Special Economic Zones: The Chinese Road to Socialism?

The death of Mao Zedong signifies a change of policies in China. The balanced growth of city and countryside which occurred in the Maoist era is now replaced by a relative emphasis on an elitist urban-based development strategy which manifested itself in the establishment of the four Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in 1980. Although the utilisation of foreign capital and the import of capitalist management skills are justified by means of Lenin's theory of state capitalism, it shows that problems such as the flourishing economic crime, the creation of housing classes, and the undermining of socialist relations of production have already emerged in Shenzhen SEZ after a few years of development.

In this paper it is argued that the urban-based development strategy adopted by the new leadership should not be seen as a complete break with the Maoist strategy, as suggested by the employment of the dualistic approach—the radical line versus the revisionist line—in analysing Chinese development. In fact, the establishment of the SEZs and other commensurate measures do not necessarily indicate the Chinese road to capitalism or the complete victory of Deng Xiaoping and his followers, but they reveal that their ideas and policies continue to be counteracted and modified by the legacy of the Maoist vision.