Shanghai-Pudong New Area: A logical step in China's drive to modernization

This thesis analyzes the People's Republic of China's modernization strategy in order to test the hypothesis according to which the "open-door" policy might represent a shift from Marxism to a Neoclassical economy model. To do so, the author compares the performance realized by the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and by the newly established Shanghai-Pudong New Area (1990). Although it benefits from the fourteen year old SEZs experience, it is argued, Pudong duplicates the flaws inherent to the SEZs and fails to offer advancement over their development. The author then suggests that China's initial objective to build a strong modern socialist country has apparently been gradually displaced by an evolutionary process of change similar to that in the Asian New Industrialized Countries (NICs), namely South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.