The people of East Timor and Papua, along with at least 500,000 “Communists”, would like a word with you on the Indonesian state’s ability to repress people, especially as this is during the era of Suharto.
Global economic effects of a non-Dengist China
- Thread starter Changundramon
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It didn't get massive investments in the 80's and the USSR would still fall as Gorbachev would still make mistakes in his reforms, why would the Soviets begin investing in China? They already had problems funding all of their allies, China would just be a massive loss of money for the Soviets as they wouldn't give anything in return.
Maybe they can heal the Sino-Soviet split but not more than that.
As for the Chinese making the USSR survive as some suggested, its impossible as the Soviet leadership (Gorbachev and his followers) wanted to reform and the Chinese even if they wanted wouldn't have the financial resources to save the USSR from collapse.
Differential labour costs not existing. Capital saturation fleeing manufacture as over saturated. Slower circuits of capital return when you dump capital into housing rather than manufacture. Marx observed it first but Keynes second. “Low equilibrium trap.”
-Yes. They would. Indonesia has had continuous recourse to forms of repression incompatible with Fordism let alone post Fordism. The East Timorese and Chinese ethnicity Indonesians and Indonesian communists would have loved the repression standards of Eastern Europe: the factory system rather than the band of 500 armed men.
Why did they massively invest in China pre Sino-Soviet split? Why did they invest in India in the 60's and 70's? Because China is 1/4 of the worlds population and having influence in China improves the Soviet position vis-a-vis the cold war and global power politics.
The USSR wanted to reform and so fell because it was obvious they were losing the cold war so they sued for terms, and ended the ideological conflict with the west - something which was holding them together. Now, if they still have China in their camp, the calculus changes, they probably don't want to reform, remain committed to their ideological conflict with the west and united by a shared foe.
And China did get US Investment in the 80's:
After assuming power in 1978, Deng Xiaoping prioritized the policy of attracting foreign investment ... To accelerate the process of opening to foreign capital and technology, the Chinese government provided presential treatments to foreign direct investment. That included tax incentives and loosening of administration restrictions. The government initially passed laws like the Equity Joint Venture Income Tax Law, the Foreign Enterprise Income Tax Law and the Industrial and Commercial Tax Provisions, and further in the 1980s, the Regulations for the Implementation of the Law on Chinese-Foreign Equity Joint Ventures, the Law on Enterprises Operated Exclusively with Foreign Capital and the Provisions of the State Council on the Encouragement of Foreign Investment and the Law on Chinese–Foreign Contractual Joint Ventures.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_direct_investment_in_China
Initiatives from central leadership were crucial in encouraging local officials and elites to engage with foreign direct investment
Yes they did have some things in China but those were advisors and scientifical co-operations they didn't shower the Chinese with money.
And yes the Chinese government received some help from the U.S. but it didn't completely change the situation of China it only helped the reforms which China was making.
And NO the Soviets didn't end the Cold War ideology split because they were losing the Cold War, you need some historical context:
The Soviet system was ineffective because of the planned economy and a combination of other factors, therefore the government was constantly losing money, this budget deficit was covered by selling oil (ironically to the West) during the 70's, however the oil prices went down during the 80's therefore the Soviets were starting to fall into debt (also other nations of the Warsaw Pact, this was the reason why Poland couldn't lower bread prices which was one of the main factors behind Solidarność), to the Soviet leadership it was becoming clear that something needed to change, Andropov (secretary of the Communist party, he believed in a more Deng Xiaoping way of reforming the Soviet Union) was the first one to realize this and started to make reforms however he would die in 1984 which prevented him from making additional reforms.
One of Andropov's friends was Gorbachev a man who had democratic and liberal ideals despite still believing in communism (a contradiction for me but he had no problem with that) Gorbachev would arrive in power in 1985 and would start to reform however he would fail as he destroyed his powerbase in the Politburo without creating a new one and because his economic reforms would fail, this lead to the rise of nationalist and separatist movements in the Union, Gorbachev despite his immense executive power would fail to respond to this problem for a long time until in December 1991 the Soviet Union would collapse.
Basically the USSR will fall with or without the friendship of China as the problems that plagued the Soviets wouldn't magically be solved by the Chinese.
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I was actually thinking about this the other day. Mind you it was just me talking to myself, but I think that any form of China that is unified and has its shit together is going to be an export powerhouse regardless of the government in charge. KMT, dengist or hardliner, I do genuinely believe there would be a fairly substantial export market.
Would it get to the same level as OTL? Probably not but you would still see people moving factories to China. At first it might only be clothes and shoes, but it would still happen.
Would it get to the same level as OTL? Probably not but you would still see people moving factories to China. At first it might only be clothes and shoes, but it would still happen.
If the Chinese government remains hard-line communist it would be more similar to an inferior version of the USSR than what it is today as yes it has a massive population but so does India and despite what the Indian government says India won't be a world superpower anytime soon
Most of the investments that could go to China in the 1980s or 1990s will go to Eastern Europe. There will be a faster process of absorbing these countries into the structures of organizations such as NATO or the EU.
The downside is that Russia plays a much greater role in such conditions.
The downside is that Russia plays a much greater role in such conditions.
Eastern Europe wouldn't suddenly have the same standard of living of Western Europe, while some industries and some capital would go to the East most would remain in the West.
Found the American.
I will acknowledge that this is what historians who are American nationals, writing in English, tend to say.
The statistics show that other than Japan, no society has ever grown as fast as the USSR economically bar Japan. And their economy collapsed in the 90's when they moved to the inferior market economy model, but whatever.
Plenty of Empires had economies far less efficient than the USSR that only existed in the minds of American propagandists. The USSR did have some economic problems (no economy ever hasn't) but the biggest problem was that they spent 1/8 of their GDP on the military. Which was a drain, so they wanted to end the cold war and ideological conflict so they could stop doing this. If China was on-side, China could have shared the defense burden and the USSR wouldn't have felt the need to end the cold war and massive defense spending - which they wouldn't be doing because the Chinese were doing 1/3 of it for them.
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No:
I was summarizing I can't say every single reason why the economy wasn't great. Plus I'm not American.
While the economy did grew during Stalin that was because Stalin took persons from the rural parts of the USSR and put them to work in factories, not because he improved the system, he just replicated it on a much larger scale.
While the military budget of the USSR was big it wasn't an unbearable burden, actually the military industry was the only one (with the nuclear one) which was on the West's level, the problem was that the rest of the system was inefficient, example: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T00313R000300020005-4.pdf
Also China wouldn't help the Soviets in their economic struggles, China pre-Deng wasn't ready to take over the Soviet burden as they didn't have the technological knowledge to fight with the U.S. in the race to armaments and didn't have the economical resource (nor the will) to save the Soviet economic system.
The Soviet leadership absolutely didn't want to end the Cold War and the ideological conflict until Gorbachev came to power, they had acknowledged however that they needed to reform the economy as the current system wasn't good enough.
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Actually a lot of people after the collapse of the USSR were saying "If only Andropov had lived longer", however that is quite unlikely as the dude was born in 1914 so a more realistic scenario would be "What if Gorbachev didn't believe in democracy?" or something like that.
Or "What if Brezhnev died earlier?"
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Soviet society is more prosperous than Deng's Chinese society. This makes it impossible to easily carry out similar economic reforms.
I disagree with Sam R's opinion that Eastern European nations are less disciplined than the Chinese. (Apart from the fact that the discipline of the Chinese is crap and they are more driven by fear of the boss).
I disagree with Sam R's opinion that Eastern European nations are less disciplined than the Chinese. (Apart from the fact that the discipline of the Chinese is crap and they are more driven by fear of the boss).
Imagine being such a Russian in 1989 and what do you expect to happen in 4 years. How rich you will become, whether you will buy a car or a TV.
Now do the same into Chinese in 1989. What will such a citizen expect?
Ok.
However I don't think that this means that reforms are harder to do, the reason why they failed OTL was because Gorbachev decided to implement "social democracy" and refused to use force to put down the trouble-makers such as Yeltsin, not because reforms are impossible to do.
Its impossible to carry out similar reforms because Western companies won't go in the USSR not because its impossible to make economical reforms that would make the Soviets competitive again.
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