods, and Content System of World Economics
I. The Object of World Economics
The object of world economics, in brief, is the world economy. World economics is the science that studies the movement, changes, and development patterns of the world economy. The object of world economics includes the following three aspects.
(1) Studying the National Economies as Components of the World Economy
The world economy is composed of national economies, meaning that national economies are the constituent elements, basic units, and cells of the world economy. Without national economies, there would be no world economy. The national economy is a comprehensive system formed by the interconnected and organically integrated economies of various regions and sectors within a country. In the long history before capitalism, the economies of different sectors and regions were largely isolated and disconnected, making it impossible to form a unified national economy. Due to the Industrial Revolution, capitalist artisanal production transitioned to machine-based large-scale industry, closely linking the economies of different regions and sectors within a country, thereby forming a national economy. The formation of the national economy created the premise for the formation of the world economy, making the study of national economies an indispensable part of the research object of world economics and the first aspect to address. However, the national economy studied by world economics is the national economy as an organic component of the world economy, not the study of the national economy itself. Currently, there are over 200 countries and regions in the world. Studying each of them individually in world economics is neither possible nor necessary.