An Overview of Government-Market Relationships: Evolving Perceptions,Role of the Market, and Government Functions

Building a high-level socialist market economy is conducive to giving full play to the market’s decisive role in resource allocations and bringing the government into better play. Correctly handling the market and the government relationships has been a central issue in China’s economic structural reform. Giving a comprehensive review and summary of the research findings achieved by the theoretical and academic circles in China, we generalize the evolution and working mechanisms of China’s socialist market economy system, following the developing trajectory and logic of relevant literature, focusing on the three aspects of evolving perceptions, the role of the market, and the functions of the government. Based on our literature overview, we also induced and extracted the basic conclusions and evolutionary features of relevant research and made suggestions for the future direction of theoretical research regarding China’s socialist market economy.