China's Great Economic Transformation

by Loren Brandt (Editor), Thomas G. Rawski (Editor)

Overview

This landmark study provides an integrated analysis of China's unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. The authors combine deep China expertise with broad disciplinary knowledge to explain China's remarkable combination of high-speed growth and deeply flawed institutions. Their work exposes the mechanisms underpinning the origin and expansion of China’s great boom. Penetrating studies track the rise of Chinese capabilities in manufacturing and in research and development. The authors probe both achievements and weaknesses across many sectors, including China's fiscal, legal, and financial institutions. The book shows how an intricate minuet combining China's political system with sectoral development, globalization, resource transfers across geographic and economic space, and partial system reform delivered an astonishing and unprecedented growth spurt. The volume chronicles many shortcomings, but concludes that China's economic expansion is likely to continue during the coming decades.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521712903
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/14/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	930
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.85(d)

About the Author

Loren Brandt is Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, where he has been since 1987. Previously, he was at the Hoover Institution. Professor Brandt has published widely on China in leading economic journals, and been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in China. He is the author of Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China, 1870–1937, and was an area editor for the five-volume Oxford Dictionary of Economic History.

Thomas G. Rawski is Professor of Economics and History and UCIS Research Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. His work covers many dimensions of China's development and modern economic history and includes Economic Growth and Employment in China, China's Transition to Industrialism, Economic Growth in Prewar China, Chinese History in Economic Perspective, Economics and the Historian, and China's Rise and the Balance of Influence in Asia.

Table of Contents

1. China's great economic transformation Loren Brandt and Thomas G. Rawski; 2. China and development economics Alan Heston and Terry Sicular; 3. China in light of the performance of Central and East European economies Jan Svejnar; 4. A political economy of China's economic transition Barry Naughton; 5. The demographic factor in China's transition Wang Feng and Andrew Mason; 6. The Chinese labor market in the reform era Fang Cai, Albert Park and Yaohui Zhao; 7. Education in the reform era Emily Hannum, Jere Behrman, Meiyan Wang and Jihong Liu; 8. Environmental resources and economic growth James Roumasset, Hua Wang and Kimberly Burnett; 9. Science and technology in China Albert G. Z. Hu and Gary H. Jefferson; 10. The political economy of private sector development in China Stephan Haggard and Yasheng Huang; 11. The role of law in China's economic development Donald Clarke, Peter Murrell and Susan Whiting; 12. China's fiscal system: a work in progress Christine P. W. Wong and Richard M. Bird; 13. Agriculture in China's development: past disappointments, recent successes and future challenges Jikun Huang, Keijiro Otsuka and Scott Rozelle; 14. China's financial system: past, present, and future Franklin Allen, Jun Qian and Meijun Qian; 15. China's industrial development Loren Brandt, Thomas G. Rawski and John Sutton; 16. China's embrace of globalization Lee Branstetter and Nicholas Lardy; 17. Growth and structural transformation in China Loren Brandt, Chang-tai Hsieh and Xiaodong Zhu; 18. Income inequality during China's economic transition Dwayne Benjamin, Loren Brandt, John Giles and Sangui Wang; 19. Spatial dimensions of Chinese economic development Kam Wing Chan, Vernon Henderson and Kai Yuen Tsui; 20. Forecasting China's economic growth over the next two decades Dwight H. Perkins and Thomas G. Rawski.

Editorial Reviews

"This impressive collection of twenty chapters provides a comprehensive, penetrating, and timely analysis of China's remarkable economic transformation in the past three decades, one of the most significant economic events with global importance. All of the chapters are written by some of today’s most active experts on China's economy, and many chapters jointly with the distinguished experts in the specific area of the discipline. The authors do not analyze China's case in isolation but place it in the general context of economic development and transition and the experiences of other economies; and they do not simply amass the numbers but interpret the data in light of economic theories. It is a valuable book for those who want to gain an in-depth knowledge about China’s economic achievements, shortcomings, and challenges." - Yingyi Qian, University of California, Berkeley

"China's Great Economic Transformation of the last thirty years is one of the most important economic events in history. The volume edited by Brandt and Rawski, with contributions from an impressive array of world class China scholars and economists, is by far the most comprehensive attempt to date at understanding this phenomenon. This volume will be for many years to come the top reference to understand China's growing role in the world economy." - Gerard Roland, Berkeley University

"This book collects masterful surveys of all important aspects of the Chinese economy by some of the leading experts in the field. The sheer comprehensiveness is impressive. It is highly useful to both people who need a quick introduction to the subject and to other China researchers." - Shang-Jin Wei, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University

"A valuable reference for collections supporting development economics and China studies. Recommended." - Choice

"There is an old Chinese saying that 'A book holds a house of gold.' This volume edited by two eminent scholars on China is an impressive achievement and certainly yields a treasure trove of detailed information and thoughtful analysis of the Chinese economy.... What makes this volume stand out from the crowd is the sheer wealth of material that is brought to bear on different aspects of the growth process and their implications for economic welfare and sustainability of that growth.... This volume is indeed destined to become part of the essential collection of reference and source materials for scholars as well as students of the Chinese economy." - Eswar Prasad, Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, The Brookings Institution

"China's Great Economic Transformation is a fine, comprehensive set of discussions of China's economy from the late 1970s, when the reform period begain, until around 2006.... If the editors had been intimidated by the rapidity of change and retreated from aiming at their moving target, this useful and informative book would not exist and we would be the poorer for it. China's Great Economic Transformation will serve very well, at least for a few more years, as a comprehensive reader in courses on China's economy." - Carl Riskin, Queens College, CUNY and Columbia University, The China Journal

From the Publisher