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On China, economic reform, and the future.

While the USSR famously succumbed to destructive neoliberal "shock therapy", China managed to avoid it. How and why? Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy, tells us about China's opting for gradual reform instead.

What did reform mean for understandings of socialism? Do communists make the best capitalists? And is the pursuit of growth and development at any cost China's own version of the End of History?

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Blake

Loved this episode, especially the last bit. Like Zhou Enlai said, "It's too soon to tell".

Nicholas CLARK

As a new listener (and new fan!) - I found this episode very compelling, living in Singapore with the awareness that the ‘Singapore model’ was enormously influential on Deng Xiaoping in particular, and continues to be a point of reference for Chinese policy makers. Lee Kuan Yew, despite his Reagan-Thatcher bona fides, expounded a very perceptive model of development within global capitalism that I think merits a closer look by the Left. Curious about the role of this development model going forward, especially outside of East Asian states (that have generally avoided the sort of turbulence that has characterised the “end of the end of history” in Western liberal democracies).

Jared

Listen to 115 if you haven't already, great episode