There are many books and essays about the Chinese economy but there are very few dealing with this subject that are both comprehensive and up to date. This volume is designed to fill both of these gaps. The focus of the book is on the Chinese economy, not politics or culture, but there are a great many topics that need to be covered if a book is to provide a comprehensive view of that economy. The book must cover subjects ranging from the many different sectors of the economy such as agriculture, labor, foreign trade, and finance. It must also cover the many policy changes particularly those occurring after the reform period began in 1978 such as state enterprise reform, macroeconomic policies, and the general nature of reform. To really understand the policy changes after 1978, however, one must have some understanding of the way the economy was organized prior to the beginning of the reform period. And for some issues, it is desirable to go further back to the nature of the institutions governing the Chinese economy during the centuries before the contemporary era that began in 1949. At the other end of the spectrum, it is helpful for understanding the present to speculate on how the current system is likely to evolve and shape China’s economic and political future and the author of one of the chapters does just that.
To understand the nature of economic reform in China (and elsewhere) a reader must know something about the political context in which these reforms occurred and that requires discussion of the politics of reform in some of the chapters and, in addition, a separate chapter on politics and corruption that shaped economic policies and performance. Closely related to the political context of economic reform is the legal context in which reform occurs and therefore there is a chapter on the development of the Chinese legal system as it affects economic activity.
Altogether there are 19 separate chapters in this volume covering these and additional topics written by 22 individual authors. The authors are all among the most distinguished observers of the Chinese economy and related political and legal institutions. They are based in universities and research institutes in China, the United States, France, and Australia. Their essays are written first of all for university students around the world who have some background in economics, but, for the most part, the chapters should also be accessible to well-educated people interested in these topics regardless of whether or not they have studied formal economic analysis.
The editors of this volume are grateful to the various individual authors for contributing to this effort, to Leila Adu for ably editing and formatting the 19 chapters, and to the editors of Routledge for seeing this effort through to publication. The first editor acknowledges with thanks the financial support for his work from the Gregory C. Chow Econometric Research Program of Princeton University.
Gregory C. Chow
Princeton University
Dwight H. Perkins
Harvard University