Development benefit, comparative benefit and the contest between two roads

Ding, Weimin; Zhang, Xiaoyu Article Development benefit, comparative benefit and the contest between two roads China Political Economy (CPE) Provided in Cooperation with: School of Economics, Nanjing University Suggested Citation: Ding, Weimin; Zhang, Xiaoyu (2021) : Development benefit, comparative benefit and the contest between two roads, China Political Economy (CPE), ISSN 2516-1652, Emerald, Leeds, Vol. 4, Iss. 1, pp. 14-29, https://doi.org/10.1108/CPE-06-2021-0009 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/319434 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Development benefit, comparative benefit and the contest between two roads Weimin Ding and Xiaoyu Zhang School of Economics, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China Abstract Purpose –Under the circumstance that the development of developing countries is a major issue that has long been of concern to Marxist scholars, the research is focused on the category of development benefit, which Xi Jinping has mentioned many times. Design/methodology/approach –Based on the Marxist theory of international value, the authors of this paper indicate that development benefit is the result of developing countries’consistently increasing labor productivity, reducing squandering in labor and transforming more labor into real value, and thus the fundamental cause of unequal development in international economics turns from the field of circulation to the area of production. Findings –Also, the authors summarize China’s experience of obtaining the development benefit and China’s development path featuring common development and criticized the comparative advantage of mainstream Western economics, revealed the path of dependency development represented by mainstream Western economics. Originality/value –Finally, the authors analyze the essence of the economy and trade conflict between China and the US and the respective strategic goals of the two countries and provide an outlook on the contest between the two roads of development and the evolutionary trend of the relationship between developed and developing countries. Keywords Development benefit, Comparative benefit, International value, Unequal development, Common development Paper type Research paper In 1957, Paul Baran (2000) utilized the Marxist method to study the relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries and the development issue of underdeveloped countries systematically and early, which made him “the first Marxist theorist who believes the rights of the underdeveloped countries are worthy of studying”(Brewer, 2003). Since then, results explaining the development issues of underdeveloped countries have emerged. Since China’s reform and opening-up, especially since the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, there have been numerous theoretical achievements in studying China’s development experience and path. However, not many results have been published to study China’s development issue under the framework of Marxism, based on Marxist value theory, especially international value theory, and in the context of the changing relations between developed and developing countries and the development problems of developing countries. This paper tries to study this issue under the adherence to Marxism as an approach to advance the construction of Chinese development economics and the study of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics. CPE 4,1 14 ©Contemporary Economic Research. Published in China Political Economy. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ legalcode. Originally published in Simplified Chinese in Economic Research Journal. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/2516-1652.htm Received 29 June 2021 Revised 1 July 2021 Accepted 1 July 2021 China Political Economy Vol. 4 No. 1, 2021 pp. 14-29 Emerald Publishing Limited 2516-1652 DOI 10.1108/CPE-06-2021-0009 1. Introduction: the prominence of development benefit and the proposition of development benefit category Xi (2015) raised the thought of “maintaining the development benefit of China determinatively”during the 28th collective learning of the Political Bureau of Central Committee of CPC in November 2015. In the report of the 19th National Congress of CPC, he again stressed the need to adhere to the principle of putting people first and “safeguard China’s sovereignty, security and development benefits more consciously”(Xi, 2017, p. 15). At the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the CPC, Xi Jinping once again proposed that the “benefits of development”should be strongly safeguarded and unswervingly upheld”(Xi, 2019). Such arguments have presented the most important demands of China as a developing country in the process of achieving economic development and economic interests, thinking issues from the perspective of international relations. Among them, the development benefit, which generalizes China’s international economic aspiration as a theory, deserves the most attention. Marxism has always emphasized the ultimately determinative effect of economic interests on human behaviors. Thus, economic interests are both the driving force and the result of human behaviors. However, real-life economic interests are always based on certain economic relations. Grasping the field of interests and examining economic relations from the perspective of interest relations and their changes can make one perceive the nature of economic relations more strongly—that is, compulsory, objective and historical. The interest relations under China’s traditional institution emphasize the interests of the country and the collective more, and there’re no category of development benefit that reflect the changes in international economic relations. The reason is that then economic activities mainly occurred in the scope of the China’s public economy, which had no primary association with external economic entities. The public economy is the primary source of people’s direct interests—it is the primary provider of material benefits and also the organizer of “the realization of the demand of activities and relationship”(Sik, 1984, p. 263). As there were two forms of public ownership with “significant differences”then, the basic interest relation under the traditional institution can be defined as a dualistic interest relation based on two forms of public ownership of the economy, which is connected and regulated by planning. Developing and strengthening the traditional public economy, especially the stateowned economy, was the main force driving people’s behaviors. Maintaining and expanding the public economy and the planned economy associated with it constituted people’s pursuit of common or general benefits. However, people’s affirmation of the traditional state-owned economy under the traditional institution is characterized by restrictions on the personal interests of workers and the interests of the enterprise, which is not conducive to giving play to the initiative, activity and creativity of enterprises and workers. When Deng (1983, p. 145) evaluated the traditional institution, he pointed out: “The power in our economic management institution is too centralized, and it should be authorized to subordinates bravely and designedly; otherwise, it will be not beneficial to give full play of the activity of four parties of the state, local places, enterprises, and individuals, nor it will be beneficial to practice the modernized economic management and increase labor productivity”. Giving full play of the initiative, activity and creativity of the enterprises and individuals by affirming the benefits of enterprises and individuals is the initial impetus and path for China’s reform and opening-up. The economic relations in China have changed dramatically upon the reform and adjustment. While the public economy, especially the state-owned economy, is growing in total volume and control and dynamism, its relative volume and ability to absorb employment is declining, however, and the non-public economy in various forms is growing rapidly, both in total volume and relative volume. The interest relation in China has also undergone tremendous changes. The traditional dualistic interest relation connected and processed by The contest between two roads 15 planning before China’s reform has changed to the multiple interest relation connected and processed by market. The benefit goal of different economic entities also differ significantly: capital-dominated enterprises are obviously pursuing profits and profit margins; more and more state-owned enterprises, which have diversified their shareholdings and become companies, also consider the increase in the company’s profit margins as their behavioral goal, although due to theirnature and the special regulation of government, these profit margins are expressed as “deformed profit margins”(Yan, 2018). As a result of the reform of the labor and personnel system, the majority of workers are de facto recognized as owners of the labor power and enter into a modern employment relationship with the enterprise, thus making income, such as wages, the driving force of their behavior. More importantly, by opening-up, China’s integration into the global economy has been advanced, and China’s commodity and capital markets are becoming more and more important parts of the world market. China’s economy has transformed from a relatively closed economy in the past to an open economy, with increasing interaction with various economies. These changes constitute an important feature of the new era in China and an important background for this study. In connection with the above-mentioned major changes in economic relations, another important change in China’s interest relation has gradually emerged since China entered the New Era, in which a new type of interest, which did not exist in the traditional system, has been formed above the interests of all economic players, namely, the interests obtained through the common development of all economic players, which is what Xi Jinping outlined as the “development benefit”. It can be foreseen that with the economic globalization and the development of China’s international economic relations, development benefit will be increasingly prominent. Being determined to exclude interference and consciously safeguarding and realizing development benefits has become the common pursuit of all economic players and the driving force for the continuous development of China in the New Era. 2. Two forms of development benefit and the cause of unequal development China’s development benefit in the New Era are manifested, first and foremost, in the general increase in labor productivity resulting from technological progress, industrial upgrading and rational allocation of resources and in the material wealth that is rapidly increasing and used to meet the growing needs of the people. However, this is only the material form of development benefit. Beyond that, we should also examine it from the form of value, which is particularly important for research under a market economy. This is because in the market economy, material wealth is only the basis of value wealth; it is the value-form that is the basic form of social wealth. According to Marx’s labor theory of value, the relationship between material wealth and value wealth is directly dependent on the pivotal role of the duality of labor—with the changes of labor productivity and under the effect of the duality of labor as the source of wealth, the material wealth and the value wealth move in opposite. When productivity increases, the aggregate of material wealth will increase; the necessary labor time contained in the material wealth per unit will decrease. When productivity decreases, the total material wealth will fall, and the labor time required by the material wealth per unit will increase. However, no matter how the productivity changes, the aggregate value wealth remains unchanged. Such movement is just a manifestation of the law of value implied by Marx in the field of production. It results in three market phenomena: (1) Some producers of commodities with particularly high productivity produce more material wealth per unit of time and use less time to produce a unit of material wealth, and they still determine the value of commodities according to the socially necessary labor spent by most producers of commodities or most commodities production, thus generating more value due to “intensified”effect of the market on labor (Marx, 2009a, p. 370). (2) Some producers of commodities with lower productivity or CPE 4,1 16 commodities requiring more labor time in the production can only determine value according to a relatively less amount of socially necessary labor, so “the excess of time would create neither value nor money”(Marx, 2009a, p. 228), thus reflecting the “squandering”effect of the law of value. (3) Only those majority producers of commodities or commodities with labor consumption consistent with the socially necessary time can have labor consumption compatible with the value wealth created. The above understanding of the relationship between the two forms of wealth in a market economy is equally valid for the world market: “on the world-market the more productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so long as the more productive nation is not compelled by competition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the level of their value.”(Marx, 2009a, p. 645). This indicates that, because of the effect of the law of value in the international context, some commodity-producing countries with extremely high productivity spend less labor and obtain more material wealth and value wealth, while some commodity-producing countries with lower productivity spend more labor and get less material wealth and value wealth; only commodity-producing countries with average or normal productivity have the labor input and the value received in line. Therefore, we can divide the benefits obtained by relevant countries from the international economy into three kinds from the perspective of material form and value form of wealth: (1) “Leading benefit”, that is, additional benefits obtained by commodity-producing countries whose productivity is higher with less labor input, which is above the average return, i.e., more material and value wealth. Compared with the productivity of most commodityproducing countries or average global productivity, the higher productivity they have, the more leading benefits they will obtain and the better the conditions provided for capital accumulation and possible monopoly will be. (2) The more lagging behind the commodityproducing countries with low productivity are, the larger the “squandering”in their labor expenditure will be. If they can increase their labor productivity more rapidly through institutional and technical innovation, such “squandering”can be reduced, and more labor can create more material wealth and value wealth, thereby forming the so-called “development benefit”. Thus, it is reasonable to argue that, from the value perspective, the so-called development benefit is the more value gained by developing countries by reducing labor “squandering”through making the growth rate of labor productivity in developing countries (represented by DR) higher than the growth rate of the world’s average labor productivity (represented by WR), i.e. DR > WR, by means of institutional and technical innovations. (3) As for the commodity-producing countries with the average or general productivity, if their labor productivity generally increases, their total material wealth or the material wealth calculated according to constant price will increase. However, the sum of their actual value wealth does not change. They can only obtain the benefits in material form without extra benefits in value form. If the above view is tenable, it can also be deduced that in the global economy, the productivity gap among countries will be reduced through common development and the general increase in labor productivity, especially that of backward countries, so that leading countries’leading benefits in the form of value will decrease while backward countries’ development benefits in the form of value will increase, and their benefits in the form of material will increase generally. On the contrary, the labor productivity gap between countries becomes wider, the more the leading countries get the leading benefits in the form of value, and the more the backward countries squander their labor, inevitably resulting in the deepening of “unequal development”and the tendency of differentiation between developed and backward countries. The unequal development between developed and backward countries was first raised by the famous left-wing economist Samir Amin (2000) and widely acknowledged by left-wing scholars. These left-wing scholars believed that a major cause of unequal development is the The contest between two roads 17 unequal exchange in the international economy, and the continuous unequal development worsens the unequal exchange in international trade. A number of theories have been developed to explain unequal exchange, and here are the most representative ones: (1) A. Emanuel (1988) raised that the capital could flow freely in the international economy while the labor could not. The developed countries had strong trade union and high wages while the backward countries had weak trade union and low wages, thereby causing the unequal exchange and value transfers between the expensive products in developed countries and cheap products in underdeveloped countries in the international trade. (2) Baran and Sweezy (1977) indicated that it is not the monopoly of trade unions and labor in developed countries, but the monopoly of capital, especially international capital, which implements price manipulation via multinational companies to achieve super-exploitation of international labor and causes unequal exchange in international trade (3) Based on the dual economy theory raised by Prebisch (1959, pp. 251–273). put forward that underdeveloped peripheral countries export raw materials, which are primary products characterized by lower returns and the lower price elasticity of demand, while the central countries export industrial goods, which have a monopolistic market, thus resulting in unequal exchange and value transfers between the two kinds of countries (4) According to Bauer et al. (2000), along with the economic globalization and the transformation of international value into international production prices, the value is bound to transfer from the sectors of low organic compositions in backward countries to the sectors of high organic compositions in developed countries, causing the non-equivalent exchange or unequal exchange in a broad sense between developed countries and backward countries based on international production price. Based on the above views, Ricci (2019, pp. 225–245). divided two forms of unequal exchange according to the different elements emphasized, one is the unequal exchange and interindustry transfers of value between different countries, triggered by the old industrial specialization (e.g. 3, 4), and the other is the unequal exchange and intra-industry transfers of value in international scope, resulting from the difference of labor income worldwide (e.g. 1, 2), which further deepens the study of unequal exchange problems. We believe that the research above is of significance for revealing the causes of unequal development. However, all of these were the analysis limited to the causes of unequal development in the fields of international circulation. In this paper, we focus on the field of international production. We emphasize that like value, the international value is first concerned with production category and taking the socially necessary labor time in the field of material production as social substance. The difference between value and international value is that the scope of effect of the latter does not belong to a specific country but the whole world, and the realization condition turns from domestic circulation to international circulation. The main theoretical contribution of this paper is to explore the causes of unequal development from the field of production and thus to provide a theoretical basis for development benefits and their realization. In fact, the exploration of unequal development in the field of international production has already been reflected in the works of E. Mandel. In Late Capitalism,Mandel (1975, pp. 359–361) analyzed the manifestation of “unequal exchange”. He points out that the commodity exchange between developed countries and backward countries is the exchange of equal international values. However, such equal international values represent unequal amounts of labor. Due to differences in productivity, the exports of developed countries may represent 300 million working hours while the exports of backward countries may represent 1,200 million working hours in the case of equal international values. “Does this exchange of equivalent international commodity values, consisting of unequal quantities of labor, imply an international transfer of value?”Mandel answered this question in the negative. He points out that in the international market, “no transfer of value occurs in the real sense of the word, since labour not remunerated or acknowledged on the market, i.e., socially squandered labour, does not after all create value.” CPE 4,1 18 However, in the domestic market, “that labour which is socially necessary on the national scale (performed under conditions of the social average productivity of labour) is less acknowledged internationally, but is still in fact fully creative of value.”Mandel argues that such kind of international exchange “not contrary to but in consequence of the law of value.” We agree with Mandel’s basic view, which advocates a focus on the field of international production based on Marxist international value theory to reveal the conditions and causes of unequal development. Research has shown that the international effect of the law of value, especially its intensified effect and squandering effect, is the prerequisite for unequal development between developed and developing countries, and the gap between labor productivity levels of different countries is the direct cause of their unequal development, which is also the historical results [1]. Given this, we can conclude that: Increasing labor productivity faster through institutional and technological innovation, and on this basis, further gradually eliminating all forms of unequal exchange in circulation and continuously reaping the benefits of development, are the fundamental ways for developing countries to escape from the plight of unequal development. The labor productivity level of China has increasingly improved via the reform and opening-up. According to available data of the World Bank, in terms of the total labor productivity in terms of US dollars earned per worker, compared with 1990 in 2001, the world average annual growth rate was 1.56%, while China’s growth rate was 5.89%, which was much higher than the average world growth level and also higher than that of the US, Japan and India, which were 3.75, 2.25 and 1.51%, respectively [2]. When comparing the data in 2015 with 2000, the world average annual growth rate was 2.26% and the rate of China was 9.05%, which was still far higher than the world’s level and much higher than the levels of the US (1.27%), Japan (0.79%) and India (5.53%) [3]. This shows that the reform and opening-up and the widespread and sustained increase of labor productivity have brought China more and more benefits in both material and value forms. It provides empirical proof of the correctness of the theory of socialist development with Chinese characteristics. What needs to be discussed below is—Are the benefits above leading benefits or development benefits for China? The data provided in Table 1 indicate that though the growth rate of China’s labor productivity [4] is rapid and obviously exceeds the word growth rate of labor productivity per capita, its absolute value is still lower than the world average. This indicates that, in the context of the world economy as a whole, the labor time consumed for producing a unit of material wealth in China is still relatively much, and squandering exists therein. However, with the continuous increase in productivity, such kind of squandering is decreasing, and the material and value wealth generated by labor input is increasing. Thus, China obtains increasing development benefits of two forms rather than leading benefits. Suppose we consider the above development benefit from the perspective of the domestic market rather than the world market. The general increase in labor productivity per capita in Period (Year) 2000 2005 2010 2015 2016 2017 World total labor productivity in terms of USD earned per worker 24,281 26,784 30,382 33,830 34,494 34,609 China’s total labor productivity in terms of USD earned per worker 6554 10,013 16,778 24,324 25,988 27,153 The ratio of China’s productivity to the world productivity (%) 26.99 37.38 55.22 71.90 75.34 78.46 Source(s): Calculated based on the data in Tables 5–8ofInternational Statistical Yearbook (2018), Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2019 edition Table 1. Comparison of total labor productivity in terms of US dollars earned per worker (Measured in constant US dollar value and purchasing power parity in 2011) The contest between two roads 19 China indicates that the socially necessary labor time for commodity production in China is gradually decreasing, and some enterprises with higher productivity thereby obtain leading benefits or relative surplus gain, providing conditions for labor and capital to share the (material) benefits of increased labor productivity. Professor Meng (2018) recently emphasized that the theory of relative surplus-value should be taken as a frame of reference for research on the socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. We agree with this. However, the above empirical evidence suggests that it would be premature to prove that China obtains a dominant position in the international economy and international market through a general increase in productivity, gaining relative surplus-value or leading benefits, from the perspective of the international economy rather than the domestic market. This suggests that the fact that labor productivity in China has gradually increased since the reform and opening-up can be examined from both domestic and international perspectives. Thus, the benefits gained from the increase in productivity are also of a dual nature. This is a common feature of the benefits gained by developing countries in economic development. As will be pointed out in the analysis that follows, recognizing this characteristic is significant for correct policymaking in developing countries. 3. The realization of development benefit and the selection of two development roads The development benefit refers to the general benefits that various economic entities within developing countries obtain through common development. However, the specific goals of each economic entity are different at the current stage. How can the “development benefits” be realized when each economic entity is pursuing its own benefits? The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has answered this question clearly: “History has proven and will continue to prove that without the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the national rejuvenation is bound to be an empty dream”(Xi, 2017, p. 16). The practices have shown that the Communist Party of China is indeed the core and mainstay leading Chinese people to realize the collective interests and defend various kinds of hardship, and the guidance of the socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics and scientific development theory is an important prerequisite to ensure the strong leadership and the correct path of CPC. In the following, we further examine the issue of road choice, comparing the development benefit with comparative advantage. In the international economic theories in mainstream Western economics, comparative advantage is a counterpart concept of development benefit. Obtaining the comparative advantage in international trade and economic development is the result of exploring and determining comparative costs. As long as the principle of comparative costs and benefits is followed, all countries involved in international trade can benefit from it. As long as the principle of comparative costs and advantage is followed, all countries involved in international trade can benefit from it. Formally, the theory is only concerned with the choice of foreign trade path, but since it requires that the economic development strategies of the countries involved in trade adapt to the foreign trade path requirements, it has become the basis for the development paths and policymaking set by mainstream economics for developing countries actually. The theory of comparative costs and comparative advantage was first raised by David Ricardo as a rejection of Adam Smith’s theory of foreign trade based on the theory of absolute advantage. This theory emphasizes the relative advantages and relative differences in costs in the production of different products of each country in foreign trade and claims that the comparative advantage is a function of relative costs rather than absolute costs, and that each country can benefit from it as long as each country produces and exports relatively low-cost goods (Ricardo, 2009, pp. 114–117). From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century, the theory of comparative advantage evolved into the theory of factor endowment, which became CPE 4,1 20 the basis of modern Western mainstream economic theory of foreign trade, as proposed by the Swedish economist Eli Heckscher and his disciple Berthier Olin and mathematicized by Samuelson. Unlike Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, which emphasizes relative differences in costs and benefits due to relative differences in resource quality among countries, factor endowment theory emphasizes that “incomes as stemming merely from the relative scarcity or abundance of capital and labor, not from relative productivity, government policies to increase it or the labor-displacing trend resulting from technological progress.”(Hudson, 2014, p. 175). The founder of this theory, Heckscher (1919, p. 274) argued that “the prerequisites for initiating international trade may thus be summarized as different relative scarcity, i.e., different relative prices of the factors of production in the exchanging countries, as well as different proportions between the factors of production in different countries.”Since both theories emphasize that comparative benefit derives from comparative costs and comparative advantage, despite their different emphasis on comparative advantage, we classify them both as theories of comparative advantage. It should be admitted that the theory of comparative advantage indeed grasps a vital phenomenon in the market economy: cComparison is the prerequisite of decision-making in the market. The advantage can only be found by comparison, and benefits can only be generated from advantages. Essentially speaking, such kind of comparison comes from the requirements on the law of value and market mechanism. This is an important reason for the widespread circulation and expanding influence of the comparative advantage theory. But there are questions: What to compare? How to compare? Compared with development benefits, the comparison method of the comparative advantage theory has significant flaws, thus forming a road different from scientific development. The first flaw is the theory of comparative advantage insisted on adopting the method of comparative static analysis and failed to correctly predict the sequences of a dual economy of utilizing comparative advantages. According to Ricardo (2009, p. 114), as long as countries play to their respective relative cost advantages, countries will naturally use the capital and labor they have in the industries that are most beneficial to their development, and thus the pursuit of individual benefit can properly be combined with the general benefits of society. Ohlin (1935) reiterated that each region “has an advantage in the production of commodities into which enter considerable amounts of factors abundant and cheap in that region,”The comparative advantage theory acknowledges the role of the international division of labor and international trade based on the comparative costs in achieving mutual benefits and eliminating international polarization. However, this is only the conclusion of analyzing the modern market by the short-term static method, which neglects the dominant role of capital in the international market and globalization, and disregards the domination of monopoly capital and the tendency toward a dualistic economy reinforced by the division of labor it advocates. On the contrary, if the long-term dynamic method is adopted, it can be seen that in recent history, the products of labor-intensive industries have tended to be primary products, with backward countries becoming exporters of such primary products and capital-abundant countries generally becoming exporters of industrial products. Hudson (2014, p. 174) indicated that: “since the nineteenth century an increasing disparity in factor proportions has emerged between capital-rich and capital-poor countries. Nations with high investment per capita have become more self-sufficient in food as well as in manufactured products. Countries with little capital have become relatively poorer, with high population growth rates. This has shrunk their capital/labor ratio, but not increased their competitive advantage in labor-intensive products.”The so-called “smile curve”in the integrated production model, the aforesaid gap of labor productivity between the developed and developing countries, and the “unequal development”of these countries are important manifestations and results of the dual economy, the “unequal, international specialization”(Amin, 2000, p. 168) and the dependency economy currently. The contest between two roads 21 References Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J.A. (2012), Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Crown Publishers, New York. Amin, S. (2000), Unequal Development, (Chinese Translation Edition Translated by Guo, X.), The Commercial Press, Beijing. Baran, P.A. (2000), The Political Economy of Growth, (Chinese Translation Edition Translated by Cai, Z. X. & Yang, Y. G.), The Commercial Press, Beijing. Baran, P.A. and Sweezy, P.M. 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