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Beijing Review 1979 – 1991

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Carry out the Four Modernisations of the Fatherland

Carry out the Four Modernisations of the Fatherland

Beijing Review 1979 – 1991

More on China …..

Comrade Mao Tse-tung was barely installed in his mausoleum before the renegades, traitors and ‘capitalist roaders’ in the Communist Party of China went on the attack. This was evident in the articles that appeared in China and which were reproduced in the various magazines produced for a foreign audience. It wasn’t just in Peking/Beijing Review that this became evident as the stance taken in China Reconstructs, China Pictorial and Chinese Literature all very soon followed suit. This was an all-round attack on the very principals and foundation of Socialism and so was carried out in all areas of society.

From the first issue of 1979 the magazine changed its name from Peking Review to Beijing Review – probably the only positive move made by the magazine since late 1976 to date.

The magazine continues to be published to this day but its aim bears no resemblance to when it was first established in the 1950s – originally under the name of People’s China. At that time its goal was to promote the construction of Socialism and to publicise these efforts to the rest of the world. From 1977 onwards its aim was to justify the re-establishment of capitalism.

However, the ‘capitalist roaders’ were never honest in their endeavours and always sought to cloak their activities in the red flag and paid mock homage to the revolutionary period of Chinese history from the Declaration of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 until just after the death of Chairman Mao in 1976.

The reason for making these magazines freely available is so that those who have an interest in the construction of Socialism can see, through a sometimes gradual process, how the Revolution can be so easily stolen from the people if they are not constantly vigilant.

We have had no access to substantial issues of the magazine after the second part of 1991 – but that’s no real loss as subsequent editions teach no one anything about Socialism.

More on China …..

 

1979 – Volume 22

1 – January 5, 1979, 32 pages.

2 – January 12, 1979, 40 pages.

3 – January 19,1979, 32 pages.

4 – January 26, 1979, 32 pages.

5 – February 2, 1979, 32 pages.

6 – February 9, 1979, 32 pages.

7 – February 16, 1979, 32 pages.

8 – February 23, 1979, 32 pages.

9 – March 2, 1979, 32 pages.

10 – March 9, 1979, 32 pages.

11 – March 16, 1979, 32 pages.

12 – March 23, 1979, 32 pages.

13 – March 30, 1979, 32 pages.

14 – April 6, 1979, 32 pages.

15 – April 13, 1979, 32 pages.

16 – April 20, 1979, 32 pages.

17 – April 27, 1979, 32 pages.

18 – May 4, 1979, 32 pages.

19 – May 11, 1979, 32 pages.

20 – May 18, 1979, 32 pages.

21 – May 25, 1979, 32 pages.

22 – June 1, 1979, 32 pages.

23 – June 8, 1979, 32 pages.

24 – June 15, 1979, 32 pages.

25 – June 22, 1979, 32 pages.

26 – June 29, 1979, 32 pages.

Supplement, Subject index for issues 1-26 in 1979, 16 pages.

27 – July 6, 1979, 48 pages.

28 – July 13, 1979, 32 pages.

29 – July 20, 1979, 32 pages.

30 – July 27, 1979, 32 pages.

31 – August 3, 1979, 32 pages.

32 – August 10, 1979, 32 pages.

33 – August 17, 1979, 32 pages.

34 – August 24, 1979, 32 pages.

35 – August 31, 1979, 32 pages.

36 – September 7, 1979, 32 pages.

37 – September 14, 1979, 32 pages.

38 – September 21, 1979, 32 pages.

39 – September 28, 1979, 32 pages.

40 – October 5, 1979, 40 pages.

41 – October 12, 1979, 32 pages.

42 – October 19, 1979, 32 pages.

43 – October 26, 1979, 32 pages.

44 – November 2, 1979, 32 pages.

45 – November 9, 1979, 32 pages.

46 – November 16, 1979, 32 pages.

47 – November 23, 1979, 32 pages.

48 – November 30, 1979, 32 pages.

49 – December 7, 1979, 32 pages.

50 – December 14, 1979, 32 pages.

51 – December 21, 1979, 32 pages.

52 – December 28, 1979, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1979, 32 pages.

 

1980 – Volume 23

1 – January 7, 1980, 32 pages.

2 – January 14, 1980, 32 pages.

3 – January 21, 1980, 32 pages.

4 – January 28, 1980, 32 pages.

5 – February 4, 1980, 32 pages.

6 – February 11, 1980, 32 pages.

7 – February 18, 1980, 32 pages.

8 – February 25, 1980, 24 pages.

9 – March 3, 1980, 32 pages.

10 – March 10, 1980, 32 pages.

11 – March 17, 1980, 32 pages.

12 – March 24, 1980, 32 pages.

13 – March 31, 1980, 32 pages.

14 – April 7, 1980, 32 pages.

15 – April 14, 1980, 32 pages.

16 – April 21, 1980, 32 pages.

17 – April 28, 1980, 32 pages.

18 – May 5, 1980, 32 pages.

19 – May 12, 1980, 32 pages.

20 – May 19, 1980, 32 pages.

21 – May 26, 1980, 32 pages.

22 – June 2, 1980, 32 pages.

23 – June 9, 1980, 32 pages.

24 – June 16, 1980, 32 pages.

25 – June 23, 1980, 32 pages.

26 – June 30, 1980, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1980, 32 pages.

27 – July 7, 1980, 32 pages.

28 – July 14, 1980, 32 pages.

29 – July 21, 1980, 32 pages.

30 – July 28, 1980, 32 pages.

31 – August 4, 1980, 32 pages.

32 – August 11, 1980, 32 pages.

33 – August 18, 1980, 32 pages.

34 – August 25, 1980, 32 pages.

35 – September 1, 1980, 32 pages.

36 – September 8, 1980, 32 pages.

37 – September 15, 1980, 32 pages.

38 – September 22, 1980, 48 pages.

39 – September 29, 1980, 40 pages.

40 – October 6, 1980, 32 pages. (Announces upcoming trial of “Gang of Four” and also of surviving Lin Biao conspirators.)

41 – October 13, 1980, 32 pages.

42 – October 20, 1980, 32 pages.

43 – October 27, 1980, 32 pages.

44 – November 3, 1980, 32 pages.

45 – November 10, 1980, 32 pages.

46 – November 17, 1980, 32 pages.

47 – November 24, 1980, 32 pages.

48 – December 1, 1980, 32 pages.

49 – December 8, 1980, 32 pages.

50 – December 15, 1980, 32 pages.

51 – December 22, 1980, 32 pages.

52 – December 29, 1980, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1980, 40 pages.

 

1981 – Volume 24

1 – January 5, 1981, 32 pages.

2 – January 12, 1981, 32 pages.

3 – January 19, 1981, 32 pages.

4 – January 26, 1981, 32 pages.

5 – February 2, 1981, 32 pages.

6 – February 9, 1981, 32 pages.

7 – February 16, 1981, 24 pages.

8 – February 23, 1981, 32 pages.

9 – March 2, 1981, 32 pages.

10 – March 9, 1981, 32 pages.

11 – March 16, 1981, 32 pages.

12 – March 23, 1981, 32 pages.

13 – March 30, 1981, 32 pages.

14 – April 6, 1981, 32 pages.

15 – April 13, 1981, 32 pages.

16 – April 20, 1981, 32 pages.

17 – April 27, 1981, 32 pages.

18 – May 4, 1981, 32 pages.

19 – May 11, 1981, 32 pages.

20 – May 18, 1981, 32 pages.

21 – May 25, 1981, 32 pages.

22 – June 1, 1981, 32 pages.

23 – June 8, 1981, 32 pages.

24 – June 15, 1981, 32 pages.

25 – June 22, 1981, 32 pages.

26 – June 29, 1981, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1981, 32 pages.

27 – July 6, 1981, includes ‘On Questions of Party History‘, adopted by the Sixth Plenary Session of the CPC on June 27, 1981, 30 pages. (This is the notorious revisionist summation of, and slander against, the Mao years of the CCP.) 40 pages.

28 – July 13, 1981, 32 pages.

29 – July 20, 1981, 32 pages.

30 – July 27, 1981, 32 pages.

31 – August 3, 1981, 24 pages.

32 – August 10, 1981, 32 pages.

33 – August 17, 1981, 32 pages.

34 – August 24, 1981, 32 pages.

35 – August 31, 1981, 32 pages.

36 – September 7, 1981, 32 pages.

37 – September 14, 1981, 32 pages.

38 – September 21, 1981, 32 pages.

39 – September 28, 1981, 32 pages.

40 – October 5, 1981, 32 pages.

41 – October 12, 1981, 32 pages.

42 – October 19, 1981, 32 pages.

43 – October 26, 1981, 32 pages.

44 – November 2, 1981, 32 pages.

45 – November 9, 1981, 32 pages.

46 – November 16, 1981, 32 pages.

47 – November 23, 1981, 32 pages.

48 – November 30, 1981, 32 pages.

49 – December 7, 1981, 32 pages.

50 – December 14, 1981, 32 pages.

51 – December 21, 1981, 40 pages.

52 – December 28, 1981, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1981, 40 pages.

 

1982 – Volume 25

1 – January 4, 1982, 32 pages.

2 – January 11, 1982, 32 pages.

3 – January 18, 1982, 32 pages.

4 – January 25, 1982, 32 pages.

5 – February 1, 1982, 24 pages.

6 – February 8, 1982, 32 pages.

7 – February 15, 1982, 32 pages.

8 – February 22, 1982, 32 pages.

9 – March 1, 1982, 32 pages.

10 – March 8, 1982, 32 pages.

11 – March 15, 1982, 32 pages.

12 – March 22, 1982, 32 pages.

13 – March 29, 1982, 32 pages.

14 – April 5, 1982, 32 pages.

15 – April 12, 1982, 32 pages.

16 – April 19, 1982, 32 pages.

17 – April 26, 1982, 32 pages.

18 – May 3, 1982, 32 pages.

19 – May 10, 1982, 48 pages.

20 – May 17, 1982, 32 pages.

21 – May 24, 1982, 32 pages.

22 – May 31, 1982, 32 pages.

23 – June 7, 1982, 32 pages.

24 – June 14, 1982, 32 pages.

25 – June 21, 1982, 32 pages.

26 – June 28, 1982, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1982, 32 pages.

27 – July 5, 1982, 32 pages.

28 – July 12, 1982, 32 pages.

29 – July 19, 1982, 32 pages.

30 – July 26, 1982, 32 pages.

31 – August 2, 1982, 32 pages.

32 – August 9, 1982, 32 pages.

33 – August 16, 1982, 32 pages.

34 – August 23, 1982, 32 pages.

35 – August 30, 1982, 32 pages.

36 – September 6, 1982, 32 pages.

37 – September 13, 1982, 48 pages.

38 – September 20, 1982, 32 pages.

39 – September 27, 1982, 32 pages.

40 – October 4, 1982, 32 pages.

41 – October 11, 1982, 32 pages.

42 – October 18, 1982, 32 pages.

43 – October 25, 1982, 32 pages.

44 – November 1, 1982, 32 pages.

45 – November 8, 1982, 32 pages.

46 – November 15, 1982, 32 pages.

47 – November 22, 1982, 32 pages.

48 – November 29, 1982, 32 pages.

49 – December 6, 1982, 32 pages.

50 – December 13, 1982, 32 pages.

51 – December 20, 1982, 40 pages.

52 – December 27, 1982, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1982, 48 pages.

 

1983 – Volume 26

1 – January 3, 1983, 32 pages.

2 – January 10, 1983, 32 pages.

3 – January 17, 1983, 32 pages.

4 – January 24, 1983, 32 pages.

5 – January 31, 1983, 32 pages.

6 – February 7, 1983, 32 pages.

7 – February 14, 1983, 32 pages.

8 – February 21, 1983, 24 pages.

9 – February 28, 1983, 32 pages.

10 – March 7, 1983, 32 pages.

11 – March 14, 1983, 32 pages.

12 – March 21, 1983, 48 pages. Includes ‘The radiance of the great truth of Marxism lights our way forward’, by Hu Yaobang. Nominally a commemoration of the centenary of the death of Marx, but also a major statement of the revisionist line of the CCP, 16 pages.

13 – March 28, 1983, 32 pages.

14 – April 4, 1983, 32 pages.

15 – April 11, 1983, 32 pages.

16 – April 18, 1983, 40 pages.

17 – April 25, 1983, 32 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 32 pages.

18 – May 2, 1983, 32 pages.

19 – May 9, 1983, 40 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 40 pages.

20 – May 16, 1983, 32 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 32 pages.

21 – May 23, 1983, 48 pages, includes a 16-page supplement: ‘The 6th Five-Year Plan (1981-85) of the People’s Republic of China for Economic and Social Development’ [First part.]

22 – May 30, 1983, 48 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 48 pages.

23 – June 6, 1983, 32 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 32 pages.

24 – June 13, 1983, 32 pages.

25 – June 20, 1983, 32 pages.

26 – June 27, 1983, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1983, 48 pages.

27 – July 4, 1983, 48 pages, includes a 24-page supplement: ‘Report on the work of the Government’, by Zhao Ziyang.

28 – July 11, 1983, 48 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 48 pages.

29 – July 18, 1983, 32 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 32 pages.

30 – July 25, 1983, 32 pages.

31 – August 1, 1983, 32 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 32 pages.

32 – August 8, 1983, 32 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 32 pages.

33 – August 15, 1983, 32 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 32 pages.

34 – August 22, 1983, 32 pages.

35 – August 29, 1983, 32 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 32 pages.

36 – September 5, 1983, 32 pages.

37 – September 12, 1983, 48 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 48 pages.

38 – September 19, 1983, 32 pages.

39 – September 26, 1983, 32 pages.

40 – October 3, 1983, 32 pages.

41 – October 10, 1983, 48 pages, includes 16-page supplement: ‘Regulations for the implementation of the law of the People’s Republic of China on joint ventures using Chinese and Foreign investment’ (September 20, 1983)

42 – October 17, 1983, 40 pages, includes 12-page supplement: ‘The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Party Consolidation (October 11, 1983). [I.e., on ‘rectifying’ or purging any remaining Party members with Maoist revolutionary sympathies.]

43 – October 24, 1983, 32 pages.

44 – October 31, 1983, 32 pages.

45 – November 7, 1983, 32 pages.

46 – November 14, 1983, 32 pages.

47 – November 21, 1983, 32 pages.

48 – November 28, 1983, 32 pages.

49 – December 5, 1983, 32 pages.

50 – December 12, 1983, 32 pages.

51 – December 19, 1983, 32 pages.

52 – December 26, 1983, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1983, 48 pages.

 

1984 – Volume 27

1 – January 2, 1984, 36 pages.

2 – January 9, 1984, 36 pages.

3 – January 16, 1984, 36 pages.

4 – January 23, 1984, 36 pages.

5-6 – January 30, 1984, 44 pages.

7 – February 13, 1984, 36 pages.

8 – February 20, 1984, 36 pages.

9 – February 27, 1984, 36 pages.

10 – March 5, 1984, 36 pages.

11 – March 12, 1984, 36 pages.

12 – March 19, 1984, 36 pages.

13 – March 26, 1984, 36 pages.

14 – April 2, 1984, 36 pages.

15 – April 9, 1984, 44 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Patent Law of the People’s Republic of China’ (March 12, 1984), 8 pages.

16 – April 16, 1984, 40 pages.

17 – April 23, 1984, 36 pages.

18 – April 30, 1984, 36 pages.

19 – May 7, 1984, 36 pages.

20 – May 14, 1984, 44 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Communique on fulfilment of China’s 1983 National Economic Plan’, by the State Statistical Bureau, 12 pages.

21 – May 21, 1984, 36 pages.

22 – May 28, 1984, 36 pages.

23 – June 4, 1984, 36 pages.

24 – June 11, 1984, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Report on the work of the Government’, by Zhao Ziyang, at the 2nd Session of the Sixth National People’s Congress, May 15, 1984, 16 pages.

25 – June 18, 1984, 44 pages, includes two internal supplements: ‘Independent and peaceful foreign policy’ (3 pages) and ‘Expanding economic exchanges and promoting common prosperity’ (4 pages) Relating to the policy of ‘opening up’ China to foreign investment.

26 – June 25, 1984, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1984,

27 – July 2, 1984, 36 pages.

28 – July 9, 1984, 40 pages.

29 – July 16, 1984, 36 pages includes the article ‘Investment environment seen as favourable’, by Gu Ming, discussing the political and legal changes from 1979 on which opened up China to foreign investment.

30 – July 23, 1984, 36 pages.

31 – July 30, 1984, 36 pages.

32 – August 6, 1984, 36 pages.

33 – August 13, 1984, 36 pages.

34 – August 20 1984, 28 pages.

35 – August 27 1984, 52 pages includes the 20-page article ‘China’s industry on the upswing’, by Lu Dong, which includes charts and statistics admitting that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was overall actually a period of rapid economic growth.

36 – September 3, 1984, 36 pages.

37 – September 10, 1984, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

38 – September 17, 1984, 36 pages.

39 – September 24, 1984, 36 pages.

40 – October 1, 1984, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Sino-British joint declaration on the question of Hong Kong’, 20 pages.

41 – October 8, 1984, 40 pages.

42 – October 15, 1984, 36 pages.

43 – October 22, 1984, 36 pages.

44 – October 29, 1984, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on reform of the economic structure’, adopted by the 12th Central Committee of the CCP at its Third Plenary Session on October 20, 1984, 16 pages.

45 – November 5, 1984, 36 pages.

46 – November 12, 1984, 36 pages.

47 – November 19, 1984, 36 pages.

48 – November 26, 1984, 36 pages.

49 – December 3, 1984, 36 pages.

50 – December 10, 1984, 36 pages.

51 – December 17, 1984, 36 pages.

52 – December 24, 1984, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1984, 52 pages.

 

1985 – Volume 28

1 – January 7, 1985, 48 pages.

2 – January 14, 1985, 36 pages.

3 – January 21, 1985, 36 pages.

4 – January 28, 1985, 36 pages.

5 – February 4, 1985, 36 pages.

6 – February 11, 1985, 36 pages.

7-8 – February 18, 1985, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Regulations on implementing the Patent Law of the PRC’, 14 pages.

9 – March 4, 1985, 40 pages.

10 – March 11, 1985, 36 pages.

11 – March 18, 1985, 36 pages.

12 – March 25, 1985, 44 pages.

13 – April 1, 1985, 36 pages.

14 – April 1, 1985, 36 pages.

15 – April 8, 1985, 36 pages.

16 – April 15, 1985, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘The current economic situation and the reform of the economic structure’, by Zhao Ziyang, 16 pages.

17 – April 22, 1985, 44 pages, includes two internal supplements: ‘Report on the execution of the State Budget for 1984 and on the Draft State Budget for 1985’ (3 pages), and ‘Report on the Draft 1985 Plan for National Economic and Social Development’ (5 pages).

18 – May 6, 1985, 36 pages.

19 – May 13, 1985, 36 pages.

20 – May 20, 1985, 36 pages.

21 – May 27, 1985, 36 pages.

22 – June 3, 1985, 40 pages.

23 – June 10, 1985, 36 pages. [Some water damage making a few words illegible.]

24 – June 17, 1985, 36 pages.

25 – June 24, 1985, 36 pages.

26 – July 1, 1985, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1985, 44 pages.

27 – July 8, 1985, 52 pages, includes two internal supplements: ‘Foreign economic contract law of the PRC’ (4 pages), and ‘The accounting regulations of the PRC for the joint ventures using Chinese and foreign Investment’ (12 pages).

28 – July 15, 1985, 36 pages.

29 – July 22, 1985, 36 pages.

30 – July 29, 1985, 36 pages.

31 – August 5, 1985, 32 pages.

32 – August 12, 1985, 36 pages.

33 – August 19, 1985, 36 pages.

34 – August 26, 1985, 40 pages.

35 – September 2, 1985, 36 pages.

36 – September 9, 1985, 36 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘China pledges to maintain world peace’, by Peng Zhen, 8 pages.

37 – September 16, 1985, 36 pages.

38 – September 23, 1985, 36 pages.

39 – September 30, 1985, 36 pages.

40 – October 7, 1985, 44 pages, includes two internal supplements: ‘Explanation of the Proposal for the Seventh Five-Year Plan’, by Zhao Ziyang (5 pages) and ‘Proposal of the CC of the CCP for the Seventh Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development’ (19 pages).

41 – October 14, 1985, 36 pages.

42 – October 21, 1985, 36 pages.

43 – October 28, 1985, 36 pages.

44 – November 4, 1985, 36 pages.

45 – November 11, 1985, 36 pages.

46 – November 18, 1985, 36 pages.

47 – November 25, 1985, 36 pages.

48 – December 2, 1985, 36 pages.

49 – December 9, 1985, 36 pages.

50 – December 16, 1985, 36 pages.

51 – December 23, 1985, 36 pages.

52 – December 30, 1985, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1985, 44 pages.

 

1986 – Volume 29

1 – January 6, 1986, 52 pages.

2 – January 13, 1986, 40 pages.

3 – January 20, 1986, 36 pages.

4 – January 27, 1986, 36 pages.

5 – February 3, 1986, 36 pages.

6-7 – February 10, 1986, 52 pages.

8 – February 24, 1986, 40 pages.

9 – March 3, 1986, 36 pages.

10 – March 10, 1986, 36 pages.

11 – March 17, 1986, 36 pages.

12 – March 24, 1986, 44 pages.

13 – March 31, 1986, 40 pages.

14 – April 7, 1986, 36 pages.

15 – April 14, 1986, 36 pages.

16 – April 21, 1986, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Report on the Seventh Five-Year Plan’, by Premier Zhao Ziyang, 20 pages.

17 – April 28, 1986, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘The Seventh Five-Year Plan of the PRC for Economic and Social Development (1986-1990): Excerpts’, 24 pages.

18 – May 5, 1986, 40 pages.

19 – May 12, 1986, 36 pages.

20 – May 19, 1986, 44 pages.

21 – May 26, 1986, 36 pages.

22 – June 2, 1986, 36 pages.

23 – June 9, 1986, 36 pages.

24 – June 16, 1986, 40 pages.

25 – June 23, 1986, 36 pages.

26 – June 30, 1986, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1986, 44 pages.

27 – July 7, 1986, 36 pages.

28 – July 14, 1986, 40 pages.

29 – July 21, 1986, 36 pages.

30 – July 28, 1986, 32 pages.

31 – August 4, 1986, 36 pages.

32 – August 11, 1986, 36 pages.

33 – August 18, 1986, 36 pages.

34 – August 25, 1986, 32 pages.

35 – September 1, 1986, 36 pages.

36 – September 8, 1986, 36 pages.

37 – September 15, 1986, 36 pages.

38 – September 22, 1986, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

39 – September 29, 1986, 40 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 40 pages.

40 – October 6, 1986, 44 pages. Includes internal supplement: ‘Resolution of the CC of the CPC on the guiding principles of building a Socialist society with an advanced culture and ideology’, adopted by the 6th Plenary Session of the 12th CC on Sept. 28, 1986, 8 pages.

41 – October 13, 1986, 36 pages.

42 – October 20, 1986, 36 pages. Includes the article: ‘China improves climate for foreign investment’ (p. 5).

43 – October 27, 1986, 36 pages.

44 – November 3, 1986, 40 pages.

45 – November 10, 1986, 36 pages.

46 – November 17, 1986, 36 pages.

47 – November 24, 1986, 36 pages.

48 – December 1, 1986, 36 pages. Includes the article: ‘A probe into theories backing China’s reform’, an academic discussion designed to further camouflage and ‘justify’ the transition back to capitalism (pp. 14-15).

49 – December 8, 1986, 36 pages. Includes the article: ‘Socialist features re-examined’, by Zhao Yao, reinterpreting socialism away from the Maoist understanding of it as a transition period between capitalism and communism (pp. 14-15).

50 – December 15, 1986, 36 pages.

51 – December 22, 1986, 36 pages.

52 – December 29, 1986, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1986, 44 pages.

 

1987 – Volume 30

1 – January 5, 1987, 40 pages.

2 – January 12, 1987, 36 pages.

North American edition, issue 2, 44 pages. (Includes 8 pages of material especially for North America.)

3 – January 19, 1987, 36 pages.

4 – January 26, 1987, 36 pages.

5-6 – February 9, 1987, 44 pages.

7 – February 16, 1987, 36 pages.

8 – February 23, 1987, 36 pages.

9 – March 2, 1987, 40 pages, includes: ‘Communique on the Statistics of 1986 Economic and Social Development’ (7 p.)

10 – March 9, 1987, 36 pages.

11 – March 16, 1987, 36 pages.

12 – March 23, 1987, 36 pages.

13 – March 30, 1987, 44 pages.

14 – April 6, 1987, 44 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration on the Question of Macao’, 12 pages.

15 – April 13, 1987, 36 pages.

16 – April 20, 1987, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Report on the work of the Government’, by Premier Zhao Ziyang, 20 pages.

17 – April 27, 1987, 48 pages, includes internal supplements: ‘Report on the Draft 1987 Plan for National Economic and Social Development (Excerpts)’, by Song Ping, 4 pages; and ‘Report on the implementation of the State Budget for 1986 and the Draft State Budget for 1987 (Excerpts)’, by Wang Bingqian, 4 pages.

18 – May 4, 1987, 40 pages.

19 – May 11, 1987, 36 pages.

20 – May 18, 1987, 36 pages.

21 – May 25, 1987, 36 pages.

22 – June 1, 1987, 36 pages.

23 – June 8, 1987, 36 pages.

24 – June 15, 1987, 36 pages.

25 – June 22, 1987, 36 pages.

26 – June 29, 1987, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1987, 44 pages.

27 – July 6, 1987, 36 pages.

28 – July 13, 1987, 36 pages.

29 – July 20, 1987, 36 pages.

30 – July 27, 1987, 36 pages.

31 – August 3, 1987, 36 pages.

32 – August 10, 1987, 36 pages.

33 – August 17, 1987, 36 pages.

34 – August 24, 1987, 28 pages.

35 – August 31, 1987, 36 pages.

36 – September 7, 1987, 36 pages.

37 – September 14, 1987, 36 pages.

38 – September 21, 1987, 36 pages.

39 – September 28, 1987, 36 pages.

40 – October 5, 1987, 36 pages.

41 – October 12, 1987, 36 pages.

42 – October 19, 1987, 36 pages.

43 – October 26-November 1, 1987, 36 pages.

44 – November 2-8, 1987, 36 pages.

45 – November 9-15, 1987, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Advance along the road of Socialism with Chinese characteristics’, report presented by Zhao Ziyang at the 13th National Congress of the CCP on October 25, 1978, 27 pages.

46 – November 16-22, 1987, 44 pages.

47 – November 23-29, 1987, 40 pages.

48 – November 30-December 6, 1987, 36 pages.

49 – December 7-13, 1987, 36 pages.

50 – December 14-20, 1987, 36 pages.

51 – December 21-27, 1987, 40 pages.

52 – December 28, 1987-January 3, 1988, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1987, 52 pages.

 

1988 – Volume 31

1 – January 4-10, 1988, 36 pages.

2 – January 11-17, 1988, 36 pages.

3 – January 18-24, 1988, 36 pages.

4 – January 25-31, 1988, 36 pages.

5 – February 1-7, 1988, 36 pages.

6 – February 8-14, 1988, 36 pages.

7-8 – February 15-28, 1988, 40 pages.

9 – February 29-March 6, 1988, 36 pages.

10 – March 7-13, 1988, 44 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Statistics for 1987 Socio-Economic Development’, 8 pages.

11 – March 14-20, 1988, 40 pages.

12 – March 21-27, 1988, 40 pages.

13 – March 28-April 3, 1988, 36 pages.

14 – April 4-10, 1988, 40 pages.

15 – April 11-17, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover.

16 – April 18-24, 1988, 40 pages. Missing front and back covers.

17 – April 25-May 1, 1988, 50 pages. Missing back cover.

18 – May 2-8, 1988, 40 pages.

19 – May 9-15, 1988, 52 pages.

20 – May 16-22, 1988, 42 pages. Missing back cover. Includes internal supplement: ‘Report on the Draft 1988 Plan for National Economic and Social Development.

21 – May 23-29, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover.

22 – May 30-June 5, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover.

23 – June 6-12, 1988, 32 pages. Missing both front and back covers.

24 – June 13-19, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover.

25 – June 20-26, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover. Includes: ‘Law of the PRC on Chinese-Foreign Contractual Joint Ventures’, 4 pages.

26 – June 27-July 3, 1988, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1988, 42 pages. Missing back cover.

27 – July 4-10, 1988, 34 pages. Missing front cover.

28 – July 11-17, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover.

29 – July 18-24, 1988, 40 pages.

30 – July 25-31, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover.

31 – August 1-7, 1988, 26 pages. Missing back cover.

32 – August 8-14, 1988, 28 pages.

33 – August 15-21, 1988, 36 pages.

34 – August 22-28, 1988, 36 pages.

35 – August 29-September 4, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover.

36 – September 5-11, 1988, 36 pages.

37 – September 12-18, 1988, 34 pages. Missing back cover.

38 – September 19-25, 1988, 35 pages. Missing back cover.

39 – September 26-October 2, 1988, 36 pages. Back cover photo upside down.

40 – October 3-9, 1988, 36 pages.

41 – October 10-16, 1988, 36 pages.

42 – October 17-23, 1988, 36 pages.

43 – October 24-30, 1988, 36 pages.

44 – October 31-November 6, 1988, 36 pages.

45 – November 7-13, 1988, 36 pages.

46 – November 14-20, 1988, 44 pages , includes articles: ‘Re-understanding Capitalism’ and ‘The privatization of urban housing’ as well as the internal supplement: ‘Report to the Third Plenary Session of the 13th CPC Central Committee’, by Zhao Ziyang, 8 pages.

47 – November 21-27, 1988, 36 pages.

48 – November 28-December 4, 1988, 36 pages.

49 – December 5-11, 1988, 36 pages.

50 – December 12-18, 1988, 36 pages.

51 – December 19-25, 1988, 36 pages, includes: ‘The reform of China’s labour system’, about the mass lay-offs from state-owned enterprises, etc.

52 – December 26, 1988 – January 1, 1989, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1988, 44 pages.

 

1989 – Volume 32

1 – January 2-8, 1989, 36 pages.

2 – January 9-15, 1989, 36 pages.

3 – January 16-22, 1989, 36 pages.

4 – January 23-29, 1989, 36 pages.

5 – January 30-February 5, 1989, 36 pages.

6 – February 6-12, 1989, 36 pages.

7-8 – February 13-26, 1989, 52 pages.

9 – February 27-March 5, 1989, 36 pages.

10 – March 6-12, 1989, 52 pages, includes 4 internal supplements (16 pages): ‘Statistics for 1988 Socio-Economic Development’; ‘Interim regulations on private enterprises of the People’s Republic of China’; and 2 others.

11 – March 13-19, 1989, 52 pages, includes internal supplement: ‘Basic Law of HKSAR,PRC (Draft)’ [Hong Kong], 16 pages.

12 – March 20-26, 1989, 36 pages.

13 – March 27-April 2, 1989, 36 pages.

14 – April 3-9, 1989, 36 pages.

15 – April 10-16, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

16 – April 17-23, 1989, 52 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 52 pages.

17 – April 24-30, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

18 – April 24-30, 1989, The official government condemnations of the world-famous student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square begin in this issue. 52 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 52 pages.

19 – May 8-14, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

20 – May 15-21, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

21 – May 22-28, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

22 – May 29-June 4, 1989, 40 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 40 pages.

23 – June 5-11, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

24-25 – June 12-25, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

26 – June 26-July 2, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

27 – July 3-9, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

28 – July 10-16, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

29 – July 17-23, 1989, 52 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 52 pages.

30 – July 24-30, 1989, 40 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 40 pages.

31 – July 31-August 6, 1989, 40 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 40 pages.

32 – August 7-13, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

33 – August 14-20, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

34 – August 21-27, 1989, 28 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 28 pages.

35 – August 28-September 3, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

36 – September 4-10, 1989, 36 pages, includes the absurd 1-page article ‘Why China will not practise privatization”, by Jin Qi, attempting to discount both the massive privatization occurring during this period and also the state capitalist relations of production of even that part of industry which was not being privatized.

37 – September 11-17, 1989, 36 pages.

38 – September 18-24, 1989, 36 pages.

39 – September 25-October 1, 1989, 36 pages.

40 – October 2-8, 1989, 56 pages. Includes a lot of statistical information.

41 – October 9-15, 1989, 52 pages.

42 – October 16-22, 1989, 36 pages.

43 – October 23-29, 1989, 36 pages.

Second copy – clearer but a much bigger file, 36 pages.

44 – October 30-November 5, 1989, 36 pages, includes the article: ‘China announces foreign debts for the first time’ (p. 29).

45 – November 6-12, 1989, 36 pages.

46 – November 13-19, 1989, 36 pages.

47 – November 20-26, 1989, 56 pages.

48 – November 27-December 3, 1989, 36 pages.

49 – December 4-10, 1989, 36 pages.

50 – December 11-17, 1989, 36 pages.

51 – December 18-24, 1989, 36 pages.

52 – December 25-31, 1989, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1989, 52 pages.

 

1990 – Volume 33

1 – January 1-7, 1990, 36 pages.

2 – January 8-14, 1990, 36 pages.

3 – January 15-21, 1990, 36 pages.

4 – January 22-28, 1990, 36 pages.

5-6 – January 29-February 11, 1990, 40 pages.

7 – February 12-18, 1990, 52 pages, includes the internal supplement: ‘Decision on further improving the economic environment, straightening out the economic order and deepening the reforms’, 16 pages.

8 – February 19-25, 1990, 36 pages.

9 – February 26-March 4, 1990, 52 pages, includes the internal supplement: ‘Statistics for China’s National Socio-Economic Development in 1989’, 8 pages.

10 – March 5-11, 1990, 36 pages.

11 – March 12-18, 1990, 36 pages.

12 – March 19-25, 1990, 36 pages.

13 – March 26-April 1, 1990, 36 pages.

14 – April 2-8, 1990, 36 pages.

15 – April 9-15, 1990, 36 pages.

16 – April 16-22, 1990, 52 pages, includes the internal supplement: ‘Continue to work for stable political, economic and social development in China – report on the work of the Government’, by Premier Li Peng, 24 pages.

17 – April 23-29, 1990, 52 pages, includes the internal supplements: ‘Report on implementation of the 1989 Plan for National Development and the Draft 1990 Plan’, by Zou Jiahua, 8 pages; and ‘Report on the implementation of the State Budget for 1989 and on the Draft State Budget for 1990’, by Wang Bingqian, 6 pages.

18 – April 30-May 6, 1990, 52 pages, includes the internal supplement: ‘The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China’, and related documents, 24 pages.

19 – May 7-13, 1990, 36 pages.

20 – May 14-20, 1990, 36 pages.

21 – May 21-27, 1990, 36 pages.

22 – May 28-June 3, 1990, 48 pages, includes a 12-page special section on the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone as an ‘ideal place for foreign investment’.

23 – June 4-10, 1990, 36 pages.

24 – June 11-17, 1990, 36 pages.

25 – June 18-24, 1990, 36 pages.

26 – June 25-July 1, 1990, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1990, 52 pages.

27 – July 2-8, 1990, 36 pages.

28 – July 9-15, 1990, 36 pages.

29 – July 16-22, 1990, 36 pages.

30 – July 23-29, 1990, 40 pages.

31 – July 30-August 5, 1990, 36 pages.

32 – August 6-12, 1990, 28 pages.

33 – August 13-19, 1990, 36 pages.

Second copy , 36 pages.

34 – August 20-26, 1990, 44 pages.

35 – August 27-September 2, 1990, 36 pages.

36 – September 3-9, 1990, 36 pages.

37 – September 10-16, 1990, 36 pages.

38 – September 17-23, 1990, 36 pages.

39 – September 24-30, 1990, 36 pages.

40 – October 1-7, 1990, 36 pages.

41 – October 8-14, 1990, 36 pages.

42 – October 15-21, 1990, 40 pages.

43 – October 22-28, 1990, 36 pages.

44 – October 29-November 4, 1990, 36 pages.

45 – November 5-11, 1990, 36 pages.

46 – November 12-18, 1990, 36 pages.

47 – November 19-25, 1990, 36 pages.

48 – November 26-December 2, 1990, 36 pages.

49 – December 3-9, 1990, 36 pages.

50 – December 10-16, 1990, 36 pages.

51 – December 17-23, 1990, 40 pages.

52 – December 24-30, 1990, includes an index for issues 27-52 in 1990, 52 pages.

 

1991 – Volume 34

1 – January 7-13, 1991, 36 pages, includes: ‘Communique of the 7th Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee of the CCP’, 3 pages.

2 – January 14-20, 1991, 36 pages, includes: ‘China opens first Securities Exchange’ [stock market], 2 pages.

3 – January 21-27, 1991, 36 pages.

4 – January 28-February 3, 1991, 36 pages.

5 – February 4-10, 1991, 36 pages.

6 – February 11-17, 1991, 36 pages.

7-8 – February 18-March 3, 1991, 56 pages.

9 – March 4-10, 1991, 36 pages.

10 – March 11-17, 1991, 52 pages, includes: ‘Economic restructuring in the 1990s’, 2 pages; and ‘Statistical Communique of the State Statistical Bureau…’, 8 pages.

11 – March 18-24, 1991, 36 pages.

12 – March 25-31, 1991, 36 pages.

13 – April 1-7, 1991, 36 pages.

14 – April 8-14, 1991, 36 pages, includes: ‘Development of China’s Special Economic Zones’, 7 pages.

15 – April 15-21, 1991, 52 pages includes article: ‘China to enact its Copyright Law’, 1 page; and ‘Report on the Outline of the Ten-Year Programme and of the Eighth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development’, by Premier Li Peng, 24 pages.

16 – April 22-28, 1991, 52 pages, includes: ‘Report on the implementation of the 1990 Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Draft 1991 Plan’, by Zou Jiahua, 32 pages; and a report on the 1990 & 1991 state budgets.

17 – April 29-May 5, 1991, 36 pages.

18 – May 6-12, 1991, 36 pages, includes short article: ‘China raises food prices’.

19 – May 13-19, 1991, 36 pages.

20 – May 20-26, 1991, 40 pages.

21 – May 27-June 2, 1991, 36 pages.

22 – June 3-9, 1991, 36 pages.

23 – June 10-16, 1991, 40 pages.

24 – June 17-23, 1991, 36 pages.

25 – June 24-30, 1991, 36 pages.

26 – July 1-7, 1991, includes an index for issues 1-26 in 1991, 52 pages.

27 – July 8-14, 1991, 52 pages, includes: ‘Building Socialism the Chinese Way’”, speech by Jiang Zemin, July 1, 1991, 18 pages.

28 – July 15-21, 1991, 36 pages, includes: ‘How has the CPC developed Marxism?’, by Hu Qiaomu, 6 pages. [Item 8 on this list consists of the capitalist-road methods of economic ‘reforms’ and ‘opening up’; item 9 is the ‘socialist commodity economy’ (i.e. so-called ‘market socialism’]

29 – July 22-28, 1991, 36 pages.

30 – July 29-August 4, 1991, 52 pages.

31 – August 5-11, 1991, 36 pages.

32 – August 12-18, 1991, 36 pages.

33 – August 19-25, 1991, 36 pages.

34 – August 26-September 1, 1991, 36 pages.

35 – September 2-8, 1991, 36 pages.

More on China …..

Neo-liberalism’s Bailout Problem

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Lenin sweeping the world clean

Lenin sweeping the world clean

View of the world

Ukraine – what you’re not told

Neo-liberalism’s Bailout Problem

by Robert Pollin and Gerald Epstein

This is a reprint of an article first published on the Portside website on 30th June 2021. It provides a lot of useful background information but the conclusion – as the authors recognise – is still the best bet for capitalism. If the system continues to use public money to maintain themselves then there’s a chance that the poor and dispossessed might think that that investment would be better used for the vast majority of the world and not just for the super-rich. Although most of this article addresses the situation in the United States the changing of the $ to the £ and the Federal Reserve to the Bank of England and you have a similar situation in Britain – and similarly for the rest of the capitalist world.

Mainstream economics ignores the massive government interventions that ‘free market’ capitalism requires.

The most basic tenet undergirding neo-liberal economics is that free market capitalism – or at least some close approximation to it – is the only effective framework for delivering widely shared economic well-being. On this view, only free markets can increase productivity and average living standards while delivering high levels of individual freedom and fair social outcomes: big government spending and heavy regulations are simply less effective.

These neoliberal premises have dominated economic policymaking both in the United States and around the world for the past forty years, beginning with the elections of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the States. Thatcher’s dictum that ‘there is no alternative’ to neoliberalism became a rallying cry, supplanting what had been, since the end of World War II, the dominance of Keynesianism in global economic policymaking, which instead viewed large-scale government interventions as necessary for stability and a reasonable degree of fairness under capitalism. This neoliberal ascendency has been undergirded by the full-throated support of the overwhelming majority of professional economists, including such luminaries as Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas.

In reality neoliberalism has depended on huge levels of government support for its entire existence. The global neo-liberal economic order could easily have collapsed into a 1930s-level Great Depression multiple times over in the absence of massive government interventions. Especially central to its survival have been government bailouts, including emergency government spending injections financed by borrowing – that is, deficit spending – as well as central bank actions to prop up financial institutions and markets teetering on the verge of ruin.

Bailouts have therefore not only repeatedly rescued neo-liberal capitalism during periods of crisis, but they have also, as a result, reinforced neo-liberalism’s most malignant tendencies. In 1978, just prior to neo-liberalism’s rise, the CEOs of the largest 350 U.S. corporations earned $1.7 million, 33 times the $51,200 earned by the average private-sector non-supervisory worker. As of 2019 the CEOs were earning 366 times more than the average worker, $21.3 million versus $58,200. Under neoliberalism, in other words, the pay for big corporate U.S. CEOs increased more than ten-fold relative to the average U.S. worker. This curious conjunction – theoretical disdain for government alongside practical reliance on it – has amounted to champagne socialism for big corporations, Wall Street, and the rich and ‘let-them-eat-cake’ capitalism for most everyone else.

The COVID-19 pandemic and recession powerfully illustrated how neoliberalism works in practice. During the pandemic, employment and overall economic activity throughout the world fell precipitously, as major sections of the global economy were forced into lock down mode. According to the International Monetary Fund, overall economic activity (GDP) contracted by 3.5 percent in 2020 in a ‘severe collapse . . . that has had acute adverse impacts on women, youth, the poor, the informally employed and those who work in contact-intensive sectors.’ But during the same period, global markets soared. In the United States, nearly 50 percent of the entire labor force filed for unemployment benefits between March 2020 and February 2021. However, over this same period, the prices of Wall Street stocks – as measured, for example, by the Standard and Poor’s 500 index, a broad market indicator – rose by 46 percent, one of the sharpest one-year increases on record. Moreover, this increase did not simply reflect the U.S. stock market recovering from the pandemic and lockdown. As of February 2021, the Standard and Poor’s 500 index was also 38 percent higher than two years prior, in March 2019, nine months before COVID-19 had been recognized as a human pathogen. And the 2020 stock market ascent began months before there was any clear evidence that the economy was recovering from the lock down. All these gains are the result of large-scale government interventions: bailouts were given, first and foremost, to boost financial markets and to help the rich.

Textbook Neoliberalism vs. Bailouts 101

In textbook economics the movements of financial markets are supposed to reflect underlying conditions in the real economy where goods and services are produced, workers are hired and paid, and companies profit or don’t in attempting to sell their products. In this scenario, when companies lay off workers, workers lose income and cut back on spending, which means companies are likely to face difficulties selling their products. Their profits should fall as a result. As unemployment rises and profits fall, the value of these companies, as expressed in their stock market prices, should decrease. This has not been the case over the past year – as disparities grew between conditions in the real economy and financial markets – because governments undertook massive bailout operations in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2020, with Donald Trump in office and Republicans controlling the U.S. Senate, the federal government enacted the CARES Act, a $2 trillion stimulus program equal to about 10 percent of U.S. GDP. More than 40 percent of the total funding – about $850 billion – went to loans and grants for businesses, with only weak stipulations as to how these funds would be used. For example, large businesses could receive a loan and still lay off up to 10 percent of their employees, while smaller businesses could receive loans or grants without committing to retaining any employees. At the discretion of the Treasury Secretary, corporations could even engage in stock buybacks to boost their share prices with the funds. The CARES Act provided one-time cash support for people earning $75,000 or less and significant, though temporary, unemployment insurance support for laid-off workers. In December the CARES Act was followed by the 2020 COVID Relief Act, budgeted at $900 billion, another 4 percent injection of GDP. About 33 percent of the Act’s funding went to an additional round of credit and grants to businesses.

Together the CARES and COVID Relief Acts amounted to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP in 2020, an unprecedented expansion of federal government deficit spending in peacetime. Yet these massive stimulus measures were exceeded by nearly $4 trillion spent on Federal Reserve interventions – nearly 20 percent of U.S. GDP – to ensure Wall Street stayed afloat. Most significantly, the Federal Reserve bought financial assets – including U.S. Treasury bonds, mortgage-backed securities, and even corporate junk bonds held by money market funds, private equity dealers, and banks – to ensure that these firms were well-stocked to survive the crisis. This gargantuan cash injection propped up the stock market and other U.S. financial markets, which in turn suppressed incipient panic and launched a spike in stock prices. The stock market rise was further fuelled by the Federal Reserve pushing the short-term interest rate it controls to near-zero. Thus, Wall Street players could borrow cheap money to purchase stocks.

The policy interventions in other high-income countries followed broadly similar trajectories during the pandemic. The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) described these measures as ‘unprecedented’ in ‘size and scope.’ As in the United States, the largest proportionate interventions involved directly bolstering financial markets through measures such as purchasing assets and guaranteeing fragile loans. The BIS estimated that these interventions exceeded 30 percent of GDP in Germany and Italy, over 20 percent in Japan, and around 15 percent in the UK and France.

It is true that these 2020 global bailout operations were triggered by the COVID pandemic, not by the breakdown of neo-liberal economic policies. But the same bailout operations deployed to counteract the COVID lock downs have also been mobilized regularly and with increasing force since the beginning of the neo-liberal era in the early 1980s.

Indeed, it was only thirteen years ago, in 2008, that Wall Street hyper-speculation brought the global economy to its knees during the Great Recession. To prevent a 1930s-level depression at that time, economic policymakers throughout the world – including in the United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Brazil – enacted extraordinary measures to counteract the crisis Wall Street created. As in 2020, these measures included financial bailouts, monetary policies that pushed central bank-controlled interest rates close to zero, and large-scale fiscal stimulus programs financed by major expansions in central government deficits.

In the United States, the fiscal deficit reached $1.4 trillion in 2009, equal to 9.8 percent of GDP. The deficits were around $1.3 trillion in 2010 and 2011 as well, amounting to close to 9 percent of GDP in both years. These were the largest peacetime deficits prior to the 2020 COVID recession. The federal government’s fiscal deficit had averaged 1.7 percent GDP in the fifty-eight years prior, between 1950 and 2008. As a share of GDP, the deficit from 2009 to 2011 spiked more than five-fold relative to the post World War II average.

As with the 2020 crisis, the Federal Reserve’s interventions to prop up Wall Street and corporate America were even more extensive than the federal government’s deficit spending policies. A careful 2017 study by Better Markets estimated the overall level of financial market support between 2009 and 2012 at $12.2 trillion, about 20 percent of GDP per year. Moreover, this total figure does not include the full funding mobilized in 2009 to bail out General Motors, Chrysler, Goldman Sachs, and the insurance giant AIG – all of which were facing death spirals at that time. It is hard to envision the form in which U.S. capitalism might have survived at that time if, following true free market precepts as opposed to the actual practice of neo-liberal champagne socialism, these and other iconic U.S. firms would have been permitted to collapse.

Similar patterns prevailed in Europe during the Great Recession. Among the then twenty-seven countries of the EU, fiscal deficits for 2009 averaged 6.8 percent of GDP, compared with a 1.8 percent average between 2001 and 2007. According to the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, established in 1997 as a means of enshrining a neo-liberal project throughout the continent, annual fiscal deficits were not permitted to exceed 3 percent of GDP other than in severe recessions. Such recessions were expected to be few and far between, with the added expectation that adhering to neoliberal policy precepts was the best way to ensure this.

The European Central Bank also pursued a massive bailout program to buttress the European financial markets. The then-President of the ECB Jean-Claude Trichet described these measures as ‘an exceptional set of non-standard policy tools’ that had to be deployed because ‘speculation and financial gambling had run rife.’ The measures included driving down the Central Bank’s policy interest rate to almost zero and providing what Trichet described as ‘unlimited’ amounts of cash to distressed European banks at the near-zero interest rate.

Bailout operations of this sort have occurred with clockwork regularity throughout the neo-liberal era, beginning with Reagan. In 1983, under Reagan, the U.S. government reached a then-peacetime high for federal deficit spending, 5.7 percent of GDP. At the time, the U.S. and global economy were still mired in the second phase of the double-dip recession that lasted from 1980 to 1982, while Reagan faced a re-election campaign for 1984. Of course, both as a political candidate and throughout his presidency, Reagan preached that big government was the problem, not the solution. Yet Reagan did not hesitate to flout his own rhetoric in overseeing a massive fiscal bailout when he needed it.

After the 1983 bailout, we then saw global stock market prices fall even more sharply than in 1929, on Black Monday in October 1987; the savings-and-loan crisis in 1989 and 90; the ’emerging markets’ collapse of 1997–1998; and the bursting of the dot-com Wall Street bubble in 2001. Each of these would have easily produced a 1930s-style meltdown without full-scale government bailout operations.

Indeed, in February 1999, Time magazine ran an effusive cover story in the immediate aftermath of the emerging markets collapse that brought down, among others, Long-Term Capital Management, the super-hedge fund led by two Nobel laureates specializing in finance. The story called the then-Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers ‘the Committee to Save the World,’ due to their ability to execute global bailout operations. It described how ‘a hedge fund blessed with two Nobel prizewinners blew up in an afternoon, nearly taking Wall Street with it,’ and ‘Brazil is just hanging on, which means so is the rest of Latin America,’ and yet, ‘these guys’ kept ‘a near thing from becoming a disaster.’

Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers succeeded in propping up global neo-liberalism for a mere two years more before the dot-com bubble required yet another bailout. But the 2001 intervention ended up being just a warm up to the 2008–09 rescue operation. Still, Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers remained ardent defenders of the global neo-liberal order, apparently seeing no contradiction between the persistent requirement to bail out neoliberalism from impending disasters and their bedrock belief that ‘trying to defy global market forces is in the end futile.’

Their perspective was shared then and continues to be shared today by the overwhelming majority of practising economists – inside academia and out. For example, in his highly influential studies of the causes of the 1930s Great Depression, the late Nobel-prize winning economist and ardent free-market proponent Milton Friedman argued that the U.S. Federal Reserve should have intervened after the 1929 Wall Street crash to stabilize the banking system. The Federal Reserve, he contended, could operate as a ‘lender of last resort’ – that is, it could provide bailout funds to the failing banks when no private lender was willing to extend them credit. Yet Friedman never questioned how this observation might conflict with his overall position that capitalist economies operate most effectively with minimal levels of government intervention, including a minimal role for the Federal Reserve.

Similarly, Robert Lucas – another highly influential Nobel Prize-winning economist and free market proponent – commented during the 2008 global financial meltdown that he supported lender of last resort bailouts at that time, since ‘everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole.’ But, like Friedman, Lucas never integrated this position into his analytic models that purport to demonstrate that capitalist economies work best in the absence of government intervention. Following the example of such major contemporary figures as Friedman and Lucas, there is not, to our knowledge, a single mainstream economics textbook that recognizes bailouts as an indispensable policy tool for enabling capitalism to continue functioning.

The Minsky ‘Wall Street Paradigm’

There have been economists outside of the mainstream who clearly argue the fundamental importance of bailout policies. The most important figure in this camp is Hyman Minsky. Minsky spent most of his academic career at Washington University in St. Louis and remained professionally active until his death in 1996 – he was his generation’s most insightful analyst of financial markets and financial crises. Minsky contended that bailouts are fundamental to capitalism within the context of his overall approach to macroeconomics, which he termed the ‘Wall Street Paradigm.’ Within his Wall Street Paradigm, Minsky formulated a ‘financial instability hypothesis’ through which he explained how allowing financial markets to operate freely inevitably produces severe downturns and crashes. These occur not as a result of miscalculations and policy errors, though such miscalculations and errors are certainly prevalent. For Minsky, financial instability and crises emerge out of the logic of capitalist market activity itself.

Minsky’s key to understanding financial instability was to trace the shifts in investors’ psychology as the economy moves out of a period of crisis and recession (or depression) and into a phase of rising profits and growth. Coming out of crises, investors tend to be cautious, as the just-ended recession will have left many of them clobbered. For example, they will hold large cash reserves as a cushion to protect against future crises.

But as the economy emerges from its slump and profits rise, investors’ expectations become increasingly positive. They grow eager to pursue highly speculative ventures because of the promise of bountiful returns, while also becoming more willing to let their cash reserves dwindle, as idle cash earns no profits whatsoever. But these moves also weaken investors’ defences against the next downturn. This is why, in Minsky’s view, economic upswings without regulations inevitably encourage speculative excesses, which cause financial bubbles. In an unregulated environment, Minsky explained, the only way to eliminate bubbles is to let them burst. Financial markets then fall into a crisis, resulting in a recession or depression.

Here we reach one of Minsky’s crucial insights: financial crises and recessions serve a purpose in the operations of a free-market economy, even while they wreak havoc on the lives of hundreds of millions of innocents who never invest a dime on Wall Street. His point is that without crises, a free-market economy has no way of discouraging investors’ natural proclivities toward greater risks in pursuit of higher profits.

In the wake of the Great Depression, the British economist John Maynard Keynes led the intellectual revolution that aimed to design a policy framework within capitalism that could supplant financial crises as the system’s built-in regulator. This was the context in which the post-World War II system of big-government capitalism was created. The package included two basic elements: regulations designed to limit speculation and channel financial resources into socially useful investments, such as affordable housing; and government bailout operations to prevent 1930s-style depressions when crises did break out.

Minsky saw this system of regulations and bailout operations as largely successful. From the end of World War II to the mid-1970s, markets in the United States and abroad were much more stable than in any previous historical period. But even during the New Deal years and the initial post-World War II period, financial market titans around the world fought vehemently to eliminate, or at least defang, the regulations. By the 1970s almost all politicians – Democrats and Republicans alike – had become compliant. The regulations were initially weakened, then abolished altogether in 1999 under President Bill Clinton and the guidance of his top economic advisors – Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Lawrence Summers.

Shadow Banking and Financialization

For Minsky, the consequences were predictable. But here we come to another of his major insights: in the absence of a complementary financial regulatory system, bailouts’ effectiveness will diminish over time. This is because bailouts, just like financial crises, are double-edged. Though they prevent depressions, they also limit the costs of financial excesses to speculators. As soon as the next economic expansion begins to gather strength, financial market players will pursue profit opportunities as they had during the previous cycle.

As bailouts have prevented full-scale market crashes – and thereby allowed market speculators to escape the full consequences of their excesses – financial institutions and market trading have, accordingly, grown exponentially under neoliberalism. For example, as of 1980, stock market trading in U.S. markets was double what corporations spent on productive investments, such as machines, buildings, land, and R&D. As of 2019 U.S. stock market trading had ballooned to 30 times the amount spent on productive investments. In other words, the ratio of stock market trading to productive investments has increased fifteen-fold in the neo-liberal era.

A similarly explosive expansion has occurred in what is termed the ‘shadow banking’ system in the United States under neoliberalism. The shadow banks include a range of institutions – including mutual funds, holding companies, money market funds, and brokerage houses – that lend money, provide readily accessible funds for account holders, and engage in activities that closely parallel those of traditional banks. Shadow banks, however, are allowed to operate under much weaker regulations than traditional banks. In 1980 the shadow banking system barely existed. Mutual funds, the largest category of such institutions, owned less than 0.3 percent of assets held by all U.S. financial institutions, including traditional banks. As of 2019 mutual funds alone held more than 16 percent of all U.S. financial institutions’ assets. In total the shadow banking sector accounted for 36 percent of all U.S. financial institutions’ assets.

Indeed, a new term has entered the economics lexicon – financialization – that is meant to evoke these patterns of explosive growth in shadow banking and financial market trading over the neoliberal era. Financialization has occurred precisely because weak financial regulations allow speculative bubbles to emerge as a regular feature of neo-liberal capitalism, while bailout operations prevent these bubbles from collapsing into full-scale 1930s-level economic disasters.

Three Scenarios

Minsky’s Wall Street paradigm certainly does not address all the afflictions of neo-liberal capitalism. In particular his model neglects the vast disparities in income, wealth, and power that are just as endemic to neo-liberalism as are its tendencies toward financial instability. He was also working before ecological issues, climate change in particular, were widely understood as matters that macroeconomics must address. Nevertheless, his framework remains a highly valuable tool for clarifying the big-picture economic policy alternatives before us today, forty years into the neo-liberal era.

In fact, contrary to Margaret Thatcher, three scenarios are possible. First, we can allow the reign of neoliberalism to continue. This is the path of least resistance, as it would proceed to shower rewards on financial titans and the wealthy. Of course, as we have seen, staying the course with neoliberalism will require regular bailout interventions. The scale of any such future bailouts will likely continue expanding, as the system’s vulnerabilities will continue deepening through financialization. But we can be certain that there will never be a shortage of economists prepared to defend neoliberalism under these circumstances and even nominate themselves to join a present-day Committee to Save the World.

The two alternatives would entail abandoning the core premise of neoliberalism: champagne socialism for big corporations, Wall Street, and the rich; and ‘let-them-eat-cake’ capitalism for most everyone else. We can call the first of these two alternatives practice-what-you-preach capitalism. Under this alternative, the government must embrace the precepts of free market economics not only when things are going well for big capital and Wall Street, but also when they are going miserably. When big corporations and Wall Street firms face collapse due to their speculative excesses or bad decisions – including failing to maintain sufficient cash reserves to carry them through economic downswings – then these firms will be allowed to fail. Through allowing firms, even big firms, to fail, we would return to a self-regulating variant of capitalism. The guiding principle here is that when capitalists realize that they too must bear the full consequences of bad decisions, they will make fewer of them.

The problem with practice what you preach capitalism is that it has been tried, and the results are well-documented. It was under this approach that financial markets collapsed regularly throughout most of the history of capitalism. Charles Kindleberger described this pattern in his classic 1978 work Manias, Panics, and Crashes, in which he framed his historical analysis within Minsky’s Wall Street Paradigm. Kindleberger’s discussion begins with the notorious South Sea Bubble in 1720, during which the South Sea Company, a failing British slave-trading firm, managed to massively, if briefly, profit from obtaining inside information on how the British government was managing its debt. Kindleberger reveals that between this 1720 South Sea bubble fiasco and the 1929 Wall Street crash, financial crises occurred in the United States and Europe an average of approximately every 7.5 years (a pattern recognized 100 years earlier by Karl Marx). The press reports of the crises that spanned the roughly 200 years include: ‘One of the fiercest financial storms of the century,’ in Britain in 1772; in Germany in 1857, ‘So complete and classic a panic has never been seen before’; and in 1929 in the United States, ‘The greatest cycle of speculative boom and collapse in modern times – since, in fact, the South Sea Bubble.’

At our present historical juncture, it would require a huge leap of faith to assume that the self-regulating properties of free markets could deliver a stable version of capitalism on their own. They have never succeeded in doing so in the past. Moreover, the extent to which contemporary capitalism has become financialized would make any such experiment in market self-regulation far riskier than it ever was in the 200 years that Kindleberger describes.

Thus, the only remaining alternative is to create an updated, reimagined version of the big government model of capitalism that prevailed in the immediate post-World War II era, before the rise of neoliberalism. Indeed, it was to avoid a repetition of the 1930s disaster that John Maynard Keynes, other economists, and Franklin D. Roosevelt led the movement to build alternative, big-government versions of capitalism. This idea became the New Deal in the United States and social democracy in Western Europe, with different specific configurations emerging in the various post-World War II advanced economies.

Extensive regulations of financial markets, public ownership of significant financial institutions, and high levels of public investment were integral features of New Deal and social democratic capitalism. Bailout policies were available as needed, but financial markets were more stable, and recessions shallower, during this period than throughout the preceding 200 years of capitalism. Average economic growth was also higher, with the gains from growth more broadly shared.

Of course, this was still capitalism. Disparities of income, wealth, and opportunity remained intolerably high, along with the social malignancies of racism, sexism, and imperialism. Ecological destruction, and global warming more specifically, was also beginning to gather force over this period, even though few people took notice at the time. Nevertheless, the New Deal and social democracy produced dramatically more egalitarian versions of capitalism than the neo-liberal regime that supplanted these models.

A re-imaged version of New Deal and social democratic capitalism will have to aggressively address the problems that continued to fester under the original models. However, a critical lesson we can learn from the massive bailout operations of the neo-liberal era is that governments in the United States and other advanced economies can mobilize formidable resources to confront crises.

Focusing on the United States, one can readily envision how a re imaged New Deal – indeed, what has come to be called the Green New Deal – can work. The centrepiece must be a massive government-led investment program focused on supplanting our existing fossil fuel-dominant energy system that is destroying the planet with a clean-energy system that can put us on a viable climate stabilization path. This economy-wide investment project will generate millions of jobs engaged both directly and indirectly in creating a new energy infrastructure. This, in turn, will open opportunities to revive union organizing that can deliver higher quality jobs and better living standards. These jobs will need to be open to women and people of colour, the population cohorts that have experienced systematic exclusion in U.S. labour markets for generations.

As we write, the Biden administration has taken major positive steps to advance such a program. The American Jobs Plan that Biden introduced in March is a serious, if still inadequate, proposal. It is designed precisely to build a clean energy economy while expanding good job opportunities. Of course, the question arises as to how we can pay for this highly ambitious public sector-led project. There are many ways to credibly answer this question, but we can start most easily by referencing the experience under neo-liberalism. As we have seen, there has never been a shortage of financial wherewithal available to bailout a system that is demonstrably unjust and unstable, as well as ecologically calamitous. It should not be difficult to find the financial resources to mount a successful U.S. and global Green New Deal over the coming generation.

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