Capitalism and Entrepreneurship in Socialist China
Contrary to popular belief, the modern Chinese economy did not spring into being in 1978 with Deng Xiaoping’s call for “Reform and Opening Up.” Rather, it was a product of an incremental, bottom-up transformation, decades in the making. As my research shows, throughout China’s socialist era, citizens at all levels of society— from farmers who illegally traded ration coupons, to state officials who colluded with underground factories to manufacture goods— actively subverted state control to profit from inefficiencies in planning and, more generally, to make things work. In the absence of “good institutions,” they formed illicit networks that subsumed the ordinary functions of markets (ex. coordination, information aggregation, risk sharing, lending) and created productive assemblages of capital, labor, and knowledge. Drawing upon an array of unconventional sources that have never before been examined by scholars, I will argue that capitalism and entrepreneurship not only supported the functioning of China’s socialist economy, but fundamentally reshaped it and created the conditions for subsequent economic growth.
Speaker Details
Adam Frost is a PhD student at Harvard University who specializes in the economic history of modern China. His research broadly explores the history of informal economies, from unlicensed taxi drivers in 1920’s Shanghai, to underground entrepreneurs in socialist China, to beggars in contemporary Xi’an. In addition to conducting traditional archival research, Adam draws heavily upon ethnography, oral history, and contraband documents. Most recently he completed a documentary on the everyday lives of beggars in Northwest China entitled, The End of Bitterness.
- Date:
- Speakers:
- Adam Frost
- Affiliation:
- Harvard University