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Understanding China's Reform Looking beyond Neoclassical Explanations

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JaneDuckett. The Entrepreneurial State in China: Real Estate and Commerce Departments in Reform Era Tianjin. London: Routledge, 1998, 273 pp.
Lance L. P.Gore. Market Communism: The Institutional Foundation of China's Post-Mao Hyper-Growth. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1998, 354 pp.
Jean C.Oi. Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, 253 pp.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Shu-Yun Ma
Shu-Yun Ma
Affiliation:
Chinese University of Hong Kong
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Extract

The relative success of post-Mao reform in China has raised a number of questions regarding the neoclassical perspective: How could China have achieved rapid economic growth without privatization? Why have Chinese officials not been resistant to market reform? What makes the Chinese state developmental rather than predatory? The four recent works reviewed in this article attempt to answer these questions by moving away from the neoclassical approach, yet none offers a better alternative. The search for the secret of China's economic “miracle” must be continued.

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Type
Review Article
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World Politics , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , July 2000, pp. 586 - 603
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2000

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