HIS 361 Contemporary China
Dr. Yusheng Yao
2012/10/29

Is Deng Xiaoping’s Policy Replicable for North Korea?

China’s huge success in the economic reform and opening up had great impact on North Korea. Although North Korea is still one of the most undeveloped countries in the world, it has tried domestic economic reform for several times during the past 30 years. It is clear that North Korea has adopted/ is adopting some measures that China used thirty years ago. What are the results of this attempt so far? Will North Korea have huge economic growth like China did? This paper will discuss these questions and work out a conclusion at the end.

One of the most important economic measures adopted during the Chinese economic reform was the “contracting down to the household.” In June 1977, the “Provincial Party Committee Six-Point Proposal”, later evolved into Household-responsibility system, let the local farmers be responsible for the profits and losses of a farm. After being supported and promoted by Deng Xiaoping, this system partially replaced the egalitarian distribution method, whereby the state assumed all profits and losses.

North Korea had a work squad management system, which allocate harvest profits base on agricultural supply and the number of days worked. With decreased productivity in agriculture, North Korea started to change its unit-based system since the middle of 1990s. The measure adopted was to restructure the existing system into a family-based one, which decreased the size of a unit from 10-25 members to 5-7. In July 2002, North Korea implemented a large- scale economic reform and significantly expanded the farming area per person. The number of agriculture products that farmers could keep also increased. However, the reform only lasted for three years due to change of polit...

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