Reinventing Socialism. Kornai, Wu Jinglian, and the global socialist reformers' network.

Alice Trinkle

Keywords: global history, China, Hungary, Eastern Europe, socialism, liberalism, economic reforms, political economy

TL;DR: Kornai as a representative of a liberal school of thought within the socialist world

Abstract: János Kornai was an influential voice of the liberal script from Budapest to Beijing. Kornai and his disciples within the socialist world envisioned a systemic transformation in their respective home countries and developed a holistic political economy for the (post)socialist world. In my PhD project on Chinese-Eastern European exchanges on (economic) reforms, I show that Kornai was only one among many reform minded economists advancing such an agenda. They established a network of reformers in the socialist world. I argue that whilst Hungarians experienced a systemic transformation, Chinese debates around reform socialism were suppressed with Tiananmen in 1989; leading to the development of a new type of socialist system in China. Hence, I proof that rather than being a post-1989 import from the West to the (post-)socialist world, liberal ideas existed and were exchanged from Eastern Europe to East Asia long before 1989. This led to a transnational debate on how to implement market principles in communist countries. On the symposium, I plan to introduce my PhD project with a substantial focus on the academic friendship between Kornai and Wu Jinglian, one of the most influential advisors of Chinese market led reforms pre- and post-1989. The focus of my presentation will be the post 1989 influence of both Kornai and Wu, which will also form a subchapter of my PhD’s 5th chapter. Opposite to many of his reform-minded disciples, Wu remained influential post 1989, as he had reduced his reform advice to purely economic matters. Kornai, on the other hand, had travelled regularly to China from the mid-1980s to act as an academic advisor on market-oriented economic reforms. Later in his life, he came to regret his advice, as shown by his “Frankenstein” article in 2019. However, as I will show Kornai was one among many Eastern European reformers exchanging with Chinese partners on marketisation in socialist contexts, being drawn to China by historical processes.