GIANNI SALVINI

Le riforme economiche in Unione Sovietica e in Cina: una valutazione comparata

N. 4/1987

Summary — The article examines, in compared perspective, the programs and the processes of economic reform in course in China and in Soviet Russia. The compared analysis of countries so different both in the level of economic development and in the historical-cultural traditions is justified not only for the common ideological matrix, but mainly for the fundamental affinity of the economic mechanisms and the strategies of development.

The attention is focussed on the reforming policies — starting in China from 1978 and in Soviet Russia from 1985 — aiming at transforming the authoritative system of allocation of resources.

Three areas are considered: the institutions and the policies in the rural world, the industrial management and the economic administration. It is in the first area, the agriculture, that we have witnessed in China a "silent revolution" which, starting from 1978, has questioned the whole collective system in order to give back importance to the peasant family as basic productive unit. In the other sectors the reforms have been more circumspect and did not assume, even in China, the character of irreversibility.

Since the reforms are in course the analysis has inevitably a provisional character. However some obstacles, believed unavoidable, are pointed out: incompatibility between the notions of public enterprise and planning on the one hand and market mechanism on the other, just as the incompatibility between economic reforms and traditional political system. The conclusion is drawn affirming that the economic reforms have acquired a systemic character only in the Chinese agriculture, whereas in the other areas a process of "trial and error" is still in course.