Acumulação, Distribuição e Estratégia sob Mao

The purpose of this article is to expose and systematize the main paradoxes of China’s accumulation regime between 1949 and 1976 in order to outline the Maoist legacy for China’s recent economic development. We problematize the dominant narrative that the Chinese economic boom begins only after the post-1978 reforms, which, many argue, would have broken with a supposedly deep economic backwardness during the decades under Mao. In this article, it is argued that the Maoist period is marked by great paradoxes, which left a determining legacy to China’s trajectory today. Among these paradoxes, we will explore: the rapid process of industrialization and structural transformation without urbanization; the military strategy for war, which led to industrialization to remote regions of the country but without specialization or productive autonomy; the improvement in well-being indicators accompanied by stagnation in agricultural productivity and by the consolidation of the urban-rural gap.