The budget and the plan in China : central-local economic relations

In a country as vast as China, and one with provinces long accustomed to autonomy, each with its own sense of identity, a strong national government is essential for effective national economic planning. But with increasingly complex planning, Maoist views on bureaucracy, the growth of local interests during the Great Leap Forward, and the problems that arose from the Soviet withdrawal of aid and the agricultural disasters of 1959-61, there has been a steady diminution of central revenues at the same time as the centre has the responsibility for the large and inflexible item of defence expenditure. This timely and cogent monograph examines, with interesting historical parallels, the changes that took place in the relative economic powers of the central and local authorities in the period after the First Five Year Plan and their consequences for national economic planning