Barry J. Naughton

Can China's remarkable, rapid emergence as a large economy and technological power be attributed to specific policies, and more generally to a Chinese program of industrial policy? More simply What is it that China has done right? This is the fundamental question that Barry Naughton addresses in his extended essay. Disentangling the threads of China's industrial policies since 1978, Naughton argues that a distinctive, "government-steered market economy," a term articulated by the country's policymakers, is indeed taking shape and warrants serious consideration as a new type of economic system―one that has ramifications far beyond China's borders.

This comprehensive overview of the modern Chinese economy by a noted expert on China's economic development offers a quality and breadth of coverage not found in any other English-language text. In The Chinese Economy, Barry Naughton provides both an engaging, broadly focused introduction to China's economy since 1949 and original insights based on his own extensive research. The book will be an essential resource for students, teachers, scholars, business people, and policymakers. It is suitable for classroom use for undergraduate or graduate courses.After presenting background material on the pre-1949 economy and the industrialization, reform, and market transition that have taken place since, the book examines different aspects of the modern Chinese economy. It analyzes patterns of growth and development, including population growth and the one-child family policy; the rural economy, including agriculture and rural industrialization; industrial and technological development in urban areas; international trade and foreign investment; macroeconomic trends and cycles and the financial system; and the largely unaddressed problems of environmental quality and the sustainability of growth.The text is notable also for placing China's economy in interesting comparative contexts, discussing it in relation to other transitional or developing economies and to such advanced industrial countries as the United States and Japan. It provides both a broad historical and macro perspective as well as a focused examination of the actual workings of China's complex and dynamic economic development. Interest in the Chinese economy will only grow as China becomes an increasingly important player on the world's stage. This book will be the standard reference for understanding and teaching about the next economic superpower.

Completely updated, China: Adapting the Past, Confronting the Future is the latest in a series of classroom units on China from the Center of Chinese Studies at The University of Michigan. It is not only ideal for courses on contemporary China but also an excellent supplement for courses in area studies, international affairs and economics, and women's studies.Each section, in addition to essay and excerpts, also includes a bibliography of additional topical works as well as suggestions for complementary video and internet teaching resources.Geography and History: Presents a broad sketch of Chinese history from earliest times and a detailed discussion of the forces that have shaped modern Chinese history. Geography sharpens the focus to China’s rich ecological and ethnic diversity.Politics: Addresses political issues in post-Tiananmen China, including corruption, human rights, US-China relations, democratic reform, and religious and political dissidents.Society: Examines contemporary social problems that have emerged in the post-Mao era, including divorce, migrant labor, family planning, problems facing Chinese women, and the proliferation of Chinese and Western religions.Economy: Assesses the post-Mao economy after twenty years of experimentation and reform, including development of private enterprises, income disparities, case studies in rural and urban economic development, and the prospects for future growth.Culture: Reviews 20th century Chinese literature, the intersection between politics and the arts, the explosion of popular culture, and changing visual culture in modern China.Future Trends: Explores the prospects for democratization, generational change in leadership, the direction of modernization, and China’s prospects for political liberalization.

Growing Out of the Plan is a comprehensive study of China's economic reforms, from their beginnings at the end of 1978 through the completion of many of the initial reform measures during 1993. The book focuses on industry and macroeconomic policy, using these to describe reform strategy in its entirety. In addition to being a thorough and reliable guide to the specifics of Chinese economic reform, the book highlights the distinctive features of Chinese reforms that differentiate them from those in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The author argues that the success of the reforms is not the result of carefully plotted strategy, although in hindsight the reforms seem to have added up to a coherent package. Perhaps most important in its connotations for other changing economies, the Chinese experience shows that gradual change of a command economy is feasible.

China’s bold program of reforms launched in the late 1970s―the move to a market economy and the opening to the outside world―ended the political chaos and economic stagnation of the Cultural Revolution and sparked China’s unprecedented economic boom. Yet, while the reforms made possible a rising standard of living for the majority of China’s population, they came at the cost of a weakening central government, increasing inequalities, and fragmenting society.The essays of Barry Naughton, Joseph Fewsmith, Paul H. B. Godwin, Murray Scot Tanner, Lianjiang Li and Kevin J. O’Brien, Tianjian Shi, Martin King Whyte, Thomas P. Bernstein, Dorothy J. Solinger, David S. G. Goodman, Kristen Parris, Merle Goldman, Elizabeth J. Perry, and Richard Baum and Alexei Shevchenko analyze the contradictory impact of China’s economic reforms on its political system and social structure. They explore the changing patterns of the relationship between state and society that may have more profound significance for China than all the revolutionary movements that have convulsed it through most of the twentieth century.