Neoliberal Economic Thinking and the Quest for Rational Socialism in China: Ludwig von Mises and the Market Reform Debate

Abstract

This paper investigates the long first decade of reform in China (1978–1992) to show that Mises became relevant to the reconfiguration of China's political economy in this period. Mises's critique of socialism came to be debated throughout the 1980s and Chinese economists developed their own reading of Mises and the socialist calculation debate. When Deng Xiaoping reinstated market reforms in the early 1990s, a history of thought review of the possibility of rational socialism and socialist markets helped to justify the Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics as the official designation of China's economic system to this day.