Well, few dengists would deny that the dismantling of the iron rice bowls, privatisation measures and neoliberal policies did not cause an immediate increase in extreme poverty. This is why I didn’t consider the paper relevant (I also agree with the basic facts presented).

Yet at the same time, the argument for why the PRC had to adopt these policies (temporarily) and why under xi jingping there is a turn away from these trends (started under hu jintao really) are linked, and complex.

Under the Mao era organisation of the economy, China faced many economic problems. It was isolated from the world, its technology was lagging behind the west, and the quality and quantity/quantity of consumer goods available to chinese citizens was limited.

These were the same problems that had destroyed the ussr, and the Chinese could see that it was a dead end. What they did was similar to cutting off a leg and eating it after getting stranded on a barren deserted island. Under ideal circumstances, the cpc would have never done deng’s reforms because it would have just been given access to all the tech and international trade it wanted with no strings attached.

When dengists celebrate deng’s reforms, what they are really celebrating is that the wound on the leg healed up and we found a way off the deserted island back to our normal life. Or at least, that’s my perspective on it. Basically, the Chinese people did not want to live under seige conditions waiting to be outcompeted and destroyed.