我在韩国的时候，上经济思想史的课，老师要求每个人选一本书读完，然后就理论做一些现实问题的解释，
我当时选好了 国家兴衰 后，在人大上找到了pdf的中文版，没日没夜的看完了，觉得感触还是很多的，有醍醐灌顶般的感觉，
我觉得我自己的了解比较浅薄，但是在解释一些现象的时候，奥尔森的推理过程还是很令人信服的。
我最后是拿奥尔森的理论和cultural revolution后中国的快速发展联系起来小分析了一下，
来不及做具体的读书笔记，把作业原文贴上，希望大家批评指正啊。

Olson’s Theory and China’s Evidences
WANG BINLUO

         While the inspiration of Rise and Decline of Nations (RADON) came mostly through Olson’s observation at UK’s poor performance compared to Japan and West Germany, the principles could also be examined to be right in other countries’ history evidences. Olson argued that, in particular, the Maoist Cultural Revolution destroyed the old elites and coalitions, thereby laying the foundation for more rapid growth later [1], even though communism remains in political control there.
          A consideration to the impacts of the Cultural Revolution during 1966-1976 helps explaining China’s fast growth from the adoption of Reforming and Opening Policy in 1978. Started from May, 1966, Chairman Mao announced that in China there was still a group of people who were scheming to destroy the proletariat government, which made a proletariat Cultural Revolution necessary. The Gang of Four, with the special organization Red Guard, then gradually controlled the government in the highest level. Under Mao’s dictatorship, all opinions against them were stifled, leading to the big change of the whole society. People of all regions and of all professions were involved in this unproductive revolution. Labour unions were dissolved because there was unnecessary while there was no mass production activity. The People’s Community and the Production League were the main organization in the rural area and they were strictly under the ideological control of the state. Most of state owned firm stopped their daily activity and were invaded or controlled by the Red Guard as their power area. Overall, the society was a total turmoil, the law system was broken, regular political process was cancelled while dictatorship of a minority of people controlled the state. In the trial of the so-called Gang of Four, a Chinese court stated that 729,511 people had been persecuted of which 34,800 were said to have died [3].Output was estimated to drop 15% percent according to unofficial statistics, and intellectual rates dropped fast,
in some provinces, the intellectual rates dropped more than 20%.
          During the Cultural Revolution, the infrastructure of the state was destroyed, and most of the interest groups were dissolved. Xuegang Zhou observed, in a state with strong government and weak society, “if the interests are organized, they are based on the state organizational apparatus and hence are not autonomous; if interests are independent of the state, they are often unorganized. [4]” Due to the enormous transition of government function during the Cultural Revolution and the overall change of main leaders, on central level and provincial level, the interest coalition had been forced to dissolve.
           The story after the Cultural Revolution went on just as the story of Germany and Japan after World War II. On the other hand, other former communist countries performed relatively badly. There were various papers concerning this point, such as Lin [5] from the perspective of comparative advantage of trade, and Qian and Weingast [6] from the perspective of economic federalism and a market-augmenting government. Those points are both innovative and insightful, but they can hardly explain why other former communist countries don't adopt those policies, and why even they had finished their democratizing process, those societies are always not stable. For Olson, the reason was partly lying in the process of political reform. As concluded by Rosser, “during the communist years the distributional coalitions had arisen in the state-owned industries……being the emergence of soft-budget constraint in the more market-oriented economies……these groups were not necessarily overthrown after the fall of the communism, but rather asserted themselves in corrupt privatizations and the rise of underground economies. [7]” Also, observed by Havrylyshyn and Mcgettigan [8], gradual privatizations, as in Poland, Hungary and China are more likely to result in restructuring and new management with less corrupt and more efficiency.
If still, the comparison between China and other former communist countries is not convincing, the difference of economic performance among provinces after 1978 made a good example to illustrate Olson’s insights in China.
          As a result of China’s first and second Five Year Plan, as well as the relationship with former Soviet Union, most of the countries heavy industry was located in the Northeast China. Liaoning province alone, share 24% of the countries industry production while the other two provinces, Jilin and Heilongjiang, ranked 2nd and 4th by industry production [9]. Those industry firms were totally owned by the state. As part of the public sector, those firms always gain a lot of advantages over policies and fiscal support. Due to the efficiency and corrupt, these firms can hardly balance their account but rely on the support from the central and local government, even after 1978, when the countries started its market economy reformation.
           With Olson’s implications, these firms will not make any efforts for innovation and restructuring themselves, but seek all the possible rent they can get from the public sector (Implication 2), then made the economy inefficient and unproductive (implication 4). They will even try to stop all kinds of reformation which may reduce their interest and their percentage in national income (Implication 7). The real case in China went exactly on the path Olson’s implications settled. Northeast provinces are among the lowest growing countries, with the highest rate of corruption. Every policy aiming at put the firms into competitive market such as bankruptcy law, free to fire excess workers, always met fierce protest and argument from them. While those provinces with the highest economic growth rate were once the poorest region with no industry at all, such as Zhejiang and Jiangsu, which now are still the fastest growing province with their
GDP per capita among the highest throughout the country [10].
            However, even though some parts of Olson’s theory goes well with the empirical evidences in China does not necessarily means it could stand more intensively examination by other issues. In a country with strong centralized government, the level of coalition activities should be much lower than in western countries, for many of them are illegal under China’s Law system. In China, policies tend to penetrate social groups’ boundaries and affect all individuals simultaneously. Finally, from the real world situation in China, the effects of special interest group may be very strong, but should not from the society, but from the government itself, or so to say, inner the party. Further examination of this issue will become too politically sensitive or too many elements involved, which asks for further study on the theory of Olson and the real world conditions in socialist China.

References:
[1] Olson, Mancur. 2000. pp166-167.Power and prosperity: Outgrowing communist and capitalist
dictatorships. New York: Basic Books.
[2] Olson, Mancur. 1982. Chapter 4. The rise and decline of nations: Economic growth, stagflation, and social rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press.
[3]James P. Sterba,New York Times, January 25, 1981
[4]Xuegang, Zhou. 1993. Unorganized Interests and Collective Action in Communist China. American Sociological Review, Vol.58, No.1, 1993. pp 54-73.
[5] Justin Yifu Lin, Fang Cai, Zhou Li. 2003. The china miracle: development strategy and economic reform (Original Chinese Version), Peking University Press.
[6] Yingyi Qian and Barry R. Weingast. 1997. Federalism as a Commitment to Preserving Market Incentives, the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol. 11, No. 4. Autumn 1997.
[7] Rosser. J. Barley.2007. The Rise and Decline of Mancur Olson’s View of the Rise and Decline of Nations
[8] Havrylyshyn, Oleh and Donal McGettigan. 2000. Privatization in transition countries. Post-Soviet Affairs 16:257-86.
[9]Angang Hu. 2004. Economic and Social Transformation in China: Challenges and Opportunities (Original Chinese Version). China Economics Press.
[10] Annual Statistics Book of People’s Republic of China. 2008. China Statistics Press.