CHINA’S ECONOMIC MIRACLE: ITS MYTHS AND POWER RETENTION BY THE RULING ELITE.

1. Although China’s economic miracle is usually presented as an example of the managerial vision of the Chinese ruling elite, this paper suggests that this is a myth used to demonstrate that the initiators of the recent economic changes are different from their predescessors, Mao and his gang and their immediate successors, and to aid their continued rule.
2. While the economic changes begun in the late 70s and early 80s were to create distance from the turmoil and violence of the earlier periods, they proceeded through the natural dynamic of modernisation, not through the wisdom of the Chinese rulers.