Evolution of Economic Policies and the Maoist Interpretation of the Socialist Transition (1949-1976)

Abstract

Before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Communist Party of China, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, sought to build a post-capitalist society based on the country’s existing socioeconomic particularities and the establishment of the Soviet Union as a superpower and embodiment of socialism. In the early post-Revolution years (1949-1957), the Party actively engaged in implementing the previously planned stages - New Democracy and Socialism. However, the interrelations between the contradictions arising from the transplantation of the Soviet model to China and changes in the geopolitical scenario created the material conditions necessary for the theoretical development of new historical stages within the Chinese revolutionary context. The most notable consequences were those related to the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Retrospectively, and from a historical analysis, certain regularities can be abstracted - although, evidently, endowed with specificities - from both the theoretical conceptions and the movements of economic policies implemented during the Mao Era.