Industrialization

   新中国于1949年新时代的突破基础之后，中国古代已经开始了新的现代化的征程：中围工业化。什么是真正的工业化？它是指在现代工业中占有逐渐发挥主导作用，在全国逐步建立一个完整的，独立的国民经济体系和产业体系，在全国从一个落后的农业国转变为先进的工业国的过程中，其推动社会生产力力呈现一个明显的改善。仔细分析后，我们可以了解的优先投放重工业保护新建政权的首位，来推动工业化的发展。

                                                                             Industrialization

   After the epoch-breaking foundation of New China in the year 1949, the ancient China has begun its new journey of modernization which centered on its industrialization. What is industrialization actually? It refers to the process in which modern industry gradually occupies a leading role, the country gradually set up a complete and independent national economy system and industrial system, the country transforms from a backward agricultural country to an advanced industrial country, and pushes its social productive forces to present an obvious improvement. In the country's first years of foundation, China is a backward socialist country still in its embryonic stage, the Chinese people are with a determined mindset and ambition to engage themselves in the probe of the road of industrialization, as a result, the various achievements China has obtained between the year 1953 to 1978 was a focus of the world in aspects like transportation, several coastal industrial bases and so on (Wei, 1995). However, there were also weaknesses caused by the industrialization which Chinese government was well aware of and paid much attention to. This paper will center on two major aspects of the strength and weakness that Chinese industrialization has brought about, one is its priority on heavy industry and the ensuing solid foundation for the whole Chinese industry development; the other is the result of a long term accumulation of various factors, the highly centralized planned economy system, which has exerted far reaching and complicated consequences on China's development since its formation.

   In the beginning of regime foundation, the condition of new China can be described as economically poor and blank and backward in the aftermath of many years' war destruction. There is almost no foreign official reorganization of the new government. Chairman Mao Zedong always mentioned such words at the early years of the new nation: What can we produce now? We can make a chair and a desk, we can make a kettle and a tea bowl, we can grow wheat, we can grind wheat into flour, and we can make paper too. But we cannot manufacture a car, or an airplane, or a tank, or a tractor. This is, actually the common concern of all the Chinese leaders at that time. However, what is important then is the great advantages of the newly built socialist system which can mobilize all Chinese people at the most extent to complete a grand task, that is to say, Chinese people can have endless potential and passion to build the new China. This is beyond conquering of all possible enemies. The other reason is the outburst of Korean War which made the international environment much more severe than before (David C, 2003). As a result, the issue of national security was high lightened and became a priority in front of all Chinese leadership. With the strategic purpose of protecting the new nation and breaking overseas blockade and hostility from western capitalist countries, in order to enhance Chinese national defense power, the Chinese lead ship gave up their previous thought of giving the people peace and security as well as firstly developing light industry and farming and then developing heavy industry, and decided to develop heavy industry instead. Facing all the severe landscape of economy, politics and military affairs, China's unitary hope to establish a close relationship with the western capitalist world, of course, melt into nothingness, it cannot merely rely on external assistance but must have to inherit and develop the spirit of self reliance, arduous struggle in order to build and make this country and nation stronger. To make the country a truly independent and powerful one, China must set up quickly a relatively complete and self contained industrial structure, and put the development and prosperity of heavy industry in a more prominent position. With this idea as a general guideline, the industrialization plan was put into action in new China with the famous five year plan in the year 1953, apart from this, it sent out a delegation of Chinese government to Soviet Union to deal with the negotiation with Soviet Union, their topic was around the assistance from Soviet Union to more than one hundred industrial programs (Chang, 1990), the key is heavy industry, in particular the industries like steel and iron, coal, electric power, petroleum, machinery manufacturing, airplane, tank, tractor, vehicle manufacturing, military industry, non ferrous metal, basic chemistry and so on.  In fact, the Chinese leadership at first had no intention to copy the industrial road of the Soviet Union; it originally did have the expectation of following a gradual road of industrial development through its own accumulation step by step.  The good news about this road is New China can better deal with its own relative factor endowment, and can bring its relative advantages into full play; the result is a relatively reasonable and proper economic relationship and urban rural relationship. What's more, with the progress and update of various relative factor endowments, as well as the update of economic structure, China can finally gain a strong and prosperous international image by brisk walking cautiously planning small step. However, the problem is this strategy would take a long time; maybe ten years or more, even this would need external tolerant conditions like the expansion of international market and development of international trade. So for new China who urgently needed to make sure national security in the first place, this strategy seemed to like that distant water cannot quench present thirst, this is the reason why Chins in the end chosen a road to copy the experience and developing mode of the No 1 Soviet Union who was the only country that could match the powerhouse of the United States in the western world then. The development of the heavy industry does have important strategic meaning to the newly founded China, this strategy increased Chinese people's confidence and enthusiasm to build and contribute to their motherland, which is related to patriotism and national self respect and loyalty; but in a more proud meaning, the priority of developing heavy industry is related to national security and stability of the new socialist regime. When new China is following closely behind the Soviet Union, the two biggest countries in aspects of both territory and political meaning can inevitably become a mental and strategic threat to the western world. This in turn will create a relative tolerant outside environment to China's economic recovery, economic development and its new regime stability. And in the end China has completed its socialist reform with a peaceful method and laid a solid foundation for later economic development. More importantly, this strategy enables China to quickly build a relatively complete national economy system, and is a prerequisite condition for China's comprehensive industrial ability in its future development. 

   The other topic to be discussed in this paper is the gradual formation of new China's economic system, the highly centralized planned economy system, this is the result of various factors, and the most important and deeply rooted factor is the national condition (Liu& Steven). In fact, the above mentioned strategy of priority on heavy industry has something to do with the highly centralized planned economy system. One can analyze this in the economic angle. For example, there are some features of heavy industry, it needs large scale investment and intensified capital, it needs a relatively high organic composition of capital, that means for a backward country a lot of equipments have to be imported from abroad, and it has a long cycle of construction in contrast to a slow repayment.  These features make it a must to have a large scale of capital accumulation and supply in order to develop heavy industry. But for new China, the situation was then that its agriculture and light industry were not advanced at all, this situation is directly contradictory to China's resource endowment.  This can be seen in the following aspects like the contradiction between the construction cycle of heavy industry and capital factor endowment, the contradiction between investment scale and capability of capital mobilization, the contradiction between the high technology feature and China's foreign currency payment capability. As a result, to make sure there is enough resource accumulation flowing to heavy industry, there must be a new system arrangement to cater for this national strategy. This system must have a planned intensified resource allocation of all economic resources, and the forces of a planned economy must have to gradually replace the dominant position of market economy. It can be said that the strategy of priority on heavy industry is the basic reason for the establishment of China's planned economy system (Montinola, et al, 1995). Of course, this does not mean the planned economy system is the only reason, other reasons are like the unification of finance and economy, the support of the Korean War, finding a solution of the contradiction between privately own economy and national economy are not to be ignored. The above mentioned are the intrinsic and inevitable factors which push the formation of the highly centralized planned economy system. One needs to notice the severe economic and social problems this strategy has brought about, the Chinese country and people have a price to pay for this strategy. The first problem is the serious national economy imbalance in industrial structure of agriculture, light industry and heavy industry. The urban and rural structure problem is deeply rooted and hardly changed, the progress of urbanization is slow, the surplus rural labor force cannot be transformed and effectively utilized, the problem of farmers, agriculture and country is very severe. Another is that non-national economy is much more difficult in their position comparing national economy, what is even worse is that non-national economy are strictly limited and even eliminated, this policy will without doubt bring a lot of difficulty to the questions like social employment, circulation of commodity, enough supply of commodity as well as people's daily life. A merely severe problem is that because there is no market competition and the absence of non-national economy system, many stated owned enterprises and rural cooperatives suffer from a low efficiency and a low competitive capability. The priority on heavy industry to surpass other countries did have obvious advantages in the beginning, but gradually the disadvantages of refusal of competition are presented with the passage of time. And in an environment which has no competition, the stated-owned enterprises would gradually form the habit of relying on help from the government, they gradually lose their initiative and ambition to create value for the country, they become efficient less and lose the ability to support themselves. For the rural cooperatives, they are born because of political forces, and without ongoing government stimulus and effective supervision, the bad result is an unfair phenomenon of different gains coming from same investment of labor and energy, and the agricultural produce is very low (Bates, 1987).  The labor force on the whole has a low positive attitude in enterprises and rural cooperatives, the abundant market resources cannot be effective allocated and utilized, so the economy cannot achieve any big progress. And also the individual freedom is hurt because almost all the important issues are regulated by the government of various levels. The requirement of the minority is easily ignored or not paid much attention to, the leadership is not effectively supervised, and the result is there can be easily tendency of the problem like dictatorship, tyranny and corruption of some government leaders. This is a common problem in many countries that once practiced planned economy system for a long time.

   In conclusion, new China's industrialization process is a complicated one that worth people's profound research to look at its strength and weakness in a historical angle. The conditions both abroad and home make it necessary to adopt those policies for Chinese leadership. After a careful analysis, one can get to know that the priority to put heavy industry in the first place protected the newly built regime, but also affected the future Chinese economic structure. The gradually born planned economy system, though a result of strategies at that period, indeed have exerted far reaching consequences for China's future development road.


Bibliography
Bates, Robert H. Essays on the political economy of rural Africa. Vol. 38. Univ of California Press, 1987.
Kang, David C. "International relations theory and the second Korean war."International Studies Quarterly 47.3 (2003): 301-324.
Liu, Xielin, and Steven White. "Comparing innovation systems: a framework and application to China’s transitional context." Research policy 30.7 (2001): 1091-1114.
Montinola, Gabriella, Yingyi Qian, and Barry R. Weingast. "Federalism, Chinese style: the political basis for economic success in China." World Politics 48.01 (1995): 50-81.
Wei, Yehua. "Spatial and temporal variations of the relationship between state investment and industrial output in China." Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 86.2 (1995): 129-136.


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