№4 (29) / 2025  

Release Date 10.11.2025

 HISTORY OF THOUGHT

 

 

Borokh Olga

PhD (Economics), Leading Researcher

Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of sciences (Moscow), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0109-4462

 

TRANSFORMATION OF THE ECONOMIC EDUCATION SYSTEM IN CHINA (THE FIRST HALF OF THE 1950s)

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The paper focuses on the transformation of economic education in China in the first half of the 1950s, when Marxist political economy became part of the official ideology. Among Chinese professional economists at that time the majority had degrees from Western universities. The long-standing estrangement between Chinese “bourgeois” and Marxist economists hampered the task of smooth adaptation of old teaching staff to the new requirements. After a brief debate about the applicability of Western economics in China relates courses were excluded from university curricula. Mastering of the Russian language and Soviet academic literature by Chinese professional economists has led to noteworthy studies on the history of Russian economic thought. Imbued with a revolutionary spirit professors of the recently established People’s University of China have contributed to constructing a new model of economic education by comprehensively embracing the Soviet experience. The task was to move from educating a small number of experts in economics to the mass training of teachers of Marxist political economy, and to establish a collectivist educational system. It was not easy to connect Soviet political economy with Chinese reality when Chinese economists had not yet grasped the new theory, while Soviet experts did not fully understand Chinese specifics. The debate in the early 1950s about the factors of productive forces demonstrated the commitment of Soviet lectures to the Stalinist interpretation, which was not accepted by some Chinese economists. Successes in implementing the Soviet model were questioned within China as an unwanted manifestation of “dogmatism”. Through close acquaintance with Soviet political economy Chinese economists formed their own opinion about it, thus moving from copying to paying greater attention to national characteristics.

 

Keywords: Marxist political economy, Western economics, Peking University, People’s University of China, Soviet experts

 

JEL: B2, B24, A2

UDC: 330.85

DOI: 10.52342/2587-7666VTE_2025_4_117_132

 

© O. Borokh, 2025

© Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences «Issues of Theoretical Economics», 2025

 

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Manuscript submission date  24.08.2025

Manuscript acceptance date: 27.09.2025

 

For citation:

Borokh O. Transformation of the Economic Education System in China (The First of Half of the 1950s) // Voprosy teoreticheskoy ekonomiki. 2025. No. 4. Pp. 117–132. DOI: 10.52342/2587-7666VTE_2025_4_117_132.