A Comparison Of Views Of Deng Xiaoping And Corbachev On Economic Structure Reform

It's more than two decades since China saw her socialist economic structure reform led by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, which has turned out to boost China's productivity and people's well-off, enhance her overall national strength and promote her status on the international stage. In contrast, in the middle of 1980s, as her new General Secretary Gorbachev came to power, the Soviet Union also underwent an overwhelming reform, which was called by Gorbachev himself "an urgent need" rather than "an impulsive whim". However, this reform ended up with the collapse of Soviet economy, the downfall of Soviet Party as well as the disintegration of the Soviet Union.It has long been a hot issue for domestic and overseas researchers why the two socialist countries, both executing economic restructuring, has ended up with different results. Using the existing research findings as reference, this paper attempts to probe into the two countries' historical backgrounds of economic restructuring and make a systematic comparison between the Views of Deng Xiaoping and Corbachev on Economic Structure Reform, hence analyze the reasons why China's reform succeeded, while that of the Soviet Union ended in failure. Based on the result of comparison, the paper also summarizes some important principles we must adhere to when executing economic restructuring, so that we can make further progress in the reform, avoid silly mistakes in practice and promote a more wholesome development of China's socialist modernization.