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13. Then there are the practical problems of implementation arising in some cases from the very success of the programme. In agriculture, these include the serious encroachment on
arable land by housing and rural industry (this limited resource is disappearing at the rate of one percent a year),
the lack of proper rewards for those condemned to growing grain while others grow rich on easier pickings; the dangers of polarisation in the countryside and its attendant social
problems (by no means everyone has the luck to live in the
rural suburbs of a large market like Shanghai, and much of
China is still desperately poor and backward); the absence in
the new agricultural policies of any proper provision for medium-scale investment in agriculture (projects not big enough to justify State aid but too big for the individual
household). In the urban economy, one of the fundamental problems is the lack of trained personnel skilled in the
management of a sophisticated economic system. This is clear
at enterprise level, but even more so at the macro-economic
level. There was a strong commitment to reform of the central
planning system and to the use of economic levers. But when
things started to get out of hand, as they did in early 1985,
the Chinese had no recourse but to revert to the familiar
methods of control by administrative sanctions. Little
progress has been made so far on the key issue of price reform,
without which much of the plan to create a more market orientated commodity economy is meaningless.
14. Another serious and growing problem is that of corruption.
This not only gives reform a bad name (the connection between
reform and corruption cannot be avoided, despite the reformers'
arguments that there is no direct causal connection), but also
diverts individual energies and often economic resources away form the programme itself. The leadership have launched numerous
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