China's Great Economic Transformation

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 editors 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 sectorial development, globalization, resource transfers across geographic and economic space, and partial system reform delivered an astonishing and unprecedented growth spurt.

'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, 'China's Great Economic Transformation is a superb collection of generally up-to-date analyses of many aspects of China's economic development over the 30 years of reform. … I will end … by reiterating my unequivocal recommendation of this important, wide-ranging contribution to our knowledge of China's economic, social and political changes …' The China Quarterly, 'China's Great Economic Transformation will serve very well, at least … as a comprehensive reader in courses on China's economy.' The China Journal

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.