Fan Shitao “Economic Reform in an Interconnected World: China’s Story and Global Perspectives”

As part of its Global Reflections series, Institute Social hosted economist Prof. Fan Shitao from Beijing Normal University on January 22. The discussion examined China’s post-1978 reform process from a comparative perspective with the Soviet Union, focusing on the historical and institutional background of this transformation.

Fan Shitao emphasized that within the Soviet bloc, the dominant belief was that the socialist system could only be transformed through radical regime change. China, by contrast, chose to reform socialism from within. This approach, he noted, enabled China to achieve rapid economic growth while preserving the core features of a developmental party-state shaped under the leadership of the Communist Party.

Fan argued that the divergence between China and the Soviet Union in their approaches to reform cannot be explained solely by policy choices made after 1978. Rather, this divergence is rooted in the political legacy of the Mao era and in earlier institutional experiences. From the 1920s onward, China largely learned its political and economic organization from the Soviet model; however, this learning process evolved alongside a persistent search for strategic autonomy.

Fan noted that between 1976 and 1978, China began to redefine itself as a developmental state. Following Mao’s death, the Chinese Communist Party shifted its focus from class struggle to economic growth. High-level visits to Western countries reinforced perceptions of China’s relative backwardness and helped shape the new policy direction embodied in the “Four Modernizations” program.

By the 1980s, Fan explained, peaceful development had become a lasting strategic orientation for China. One of the most striking aspects of the reform process was that it was led by cadres who had previously been the standard-bearers of revolutionary politics. China debated the market economy through the examples of Yugoslavia and Hungary, yet consistently sought to adapt reforms to its own conditions.

In the final part of the discussion, Fan Shitao noted that China did not adopt the Washington Consensus, which was marketed to developing countries during the 1980s and 1990s as a market-oriented reform package, as a comprehensive policy blueprint. He argued that presenting privatization as a universal solution was incompatible with China’s historical experience and institutional structure. Instead, China opted for a gradual, selective reform path tailored to its specific national context.