Book Reviews : The Economy of Communist China: An Introduction. By YUAN-LI WU. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965. Pp. vii, 225. Paper $2.25.)

• Author: Kai-Loo Huang
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296601900167
• Published date: 01 March 1966
• Date: 01 March 1966
• Subject Matter: Articles

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used to typify the whole course of the hero’s development and thus anticipate what
follows. The reader gets very few gripping insights into the hero’s fearful process of
metamorphosis. The moralizing at the very end gets rather sticky. A few misprints,
for example in the Acknowledgements, detract from an otherwise elegant imprint.
WARD
M. MORTON
Southern Illinois University
The Economy of Communist China: An Introduction. By YUAN-LI WU. (New
York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965. Pp. vii, 225. Paper $2.25.)
This book covers the period of 1949-64, recommendable as an introduction for
readers interested in Communist China either as an economic experiment or as a
political power. In the opening chapter, Professor Wu notes that the Communist
economic development by planning and industrialization &dquo;is by no means a new
one,&dquo; as the Nationalist Government had tried to do the same during 1930-37. This
note will lead readers to ask, why did the Nationalist Government fail? In fact, the
Commune idea could be traced back to more than 2,000 years in Chinese political
theory, while land reforms had been tried many times and the recent one by the same
Nationalist Government in Taiwan. Many such problems found in this book could
constitute interesting subjects for further research.
The diagrams depicting government and planning organizations found in Chap-
ter 2 and Appendixes prove that bureaucracy develops just the same under any
system, only the Communist party commands even the statistics which turned out to
be a boomerang in due course. Analyzing the Planning Programs, the author plunges
into arguments in theory of economic development, and after feeding the readers
with confusing statements of the Communists, finally points out there are Communist
deviations contrary to their planning. In Chapter 4, the Communist Income Distri-
bution Planning is summed up with one &dquo;Principle of Low Wages.&dquo; Table V-1 in
chapter 5 can be considered a conspectus of...