ABSTRACT
T h e MAOIST VISION s t il l h o l d s a p r o m ise OF PRODUCING A better model for development than the Manchester-PittsburghEssen-Kharkov-Nagoya example offers. In Maoist terms, urban concentrations with large factories using sophisticated technol ogy represent one “leg” of the policy of “walking on two legs”. The other leg is small-scale rural-based industry. The urban leg, as indicated in the last chapter, is to be kept from growing too large and overcrowded, and cities will be distributed over the country as a whole rather than concentrated in only one area. But it is the small-scale rural alternative to urban-centered growth which has principally caught the imagination both of Chinese revolutionaries and of outside observers. Such a design seems to fit the circumstances, needs, and values of a peasant and villagecentered China in both its traditional and its revolutionary set ting; it also appeals to Chinese, and to outsiders, as a far more at tractive path to development than is offered by grimy, de-humanizing, overcrowded cities. Perhaps the Chinese can in deed chart a better course.
