Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics: How Economic Bureaucrats Make Policies and Remake the Chinese State

Yingyao Wang's book "Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics" has won the 2025 Sociology of Development Book Award from the American Sociological Association's Sociology of Development Section. It highlights how bureaucrats have driven China's economic development by competing for career advancement and reshaping state-market relations.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 21 May 2024
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Winner,2025 Sociology of Development Book Award,Sociology of Development Section,American Sociological Association Chinas remarkable economic development has been propelled by bureaucrats, who have maintained significant influence and control over policy-making despite the countrys transition from socialist planning to a market economy. However, bureaucrats are often overlooked or marginalized in favor of party leaders' top-down rule or bottom-up initiatives. "Markets with Bureaucratic Characteristics" offers a fresh perspective on economic policy-making in China over the past four decades, highlighting how bureaucrats have played a pivotal role in driving large-scale transformations. Yingyao Wang's book demonstrates how competition among bureaucrats motivated by careerism has led to the emergence of new policy approaches. Second-tier economic bureaucrats established distinct "policy paradigms" aimed at enhancing their own standing and rewriting China's long-term development plans. These policy paradigms reshaped the Chinese economy and state-market relations, emerging from the middle levels of the bureaucracy. Drawing on detailed biographical and interview data, Wang traces how officials formed alliances and rivalries based on shared career trajectories, generational experiences, and social networks. This book provides valuable sociological insights into the complex relationships among bureaucracy, states, and markets, shedding light on the making and trajectory of Chinas ambitious economic reforms.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231214780