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Paths not Taken

Joel Andreas on Isabella Weber, How China Escaped Shock Therapy. Reconstruction of the tight contest between ‘big-bang’ and ‘dual-track’ market reformers in Deng’s PRC, weighing generational experience, Western proselytising and the classical Chinese tradition.

Sino-Seismology

Joel Andreas on Martin King Whyte, Myth of the Social Volcano. Empirical survey of attitudes to inequality in the PRC, offering comfort for Beijing.

A Shanghai Model?

Assessment of Huang Yasheng’s iconoclastic account of the PRC’s economic reforms, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics. Did the 1990s witness a turn away from rural entrepreneurialism towards a state-led model favouring coastal elites?

Changing Colours in China

The nature of China’s present socio-economic system has for some time been hotly debated. Reflecting on Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing, Joel Andreas traces the path of property relations, social services and income distribution in the PRC since the late seventies, reaching unambiguous conclusions.