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China by Mrs Sarah Hogg in The Times. This paucity of
serious analysis is a pity, if only because British visiting
businessmen and bankers_ tend to arrive in China with only
a sketchy notion of the setting in which they plan to pursue
their business ambitions.
27.
I know what is said about the Chinese economy in the
British press.
What I do not know is the extent to which
China's reform programme is being studied in other developing
and Communist countries. The Chinese, for their part, have
studied the reform programmes of Yugoslavia and Hungary. Zhao
Ziyang recently told the Chairman of the Hungarian National
Planning Office that Hungary and Yugoslavia were the "vanguards
and pioneers of reform in the socialist countries" and that
Hungary's experience would be of great help to China. I assume
that the Yugoslavs and Hungarians have studied China's programme.
But have the Russians; and, if they have, are there any signs
that they might be prepared to experiment on some of the same
lines? In a particularly interesting passage of his speech at
Chatham House Hu Yaobang said:-
"Some people abroad did not favour our opening to the
outside world and the reform. They suspected that our
policies deviated from orthodoxy and were nothing but
heresies. But suspicions like this have tapered off in
recent years and they began to view our policies in a
new and favourable light."
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