Comparison to China and North Korea

Romania in a way is very similar to both these countries; it started off as a core-command economy with a heavy focus on dictatorship. This grew once Nazi Germany occupied various parts of Romania as part of their alliance during the Second World War. Romania then started to follow a path closer to China than North Korea as it started to gain Soviet influence and move towards Communism. Furthermore, Romania started to drop in GDP during its communist period as many of its inhabitants were unable to even purchase basic needs. And lastly, like China, Romania had a revolution between Western and Soviet ideals which eventually resulted in a transition from a pure command economy to a free-market privatisation style economy.

Despite the similarities it had in its history, Romania had a very powerful head start unlike its Asian counterparts with rapid industrialisation during the era of The Great Depression where many countries had trouble even finding jobs for most of its inhabitants. Additionally, Romania took a significantly longer amount of time to transition between dictatorship, communism and democracy than China did but eventually transitioned unlike North Korea. In terms of economic policies added to improve development of the country, Romania's policies were much more tame than China's Great Leap Forward and while it did leave many without basic needs, didn't result in a famine that killed 1/10th of its population. Romania's policies were aimed at debt reduction as it borrowed mass amounts of money to help quickly improve its development during the 1980s.

   

Bibliography: Wang, Weihang. "The Revolutions of 1989 in Poland, Romania and China."The Revolutions of 1989 in Poland, Romania and China. The Ohio State University, Autumn 2014. Web. 05 June 2015. <https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/revolutions-1989-poland-romania-and-china>.