State and market in post-1976 China: the great leap to the right

Abstract

The Chinese Economic Reform was developed on the shoulders of Party-State’s structures that were constituted between 1949 and 1976, or better, on the shoulders of its specters. The spoils of the People’s
Communes and the Revolutionary Committees – Maoist structures that served to organize labor and state administration, and were in the center of fierce disputes during the 1960 – served as bases to implement the
Reform during the 1970 and 1980. In order to legitimate this new use of old structures, the CCP promoted series of academic campaigns to rewrite Chinese history, and weave the discourse bases for the hegemony of a new State. However, the new Chinese economy is founded on deep crises of a recent past, and these crises haven’t yet been overcome.