Four Modernizations

Abstract: Among planned socialist economies, China's Open Door policy for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) represents a unique and unprecedented development. While most planned socialist economies have maintained the conventional Marxist party line of shunning the import of capitalist practices and development, post-Mao China has actively solicited and welcomed foreign direct investment from capitalist economies.1 Following the policy changes of 1978, which the Chinese government announced as a means of accomplishing the Four Modernizations, the second session of the Fifth National People's Congress approved as part of its Open Door policy on July 1, 1979, the "Law of the People's Republic of China on Joint Ventures Using Chinese and Foreign Investment." A state foreign investment commission was set up to direct and oversee the investment process, and a number of agencies at the national and provincial level were set up to promote investment from overseas.2 As a sequel to the direct investment law, legislation was passed in August 1980 to set up special economic zones (SEZs) as specially designated areas where FDI would be welcomed and located both as a means of experimenting with "market economy planning" and for attracting capital and technology needed for modernization. Four SEZs were set up in quick succession at Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Xiamen, and Shantou.3 Subsequently, by 1984, 14 more coastal cities and Hainan Island were opened to foreign investment. In early 1985, three more zones were opened to FDI: the Yangtze River delta, the Pearl River delta, and the Zhangzhou-Quanzhou-Xiamen region in southern Fujian Province. These policy changes of revising the foreign trade and foreign investment structures were seen as integral and critical aspects of China's quest for modernization, emphasizing a significant reversal of

Abstract: Since the opening of Sino-American relations in the 1970s and the reopening of Sino-Soviet relations in the 1980s, China's foreign policy toward Africa has been far less pronounced, at least compared to the levels of Chinese interest and activities in Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s. China's preoccupation in the 1980s with internal economic development, "the four modernizations," and political change have also been the focus of much attention. Have the concerns with economic and political developments and relations with the superpowers so consumed China that it has neglected foreign relations on other fronts, including Africa? The purpose of this article is to consider China's African policy since the 1960s, with a focus on political and foreign aid policies and behavior. Specifically, we will examine the following questions: What has been the role of the African theater in Chinese foreign policy? What major policy changes, if any, have taken place in China's African policy? Has China sought to maintain a significant level of interaction with Africa in the 1980s? If so, how and with what success? Is there an Africa in future Chinese foreign policy considerations? And, what does China's African policy tell us about Chinese foreign policy generally?

Abstract: The Sino-Vietnam War of February–March 1979 marked the culmination of months of strained relations between the two neighbouring communist states. (This article explores Chinese foreign policy as it evolved before, during and after the conflict) My underlying thesis is that China's original goals were both political and military, relating to the definition and strengthening of China's role in regional (e.g. Indo-Chinese and South-east Asian) international politics, as well as China's perceived role in the global relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States. Because the conflict's military goals were not fully attained, the political goals were also not met, affecting not only the relationship between various Chinese leadership factions and their views about China's economic development plans, but also the importance of military modernization costs as part of the “four modernizations” and even China's alignment vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and the United States. I shall first describe the prelude to the war.

Abstract: THE BEIJING SPRING or the Chinese Democracy Movement began as a dazibaol movement in Beijing in November 1978. The movement soon spread all over China and by Christmas engulfed all the major cities of the country. Activists organized into groups and started to publish poorly printed, unofficial journals-underground journals (dixia kanwu), as they have been called. These journals quickly became the principal media of the Democracy Movement. In spite of varying philosophical and political orientations, the different democratic groups formed a kind of loose coalition. Their rallying point was the demand for democracy which Wei Jingsheng, one of the prominent figures of the Democracy Movement, had dubbed "The Fifth Modernization." This demand does not imply opposition to the Four Modernizations, which are designed to change China into a modern, industrial society by the year 2000 through modernization of agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology, but rather suggests that the modernization program is insufficient because it does not embrace that vitally important element without which the others will not or cannot be achieved-the modernization of democratic con-