China S Economic Revolution

Professor Eckstein's book is a study of China's efforts to achieve rapid modernization of its economy within a socialist framework. Eckstein begins with an examination of economic development in pre-Communist China, specifically focusing on the resources and liabilities inherited by the new regime in 1949 and their effects on development policies. He then analyses the economic objectives of the Communist leadership - narrowing income disparities, maintaining full employment without inflation, and achieving rapid industrialization - and argues that the implementation of these goals required a potent ideology capable of providing a strong faith and motivational force for the mass mobilization of resources. In discussing the methods used by the government to achieve its aims, Eckstein makes a thorough evaluation of China's general framework for economic planning, particularly in regard to the distribution and pricing of farm products and the allocation of resources in the industrial sector. The author also evaluates the radical institutional changes in property relations and in economic organization in the People's Republic of China.

China’s dismantling of the Mao-era rural commune system and return to individual household farming under Deng Xiaoping has been seen as a successful turn away from a misguided social experiment and a rejection of the disastrous policies that produced widespread famine. In this revisionist study, Joshua Eisenman marshals previously inaccessible data to overturn this narrative, showing that the commune modernized agriculture, increased productivity, and spurred an agricultural green revolution that laid the foundation for China’s future rapid growth. Red China’s Green Revolution tells the story of the commune’s origins, evolution, and downfall, demonstrating its role in China’s economic ascendance. After 1970, the commune emerged as a hybrid institution, including both collective and private elements, with a high degree of local control over economic decision but almost no say over political ones. It had an integrated agricultural research and extension system that promoted agricultural modernization and collectively owned local enterprises and small factories that spread rural industrialization. The commune transmitted Mao’s collectivist ideology and enforced collective isolation so it could overwork and underpay its households. Eisenman argues that the commune was eliminated not because it was unproductive, but because it was politically undesirable: it was the post-Mao leadership led by Deng Xiaoping—not rural residents—who chose to abandon the commune in order to consolidate their control over China. Based on detailed and systematic national, provincial, and county-level data, as well as interviews with agricultural experts and former commune members, Red China’s Green Revolution is a comprehensive historical and social scientific analysis that fundamentally challenges our understanding of recent Chinese economic history.

China's dramatic economic transformation can only be understood in relation to her modern history. David Pyle reviews the post-1978 reform process in the context of two centuries of Chinese economic, social and political history. Agricultural, industrial and financial reforms and the attraction of foreign trade and direct investment are analysed in detail. The conclusion compares China's gradualist approach with the 'big bang' of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, examining China's prospects and the lessons to be learnt elswhere.

China's Unfinished Economic Revolution offers a fundamentally different interpretation of China's economic reform. The common view that China's gradualistic approach has served it well overlooks the fact that state-owned banks for the last two decades have channeled a large share of sharply rising household savings into what are mostly unreformed, money-losing companies. The result is that several of China's largest financial institutions now are insolvent. To avoid a major domestic banking crisis the book argues that China must recapitalize and restructure its domestic banking system and end the long-standing practice of making lending decisions based on political rather than economic criteria. Nicholas Lardy explains that this course will inevitably be costly in political terms, in part because it will lead for a time to a slower rate of economic growth. But the alternative is even less attractive—permanently slower growth, continued macroeconomic instability, an inability to meet the expectations of the international community for the opening of its domestic financial markets, and insufficient resources to deal with severe environmental deterioration, growing water shortages, and a rapidly aging population. This timely book also analyzes the new reform initiatives China has launched in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, suggests additional steps that must be taken, and evaluates the implications for U.S. policy.

The Uprising at Tiananmen Square may have been crushed politically, but it has had extraordinary consequences in opening up China to new varieties of economic experimentation. Nowhere has this fusion of political repression and economic opportunity been better captured than in Hui Wang's masterful study. And given the world wide and historic importance of China, this volume deserves most careful consideration. Given his unique background as a former assistant director of the China National Economic Reform Institute (CNERI) hi Beijing, and before that, a board member of "The Economic Daily "in the capital city of China, he is able to provide the sort of first hand account that deeply enriches this fundamental treatise on the transformation of the Chinese economy from a centrally planned to a market system. This book should prove to be especially timely as American investors and businessmen are pouring into China for new commercial ventures; while scholars are likewise coming to China in order to obtain information and experience to benefit other struggling formerly socialist economies. Wang makes no claim that present-day China is necessarily a model for the rest of Asia or Eastern Europe, but he does make plain that variations on the theme of a free market and a controlled polity are as much part of "Leftist" as well as "Rightist" regimes. As a result, this book should have appeal quite beyond undergraduate and graduate courses in modern China, and should extend to those political scientists and sociologists who take seriously fundamental themes of development.

After three decades of reform and opening up, China is closing its doors, clamping down on Western influence in the economy, media, and civil society. At the same time, President Xi Jinping has positioned himself as a champion of globalization, projecting Chinese power abroad and seeking toreshape the global order. Herein lies the paradox of modern China - the rise of a more insular, yet more ambitious China that will have a profound impact on both the country's domestic politics and its international relations.In The Third Revolution, eminent China scholar Elizabeth Economy provides an incisive look at the world's most populous country. Inheriting a China burdened with slowing economic growth, rampant corruption, choking pollution, and a failing social welfare system, President Xi has reversed course,rejecting the liberalizing reforms of his predecessors. At home, the Chinese leadership has reasserted the role of the state into society and enhanced Party and state control. Beyond its borders, Beijing has recast itself as a great power and has maneuvered itself to be an arbiter - not just aplayer - on the world stage. Through an exploration of Xi Jinping's efforts to address top policy priorities - fighting corruption, controlling the internet, reforming state-owned enterprises, improving the country's innovation capacity, reducing the country's air pollution, and elevating itspresence on the global stage - Economy identifies the tensions, shortcomings, and successes of Xi's first five years in office. Xi's ambition, she argues, provides new opportunities for the United States and the rest of the world to encourage greater Chinese contribution to global public goods butalso necessitates a more proactive and coordinated effort to counter the rapidly expanding influence of an illiberal power within a liberal world order. This is essential reading for anyone interested in both China under Xi and how America and the world should deal with this vast nation in thecoming years.

This text aims to shed light on the country's rapid industrialization and internationalization by looking at questions such as: Can China sustain its accelerated rate of growth? and Can labor supply be sustained at a relatively low wage rate?

This text aims to shed light on the country's rapid industrialization and internationalization by looking at questions such as: Can China sustain its accelerated rate of growth? and Can labor supply be sustained at a relatively low wage rate?