Making Sense of Joan Robinson on China

Joan Robinson was a member of the famous Keynes Circus of young economists at Cambridge in the 1930's. She was a theorist par excellence, making outstanding contributions to the understanding of competition, aggregate demand and capital. At the same time, she developed an interest in underdeveloped economies and alternatives to capitalism that eventually produced a long list of writings on China between the 1950's to the 1970's. These writings were neither theoretical nor empirical, but a series of opinion pieces and reports. Yet it is these writings that arguably cost Joan Robinson the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics. 

This short book reviews those writings and comments on what has happened since with regard to China’s development, Joan Robinson's interpretation and predictions, and how her 1950's lectures in China match up to China’s policies since Mao.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in how the history of economic thought can inform and progress development economics.

Foreword

Chapter one: INTRODUCTION

Chapter two: THE MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS

A.    Letters from a visitor to China (1954)

B.    China: An Economic Perspective (1958)

C.    Notes from China (1964)

D.    The Cultural Revolution in China (1969)

E.    Economic Management in china, 1972 (1973)

F.    Reports from China, 1953-1976 (1977)

G.    China since Mao (1979)

Chapter three: THE FIRST PHASE: THOUGHTS ON SOCIALIST DEVELOPMENT IN A BACKWARD OVERPOPULATED ECONOMY

B.    State accumulation, technology and the price system: Lectures in China

C.    Performance and prospects at the end of the first five year plan

D.    Some important events and Joan Robinson’s point of view

Chapter four: THE SECOND PHASE: A “STARRY-EYED” JOAN ROBINSON

B.    Birth control: The return of orthodoxy

C.    The leap in the communes

D.    Campaigning for the Maoist point of view

E.    The Cultural Revolution: Illusion of a cooperative solution

F.    Managing the economic chaos: On rightist principles

Chapter five: THE THIRD PHASE: SELF-CRITICISM

A.    Looking back – with the benefit of hindsight

B.    Joan Robinson after Mao

C.    Joan Robinson’s insights and the rightist development initiatives

Chapter six: CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

Dr Pervez Tahir completed his PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge in 1990 and held the Joan Robinson Memorial Lectureship in the same year. Currently Chairman of the Bank of Punjab, Pakistan, he has had a long career in the Government of Pakistan, starting in 1974 as the Deputy Economic Adviser of Ministry of Finance and rising to be the Chief Economist of the Planning Commission in 2000. He retired as Managing Director of the National Energy Conservation Centre. In 2007-08, he served as Mahbub ul Haq Chair at Government College University, where he received his Master and worked as a lecturer in 1971-72. The Forman Christian College University, Lahore, appointed him Professor/Head of Department of Economics in 2009. Before joining Government, he was the Economic Correspondent of the Pakistan Times and Editor of the weekly, Punjab Punch. Presently, he writes for the Express Tribune.