China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism.
One of the most consequential economic debates in China over the direction of reform took place in the 1980s and focused on how markets should be created. The outcome of that debate set the pattern for much of China's subsequent economic reforms. Isabella Weber, drawing on interviews of the participants and others together with many new sources of unpublished and published information, does a masterful job of explaining how this debate evolved and its ultimate impact.
DWIGHT H. PERKINS, Harvard University, Director of the Harvard Institute for International Development, 1980-1995
This superb book presents the most compelling interpretation I have read of the sources of Chinese gradualism and its success in fostering economic growth and transformation while preserving enough social cohesion to hold the Chinese society together. It is the product of an independent, inquisitive, open mind-the only type that can hope to grasp the phenomenon that is modern China. It is also the work of a first-rate economist, in the best sense of that term.
JAMES K. GALBRAITH, The University of Texas at Austin, former Chief Technical adviser to China's State Planning Commission for macroeconomic reform
Isabella Weber's book gives an excellent historical overview of China's economic statecraft bringing the reader to the crucial period of market reforms and to the decision to avoid the full implementation of the neoliberal agenda, thus setting the stage for the fastest and longest growth in world history.
BRANKO MILANOVIC, LSE and CUNY, former Lead Economist, World Bank Research Department
Isabella Weber succeeds in offering a powerful account of China's reform-era?market creation?that is of acute interest to economists and historians alike.?Her book is a call to economists to ponder the relevance of political economy with its European roots in classical economics of the early modern era and with Chinese roots in a period almost two millennia earlier.?
R. BIN WONG, Director of the UCLA Asia Institute and Distinguished Professor of History
China's debates in the 1980s about reform of the non-market economy are centrally important to understanding global political economy in the 21st century. The resolution of the debates about the 'Big Bang' set China on the course of pragmatic system reform ('groping for stones to cross the river') that has remained in place ever since.?Isabella?Weber's study is unique. It uses information not only from a wide array of written documents but also from extensive interviews with participants in the debates. Her remarkable book provides a rich, balanced and scholarly analysis which illuminates the complex reality of this critically important period in modern world history.?
PETER NOLAN, University of Cambridge, Founding Director of the University's Centre of Development Studies
