Types of Reform, 12th Nov., 2010.

I read the article I found yesterday.  The concluding paragraph was the most interesting.

"Lastly, in regards to the route taken during Russian and Eastern European privatization, there have been a lot of misunderstandings.  As for the results of the so-called "Shock therapy," I think too many academics still make their conclusions from the conditions in the mid- to late-90s.  There hasn't been anyone today that has gone back to Eastern Europe and looked around, seen the difference between today's Eastern Europe and the Eastern Europe of the 90s.  Recently I was discussing gradual reform versus shock therapy with an Eastern European academic.  He said that in Eastern Europe this is not an issue, because reform there has already finished completely.  Not only that, but many Eastern European countries' standards of living are already very close to those in Western Europe.  For example, the countries that were split up, such as Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union, the people of those countries, no matter in public policy or the commoners, all believe reform is a thing of the past, a sentence ending with a period.  By contrast, how the next Chinese economic reform should advance is still a sentence ending in a question mark, still continuing.  Therefore, to say "Eastern European reform has been a failure, but Chinese gradual reform is a success," does not stand on its own.  One has already finished, but the other is still underway. What is China's next step?"

The Pew Research Center has more on these attitudes.