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Quantification and Evaluation of Production Value under the Planned Economy System: A Comparative Analysis of Market-Oriented Reforms in China and the Soviet Union

Author(s)

Jinhao He

Affiliation(s)

School of Marxism, Harbin Institute of Technology, Department of Ideological and Political Education, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China

Abstract

During the 1960s and 1970s, China and the Soviet Union, as socialist states operating under a planned economy, successively encountered bottlenecks in their economic development. These included the inability of central planning to fully adapt to the immediate demands of the market; low production efficiency coupled with significant waste of means of production; and a degree of confusion in the formulation of production quotas for local production units by the central authorities.These issues concerning the quantification of production value are crucial to the operation of the planned economy; the design of these indicators and actual inputs influence the actual trajectory of the socio-economy. Taking the reform measures of the planned economies in China and the Soviet Union as a starting point, this paper analyses, from the perspective of the quantification and evaluation of production value, the drawbacks of replacing physical indicators with value indicators in the Soviet Union's Lieberman-Kosygin reforms,compares the logic of production value assessment under incremental reform during China's Reform and Opening-up, and, drawing on Kornai's theory of transition economies, the experience of implementing planned economies and their operational logic, explores the balance between the quantification and assessment of production value under a planned economy. It proposes that the assessment of value must take into account both quantity and quality, the matching of supply and demand, and alignment with the superstructure.The study finds that a single value indicator is prone to causing a disconnect between the production side and actual demand, whereas a dynamic evaluation system that balances planned regulation with market adjustment is key to achieving the rational quantification and effective evaluation of production value.

Keywords

Production Value; Quantification and Evaluation; Planned Economy; Sino-Soviet Reforms; Incremental Reform

References

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