While East Asian economies embarked on an outwardly-oriented development path starting in the late 1950s, China became mired in an elite conflict over globalization, which continues to influence contemporary Chinese foreign economic policy-making. This chapter will analyze opinion group formation and evolution by evaluating two cases of profound crisis: one following the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s and the less obvious crisis that followed the adoption of the "opening" strategy at the Third Plenum of 1978. The GLF crisis generated two major opinion groups that promoted import substitution and autarchy in the 1960s and 1970s. The crisis in development following the Third Plenum resulted in two major opinion groups adopting radical and conservative approaches to export promotion. The ensuing struggle within the policy elite to implement a particular vision of development strategy has thus been the primary cause for the Chinese development antinomy.
