Experts Discuss China's Future

The People's Republic of China is creating its own form of socialism as it moves away from the Soviet-style socialism it began to follow in the 1950s, according to experts who spoke last night at the Kennedy School of Government's Arco Forum.

A crowd of 433 heard three participants in a panel discussion called "China: On the Road to Capitalism?" address the changes in China's economy since the death of its long-time leader Mao Zedong in 1976.

"China is now correcting Mao's mistakes," said Li Miao, a former administrator of China's Ministry of Finance. But while Mao's successors have disbanded communes and encouraged private enterprise, Miao said, the Chinese are not abandoning socialism.

"China is building socialism with Chinese characteristics," he said.

"Chinese patriots have been searching for [national] wealth and power, and seeking to redevelop their country" since the end of Western and Japanese imperialism earlier this century, said Professor of Government Roderick MacFarquhar. "Today's changes in China are a variation of [that search for] wealth and power."

'A Vogue for Meritocracy'

David Aikman, a former Beijing Bureau Chief for Time Magazine, said that China's leader Deng Xiaoping's most significant accomplishment has been the creation in China of "a vogue for meritocracy."

"The Deng regime is based on incentives and social advances, but is unaffected by dogma," he said.

In a question and answer session after the discussion, a member of the audience asked whether the United States, in giving economic aid to China, was fostering the development of a potential enemy. Aikman acknowledged that the United States may in fact be helping to sustain a government operating under an ideology the American government opposes, but said that "it is in our best interests that we encourage reforms against the leftism that Mao advocated."

All members of the panel agreed that it will take China decades to reach the economic status of Hong Kong orTaiwan. Aikman said China's economic improvementswill have to continue until the middle of the 21stcentury to be meaningful.

Predictions

"China will be the first country in the worldto abandon Marxism-Leninism as an officialdoctrine," Aikman said when asked to offer a"fortune cookie" prediction on China's future."

In response to the same question, Miao saidthat "China outlasted Confucianism and may outlastMarxism, but it will take longer than tonight.