Russia had the NEP to increase "productive forces" (cliche I know), was only semi feudal, and only had a 5 year civil war. Meanwhile China was full on feudal and was coming out of a 33 year long civil war and a japanese invasion
But the fastest growth happened after NEP was reversed and full state control of the economy was restored. From quick googling, Russia's GDP per capita was $1400 compared to China's $600. So I guess Russia had an industrial advantage. As for devastation due to War, I think both countries had faced equal devastation. Russia had beared the brunt of WW2 and still maintained excellent growth rates through 1955
oh, I was wrong about the NEP, but Russia had a space between ww2 and the civil war, while china had 33 years of nonstop civil war, not including the century of humiliation, plus it fully feudal with little to no industry, unlike Russia, which at least had some
But the fastest growth happened after NEP was reversed and full state control of the economy was restored.
Also China in the early 50s was basically operating under similar circumstances to the NEP for about as long, before they'd built out the bureaucracy enough to start collectivizing and building a (very, very loose) central planning and logistics system.
From quick googling, Russia’s GDP per capita was $1400 compared to China’s $600.
There are more specific figures focused on actual material productive capacity like tons of steel that could be produced per year, but you're correct here that the industrial underdevelopment is the heart of the issue they faced. 1917 Russia is often described as an undeveloped backwater, but 1950 China had less total industrial capital with a bigger populace, and that became the heart of the problem that they tried and tried to untangle with various success and failures until they started collaborating with the US and got a constant stream of modern industrial capital in exchange for turning their educated populace and logistics systems to commodity production for export.
Through the Mao-era specifically, their biggest ongoing issue was trying to balance industrial buildup in the cities with food production and expropriation in rural areas as well as the mechanization of agriculture and logistics. Where the Soviets had been able to rapidly industrialize through agricultural collectivization and the mass migration of workers from the countryside to new factories, China lacked enough mechanized capital to facilitate increases in agricultural productivity per amount of labor and so had a constant fight to stop the migration of workers from the countryside to cities because with less agricultural labor there wouldn't be enough food grown to support those same cities. So they were stuck in a constant state of both capital and labor shortages and after the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward their leadership chose safe stagnation and even slower growth than another push to rapidly industrialize (until Deng and China's collaboration with the US for industrial capital).
China's first 5 year plan (1953–1957) was quite successful with regards to industrial growth. The remaining private industries were brought under state control (agricultural land reform had been ongoing since the civil war), and with technical support from the soviet union, a large increase in the production in industries like coal, steel, and machinery was accomplished. Agricultural growth and collectivization saw progress but to a smaller degree. It'd be interesting to see how things would have went had they kept this up, but they decided to do the Great Leap Forward instead, which was, to sum it up, too ambitious. Then after the Sino-Soviet split (one of the greatest tragedies in the history of communism imo), they had lost the technical support of the Soviets as well as their economic and military relations. This is likely one of the larger reasons for the PRC opening up to the west and the market reforms.
Critical support to the PRC, but it's true they have made a good deal of blunders (along with the USSR). There's not really a reason why China couldn't have developed its productive forces without the market reforms, of course, but the picture is a bit more nuanced than the party selling out to the capitalists (why not just fully liberalize the country and make themselves the new oligarchs in that case?) What I wish would've happened is that China and the USSR had made nice and stomped on the capitalists together instead.
The two biggest problems were the lack of ability to procure foreign industrial goods and technology and the need to spend a huge amount on defence. During the 1950s there was a fast growth rate in industry, which was mostly aided by the soviets sending experts and transferring industrial equipment to China. When the sino soviet split happened this stopped, and economic growth slowed down. Pretty much the remainder of the Maoist era was spent trying to figure out how to build up the economy independently, they failed in this regard. They choose labour-intensive methods over capital intensive ones, as labour was abundant and capital was not. The problem was that this ended up with people simply working harder without much increase in efficiency, and eventually without much progress by the 1970s people began to tire of these practices, which is why there was little resistance to the adoption of Deng Xiaoping's agenda.
There were proposals to try to focus a significant proportion of resources on mechanising agriculture, which would have kick-started growth by freeing up peasants to go work in the cities, however, this policy was not adopted in any meaningful sense until Deng, because of the (in my view erroneous) arguments that doing so would exacerbate the urban-rural divide.
Regarding defence, Maoist china was on the defensive for pretty much the entire time it existed. You start off with the Korean war and the need to send hundreds of thousands of troops to defend them. Then you have the Vietnam war going on for 25 years right on your border, you have conflicts with India over the border in the Himalayas, with Taiwan because they are a breakaway province, with the US as the CIA attempts to fuel separatist and reactionary forces in the country, and finally with the soviets after the sino soviet split, by 1969 many observers were seriously concerned that war would actually break out between the two countries, fortunately, it did not.
This necessitated a large amount of resources being devoted to defence, which is why despite being a poor country, the Chinese military was making serious attempts at modernisation, they developed indigenous tanks, aircraft, rifles and other equipment. They developed nuclear capabilities, ballistic missile technology and launched their first satellite in 1970, a mere 13 years after sputnik.
