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Inheritance
The roots of China’s recent boom extend deep into its imperial and communist past. But tradition’s legacy is a complicated one. To achieve modern development, China had to throw off the “yoke” of traditional society. Yet the long traditions of centralized government administration, kin-based entrepreneurism, and value placed on education and diligence prepared the Chinese well for capitalism. Despite catastrophes like the Great Leap Forward and the famine in its wake, Mao Zedong’s nation building efforts between the founding of the PRC in 1949 and the unleashing of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 laid socialist foundations for the subsequent boom. Even the disastrous, decade-long Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution contributed to the boom: By eroding public support for radical politics, the ground was cleared for a transition from revolution to reform—for new policies that were gradualist, internationalist and capitalist. |
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The Cultural Revolution Created Pent-Up DesirePeriod: Inheritance (Pre-1978)
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Click to expand In our company for example, we had a chairman here in 1977, shortly after the cultural revolution. And I was here in 1980s. So uh, there was a quick desire for change. I think the people are really sort of smart. You know, you go to all these factories and there was at least one or two people who really knew what they were doing. So the college education was devastated during the cultural revolution, but there still were people. Every factory I went to there was kinda one person who really knew what was going on and generally directed the technology in such a manner that you know, this person knew how to install the equipment, that person knew how to get quality out of it. You had the leadership and you have the workers, and you had one or two people at the plant who were just excited about technology and really wanted to make it work. And I found it very invigorating. If I look back, my plant in Hangzhou had one guy, the one in Guangxi or Nanning had two, Shanghai had a bunch. They were ready to produce, ready to do good quality,and nothing was gonna stop them. And it was really exciting attitude at the time. And that was in 81, 83. And then you walk around the streets and at that time it was the situation that you couldn't just leave the State-owned enterprises, they had your dang'an or your file and you couldn't go, you're stuck. Yet, there was a pent-up desire. I wanna go to shanghai, I wanna do this, I wanna do that.
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