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The leaders of both Russia and China have initiated policies for immense economic reform since 1980. ... China’s leader in the 1980’s, Deng Xioaping, initiated policies intended for economic modernization. Deng Xioaping’s policies included reforms in limitations on agriculture and a restructuring of enterprise ownership, both designed to diverge from Mao’s centrally-planned economic system. As a result of the reforms, China’s economy improved dramatically for until the end of the century. But with no sectors left to liberate and unemployment dramatically increasing, its appears as though China’s economic prosperity is coming to an end, unless further reforms in a different direction are made. Russia’s first truly economic reformist leader after Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev, declared early on that his goal for Russia was to provide “economic well-being of the country and its people.” # He and his successors aimed to achieve this goal through marketization and economic liberalization of the state socialist economy they had inherited. Unlike China though, Russia’s economy plummeted in the 80’s and 90’s and became more unstable than before. The divergent effects of economic liberalization in China and Russia can be attributed to the opposing methods their leaders employed to implement their objectives.
Although Russia’s economic objectives were analogous to China’s when they were conceived in the early 1980‘s, their methods of reform were worlds apart. Russia’s major reformist leader of the 80‘s, Gorbachev, was primarily concerned with radically transforming Russia’s politics and foreign policies. As a result, his economic policies were somewhat incoherent and lacked concrete ways to be executed. ... While his ideas may have been in line with what Russia needed for a stable economy, his weak attempt at reforming it failed because of his preoccupation with reforming the other realms of government.
Russia’s next president, Boris Yeltsin, shared Gorbachev’s reformist mentality, but wanted to see Russia’s economy restructured immediately. In January of 1992, Yeltsin and his associates implemented an economic policy commonly referred to as shock therapy. ... However, after a long history of working solely for the benefit of the state, it proved to be too difficult for Russian business owners to escape the communist mentality and restructure their businesses under this new system of liberalization.
Approximate Word count = 1851
Approximate Pages = 7.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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