- I think you raise a lot of important questions that a lot of people must have on the rapidly changing economic landscape and power of China. Perhaps it might be helpful to adopt a more expansive view of China’s economic history in order to better contextualize the why and how of China’s recent developments. As Americans, I feel like we often fall into patterns of looking at China from a Cold War perspective and we think of Chairman Mao as a very crucial, which I will not argue with, he is. However, in placing so much emphasis on Mao’s China, I think we run the risk of forgetting to think of the rest of China’s history. Mao is but one figure in what is a very expansive history that spans thousands of years. In the past, China has had very capitalistic patterns and it is very important to keep this in mind. It would probably also be very helpful to think of communism as both a political and economic system. Are both mutually exclusive? In looking at China, it seems they are not since politically they are a communist country, but not so much economically.
edited by nramon on 8/3/2016
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