Smooth here is a relative term, especially compared to the shocking cataclysm that blew apart the former Soviet economy when Yeltsin called in the neoliberal "radicals". In this excellent chat with Isabella Weber, author of How China Escaped Shock Therapy, this episode of the ever-excellent Politics Theory Other the recent economic history of China is explored, and crucially how the party avoided the disaster that befell the USSR and its client regimes.
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*Implying that it was anything other than capitalist under Mao, albeit state-capitalist.
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