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Why the great leap forward continues
John Ross's book provides an in-depth description of China’s rise, the political strategy that has made that possible and what can be learned from it, says CARLOS MARTINEZ
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China’s Great Road: Lessons for Marxist Theory and Socialist Practices
by John Ross
(Praxis Press, £15)
IN THE 71 years since the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949, China has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world, with the vast bulk of the population enduring abject poverty, to the brink of becoming a high-income country which has achieved total elimination of absolute poverty and the world’s fastest rise in average living standards.
Such is the human reality behind the abstract notion of China’s rise. The country’s life expectancy in 1949 was around 35, now it is 77. Illiteracy, malnutrition and homelessness were endemic, now they have been eliminated.
In his book, John Ross makes it very clear that China’s successes are those of socialism. Yet Western economists have long insisted that any “China miracle” exists within a framework of capitalism. In this version of events, China dropped socialism in the late 1970s, adopted capitalism and let the neoliberal magic do its work.
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