Word: mao
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...least a system that can cooperate with real, full-blown capitalism to a greater degree than any other in the Communist world. In the centuries-old Chinese debate between those who are eager to learn from the more modern world outside and those who shun it, Mao came down completely on the side of xenophobia and cut China off almost totally from foreign goods, money and culture. Deng has opened the country to imports of everything from machinery to the ubiquitous tape recorders and portable stereos. He has proclaimed an "open-door policy" toward foreign investment--unperturbed by the reminiscences...
...additional 100 million workers; in several provinces they have become the dominant form of business. Nationwide, though, more than 85,000 state-owned enterprises account for a heavy majority of jobs and four-fifths of China's industrial output. Until very recently they operated under a system that Mao had copied from Stalin: ministries in Peking assigned all raw materials and dictated all investments, told every factory manager what and how much to produce and where to sell it and at what price, set wages and assigned jobs, took all profits and subsidized any losses. As late...
...into consumer goods: refrigerators, washing machines, TV sets. Some of the controls have been progressively loosened. In 1982 Peking stopped dictating all garment styles and freed the city's factories to adopt their own designs. Result: though perhaps 80% of any randomly assorted crowd are still dressed in baggy Mao suits, there is a generous sprinkling of blue jeans, Western-style business suits and coats, skirts and knee-high leather boots...
...abolished some subsidies for food, clothing and utility production and gradually freed some industrial prices. One result was a whiff of that old capitalist evil, inflation: in some cities, food prices jumped 35% in early 1985. The blow was softened by a continuation of wage increases begun immediately after Mao's death. Nonetheless the price boosts stirred widespread grumbling, particularly among older Chinese who retain bitter memories of the hyper-inflation that preceded the Communist takeover...
...example is Jin Ping Mei (The Golden Lotus), a highly erotic literary classic from the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644). Mao would let it be seen only by party officials of ministerial rank or higher. Wei Junyi, head of the People's Literature Press, prepared an expurgated edition for somewhat wider distribution, put it off during the campaign against spiritual pollution, and finally let it be printed in 1985 for distribution to writers and scholars, who snapped up 10,000 copies immediately at $6.65 per copy...