The Chinese Economic Experiment: Lessons for India

By J. H. DOSHI

Summary

J. H. Doshi, an industrialist and President of the Forum of Free Enterprise, reports on a ten-day Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry delegation visit to China in 1978, comparing it with a previous trip in 1958. He frames China and India as the two great post-war experiments in economic growth — one totalitarian-socialist, the other a democracy newly emerging from Emergency rule — and uses observations from Peking, Shanghai, Hangchow and Canton to take stock of what three decades of central planning have delivered. Doshi credits China with conspicuous gains in agriculture (afforestation, water conservation, cropping intensity, 280 million tonnes of foodgrains against India’s 125), in heavy industry (steel, coal, petro-chemicals, ambitious 1985 targets), and in basic living standards: full employment of a sort, clean public spaces, rationed essentials, low wage disparity, and a visibly fed population with no beggars.

But the report is equally insistent on the costs and the recent reversal. There is no press, no freedom of expression, no freedom of movement; everything is rationed; even marriage requires departmental permission. The sparrow-elimination episode of the Great Leap Forward is taken as a parable for the dangers of highly centralised decision-making. After Mao’s death and the smashing of the Gang of Four, Doshi argues, the new leadership under Hua and Teng (Deng) has quietly discarded the dogma that communism is perfect: Marx’s ‘to each according to his need’ is being replaced by ‘to each according to his work’, autarky is being abandoned for turnkey deals with Japan, Germany and the West, and bureaucratic controls are under attack.

The closing ‘Lessons for India’ section turns the comparison into a polemic. From the Second Five-Year Plan onwards, Doshi writes, India copied the communist planning strategy with disastrous results — neglected agriculture, neglected rural roads and primary education, heavy taxation, unproductive public-sector projects, large-scale corruption, an unproductive bureaucracy. The 1977 policy shift is welcomed but judged insufficient. India should learn from China where China was right (agriculture, afforestation, asset-building employment, cost consciousness, decentralisation) while refusing the price China paid: liquidations, suppression of dissent, the end of press freedom. The 19-month Emergency, Doshi argues, was India’s brief glimpse of that road, and the electorate rejected it. The pamphlet ends with a call to pursue prosperity with freedoms, realistic economic policies rather than outdated ideologies, and citizens who do not look up to a ‘Ma-Bap Sircar’ for everything.

Key points

• Doshi reports on a 1978 FICCI delegation visit to China (Peking, Shanghai, Hangchow, Canton), measured against his earlier 1958 visit, treating China and India as the two great post-war growth experiments under opposed ideologies.

• He credits Chinese agricultural performance — 99% irrigated land vs India’s 28%, 280 million tonnes of foodgrains vs India’s 125, three crops a year, afforestation up to the edge of roads and runways — and the Commune system’s self-sufficiency in food, schooling and primary health.

• Industrial achievements are catalogued (steel up from 6–7 to 25 million tonnes, coal at 250 million tonnes, plans for 120 large projects by 1985, turnkey contracts with Japan and Germany) but framed as multiplication of existing capacity since Soviet advisers left in 1960.

• The sparrow-elimination campaign of the Great Leap Forward is offered as a moral about ecological balance and, more pointedly, about how ‘highly centralised decision-making leads to mistakes on a colossal scale’ while decentralised systems contain damage.

• Doshi documents the absence of independent newspapers, freedom of expression, freedom of movement and free choice of employment, alongside rationing, permit-controlled marriage and overemployment in petro-chemical plants where 33,000 work in a partly-automated facility.

• He tracks the post-Mao policy shift: the dogma that communism is perfect has been discarded, capitalist management techniques are being studied, Marx’s ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ is being replaced by ‘to each according to his work’, and Stalinist autarky is being condemned.

• The ‘Lessons for India’ section attacks the Second Five-Year Plan tradition: Indian planning since 1956 is described as a disastrous imitation of the communist strategy that neglected agriculture, infrastructure and primary education while burning scarce resources in inefficient public-sector projects, unproductive bureaucracy and large-scale corruption.

• Doshi closes by repudiating the Emergency as India’s brief glimpse of the Chinese path and calling for ‘prosperity for the masses with freedoms’ — realistic economic policies, citizens who do not look up to a ‘Ma-Bap Sircar’, and a hastening of the inevitable liberal direction.

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