also the soviet union needed to do what china did, but was too stuck in dogmatism or the party elites no longer “believed in communism” without understanding that post industrialization… heavy industry is in large part not going to serve your people. it NEEDS to develop into what sort of looks like capitalism.
What? That was a big part of Khrushchev's reforms, trying to shift from building productive capital to making consumer goods and shifting from purely centralized planning to a mixed economy of centrally-planned important industry and agriculture with a tolerated private market for services, extra produce, etc.
It was defined by huge failures like the attempted privatization of tractors, the private sector become a persistent drain on the Soviet economy that encouraged stealing from supply chains to sell or trade in the so-called "second economy," and the shift away from focusing on building up more productive capital led to the USSR's economic growth slowing and eventually stagnating when its previous trajectory had it reaching parity with the US economy in the 70s.
Clearly a shift from making machines that make machines that make more machines was something that had to happen eventually, but the USSR's problem was that it did so far too early and then in the face of stagnation doubled down on it until it suffered complete economic collapse from the destruction of central planning systems and the privatization of state assets.
What China did was open itself up as a market for western capital and a labor pool to produce consumer goods for the west (in a similar fashion to how earlier Japan and South Korea were made to open up as markets and labor pools by the US occupation and experienced rapid industrialization as a result and with the obvious cost of becoming sources of cheap labor for the US), because the CPC leadership determined that that was the only way to get past the problem of just how far behind in industrial capital they were as a result of the conditions China was in when the revolution succeeded: for example, in 1950 China's entire steel production was less than that of Russia in 1917, and most of China's heavy industry was concentrated in Manchuria. They did receive a fair amount of aid from the USSR early on in the form of both industrial capital and skilled technicians coming to train people, but the USSR itself only had so much to spare for that project and this slowed or stopped as relations between the USSR and China cooled in the Khrushchev era.
What? That was a big part of Khrushchev's reforms, trying to shift from building productive capital to making consumer goods and shifting from purely centralized planning to a mixed economy of centrally-planned important industry and agriculture with a tolerated private market for services, extra produce, etc.
It was defined by huge failures like the attempted privatization of tractors, the private sector become a persistent drain on the Soviet economy that encouraged stealing from supply chains to sell or trade in the so-called "second economy," and the shift away from focusing on building up more productive capital led to the USSR's economic growth slowing and eventually stagnating when its previous trajectory had it reaching parity with the US economy in the 70s.
Clearly a shift from making machines that make machines that make more machines was something that had to happen eventually, but the USSR's problem was that it did so far too early and then in the face of stagnation doubled down on it until it suffered complete economic collapse from the destruction of central planning systems and the privatization of state assets.
What China did was open itself up as a market for western capital and a labor pool to produce consumer goods for the west (in a similar fashion to how earlier Japan and South Korea were made to open up as markets and labor pools by the US occupation and experienced rapid industrialization as a result and with the obvious cost of becoming sources of cheap labor for the US), because the CPC leadership determined that that was the only way to get past the problem of just how far behind in industrial capital they were as a result of the conditions China was in when the revolution succeeded: for example, in 1950 China's entire steel production was less than that of Russia in 1917, and most of China's heavy industry was concentrated in Manchuria. They did receive a fair amount of aid from the USSR early on in the form of both industrial capital and skilled technicians coming to train people, but the USSR itself only had so much to spare for that project and this slowed or stopped as relations between the USSR and China cooled in the Khrushchev era.
I think what sets China apart is that their reforms were completely illiberal. Jack Ma is allowed to exist but ultimately he is a slave to the party