By that measure, the Soviet Union was still growing up to 1986, when Gorbachev launched his perestroika, and would not have been considered in economic crisis either
Likewise, it is probably far-fetched to fault Khrushchev for not reforming Gosplan on time, leaving it to fossilize over the next twenty years.
China presents itself as a power that commendably eschews hegemonism, but the form its abstinence most frequently takes is either compliance with the existing hegemon—over the Iraq war, to take but one example—or pursuit of narrow self-interest—as with Sudan—and its relations with Third World countries remain strictly instrumental.
At the same time, dialectical materialism and the Leninist theory of the revolutionary party appeared to provide the best theoretical tool-kit for revolutionary strategy and modern social mobilization.
Historical materialism offered a way of making socio-economic sense of the country’s long past, and projecting it forward with purposefulness beyond any previous Chinese imagination.
