The Political Logic of Economic Reform in ChinaIn the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries. |
Contents
3 | |
The Prereform Chinese Economy and the Decision to Initiate Market Reforms | 23 |
CHINESE POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS | 53 |
Authority Relations The Communist Party and the Government | 55 |
Leadership Incentives Political Succession and Reciprocal Accountability | 70 |
Bargaining Arena The Government Bureaucracy | 92 |
Who Is Enfranchised in the Policymaking Process? | 107 |
Decision Rules Delegation by Consensus | 116 |
Playing to the Provinces Fiscal Decentralization and the Politics of Reform | 149 |
Creating Vested Interests in Reform Industrial Reform Takeoff 197881 | 197 |
Leadership Succession and Policy Conflict The Choice Between Profit Contracting and Substituting TaxforProfit 198283 | 221 |
Building Bureaucratic Consensus Formulating the TaxforProfit Policy 198384 | 245 |
The Power of Particularism Abortive Price Reform and the Revival of Profit Contracting 198588 | 280 |
CONCLUSION | 331 |
The Political Lessons of Economic Reform in China | 333 |
Bibliography | 351 |
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Common terms and phrases
adjustment tax administrative agricultural author's interviews authority bargaining Beijing billion yuan Bo Yibo bureau bureaucratic Central Committee central planning Chen Yun China command economy Commission Communist Party competition conference conservative contracting Council decision Deng Xiaoping economic reform economists enterprise managers factories FBIS firms fiscal decentralization foreign funds groups Guangdong heavy industry Hu Yaobang Hua Guofeng implemented incentives increased industrial ministries industrial reform institutions interests investment Jingji Jiyun large enterprises leadership Li Peng light industry Mao Zedong market reforms ment ministries and provinces National People's Congress Naughton nomic nonstate Oksenberg output particularistic party and government party leaders Peng percent policy-making Politburo premier price reform prises profit retention profit-contracting provincial officials readjustment reform drive reform policies reformist Renmin ribao responsibility system revenues rules sector selectorate share Soviet Union Standing Committee subordinate tax rates tax-for-profit tion Xinhua Zhao Ziyang
Popular passages
Page 6 - As the Chinese economists put it, Deng Xiaoping and his reformist lieutenants, Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang, pushed against the stone wall of the Chinese bureaucracy. Where they found loose stones, they pushed through; when stones would not move, they did not waste energy pushing