Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics
Entrepreneurship and the State

Explains why China grew differently in the 1980s than in the 1990s and beyond, and what consequences this has today.

Yasheng Huang (Author)

9780521898102, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 September 2008

366 pages, 9 tables
23.8 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'[Marshals] an impressive array of survey and documentary evidence … a must-read for China specialists.' The Journal of Asian Studies

Presents a story of two Chinas – an entrepreneurial rural China and a state-controlled urban China. In the 1980s, rural China gained the upper hand. In the 1990s, urban China triumphed. In the 1990s, the Chinese state reversed many of its rural experiments, with long-lasting damage to the economy and society. A weak financial sector, income disparity, rising illiteracy, productivity slowdowns, and reduced personal income growth are the product of the capitalism with Chinese characteristics of the 1990s and beyond. While GDP grew quickly in both decades, the welfare implications of growth differed substantially. The book uses the emerging Indian miracle to debunk the widespread notion that democracy is automatically anti-growth. As the country marked its 30th anniversary of reforms in 2008, China faces some of its toughest economic challenges and substantial vulnerabilities that require fundamental institutional reforms.

1. Just how capitalist is China?
2. The entrepreneurial decade
3. A great reversal
4. What is wrong with Shanghai?
5. Capitalism with Chinese characteristics.

Subject Areas: Entrepreneurship [KJH], Economics [KC]