How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate

China has successfully integrated into the global economy while maintaining its own economic model. This book explores the debate between reformers in the first post-Mao decade on how to reform the economy, ultimately leading to China's path of gradual reindustrialization. It sheds light on the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China and provides an original perspective on China's economic model.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 358 pages
Publication date: 27 May 2021
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

China's integration into the global economy has been a gradual process, facilitated by marketization without complete assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book explores the intense debate surrounding economic reforms that shaped China's path during the first post-Mao decade. Reformers in China were divided on the approach to reform, with differing opinions on whether to destroy the socialist system through shock therapy or utilize the institutions of the planned economy as market creators. The historical record demonstrates the significant stakes involved in this question, as China embarked on an unprecedented economic expansion while Russia's economy collapsed under shock therapy.

Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants, World Bank officials, and insights from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately led China to pursue a path of gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Overall, the book offers an original perspective on China's economic model and its ongoing contestations from within and from without.

Weight: 564g
Dimension: 154 x 234 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032008493