China’s long-term economic dynamics pose a formidable challenge to economic historians. The Qing Empire (1644 –1911), the world’ s largest national economy before 1800, experienced a tripling of population during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with no signs of diminishing per capita income. While the timing remains in dispute, a vast gap emerged between newly rich industrial nations and China’s lagging economy in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Only with an unprecedented growth spurt beginning in the late 1970s did this great divergence separating China from the global leaders substantially diminish, allowing China to regain its former standing among the world’s largest economies. This essay develops an integrated framework for understanding that entire history, including both the divergence and the recent convergent trend. We explain how deeply embedded political and economic institutions that contributed to a long process of extensive growth before 1800 subsequently prevented China from capturing the benefits associated with the Industrial Revolution. During the twentieth century, the gradual erosion of these historic constraints and of new obstacles erected by socialist planning eventually opened the door to China’s current boom. Our analysis links China’s recent development to important elements of its past, while using recent success to provide fresh perspectives on the critical obstacles undermining earlier modernization efforts, and their eventual removal. (JEL N15, N45, O11, O47, P21, P24, P26)

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From Divergence to Convergence: Reevaluating the History behind China's Economic Boom

This paper aims to offer new theoretical and empirical insights into co-evolutionary development. Theoretically, it advances a political perspective which focuses on the role of power and how this can be translated into influence as an evolutionary driver through the relational framework between an organization and external parties. Empirically, the paper elaborates this perspective by reference to how China's largest container terminal evolved within a changing environment, and how its evolution in turn impacted on the evolution of its sector. In this case, the key relational framework was that between the organization and government institutions. Application of a political perspective to the case study suggests a theoretical model that can inform future research and practice. © 2012 The Authors Journal of Management Studies

The Dynamics of Influence in Corporate Co-Evolution

Abstract China has a highly “political” economy. Despite periodic efforts to promote the market, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the state bureaucracy exercise dominance over China’s overall developmental strategy, property rights, the large state-owned sector, foreign economic relations, and the sale of land—all of which is state-owned—to developers. The chapter analyzes the decollectivization of agriculture (1979–1983), the growth of collectively owned rural factories (1984–1996), the emergence and expansion of the private sector, and the internationalization of the Chinese economy through the adoption of export-led growth, the encouragement of foreign direct investment in the PRC, and China’s own overseas investment. Throughout, it highlights the role of China’s leadership in the economy from the tumultuous Mao era through Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening up,” and Xi Jinping’s reassertion of party-state control. 

China’s Political Economy

Tales from the development frontier is an important publication that presents analytical reviews and case studies that show how selected developing countries have developed light manufacturing to create jobs and foster prosperity. China's emergence as a powerhouse in light manufacturing is a major focus of this volume, but other countries in Africa and Asia are also included. Mindful of the adage that there is as much to learn from success as failure, the case studies examined in this book cover both triumphs and disappointments, eliciting from them lessons on the development of light manufacturing and how this sector can be leveraged to accelerate growth in poor countries where the initial conditions may not be quite ideal. The book brings out the role of focused, targeted initiatives that can help break the poverty trap and ignite growth that begins small but can eventually lift broader segments of the economy. Each successful enterprise or industry described in this book began as a family workshop, a microenterprise, or a group of small entrepreneurs meeting a limited demand in a small area. Although these fledgling ventures confronted market, institutional, and regulatory environments loaded with daunting obstacles, they managed to find room for organic growth, supported by focused government policy interventions to ease the binding constraints. At some point, though not necessarily at first, cooperation and even partnership with government policy makers helped to power a gradual transformation that turned small informal firms into modern corporations capable of establishing national and, eventually, international distribution networks. The book argues that this sequence of ground-level entry and gradual organic growth to a larger scale represents a common element in the growth of light manufacturing in the United Kingdom and other early developers, as well as the recent successes such as China. China's emergence as a powerhouse in light manufacturing is a major focus of this volume, but other countries in Africa and Asia are also included. Mindful of the adage that there is as much to learn from success as failure, the case studies examined in this book cover both triumphs and disappointments, eliciting from them lessons on the development of light manufacturing and how this sector can be leveraged to accelerate growth in poor countries where the initial conditions may not be quite ideal.

Tales from the development frontier

This thesis introduces an overlooked perspective on Chinese foreign policy, that of interest groups. I use environmental foreign relations as a vantage point to examine how domestic interest groups exert influence on China’s environmental foreign relations. The proposed theoretical framework, constructivist utilitarianism, provides a bridge between the constructivist school and rationalistic institutionalism in the IR debate to explain the discursive turn of the Chinese government in global environmental governance. The discursive turn refers to the changing attitudes towards environmental governance based on learning, shared experiences, and offering an alternative norm to replace liberal environmentalism.
The interest groups under scrutiny are line ministries, state-owned enterprises, environmental non-governmental organisations, local governors, and intellectuals. They each represent a distinct interest, and demonstrate different pathways for influencing foreign relations. The focus on domestic players supplements the traditional focus on international systemic factors to explain the behaviour of China on the global stage and in bilateral relations. The empirical chapters are organised according to three dimensions: international environmental treaty implementation, sharing the Chinese experience, and offering an alternative environmental norm. Each chapter focuses on one factor, in the following order: environmental diplomacy, the Chinese experience, and ecological civilisation. These three dimensions reflect the trend of the discursive turn, which is closely linked to China’s desire to establish a good national image.
My findings show that interest groups in China utilise the strategic concepts of environmental diplomacy and the Chinese experience to maximise their interests. The emergence of the discourse of ecological civilisation creates space for different groups to jump onto the bandwagon by interpreting the concept in favour of their interests. In this process, identity politics becomes a mechanism by which to aggregate and rank domestic preferences in such a way that economic interests outweigh environmental ones at the state level. This thesis calls for more future research to examine other foreign relations issues through the lens of interest groups, to better comprehend the complex dynamics of China’s role in the world.

Strategic concepts and interest groups in China’s environmental foreign relations (1984-2015)

As this remarkable story begins, the Chinese people were just recovering from the devastating effects of the Cultural Revolution and the loss of the country's revered leader Chairman Mao. Deep pockets of ultra-leftist thinking remained, and reformers determined to help bring the Chinese economy and industry out of its backward state faced the challenge of a lifetime. Against tremendous odds and resistance, a determined team of reformers, led by Deng Xiaoping, guided China out of its decades-long international isolation and economic stagnation. Westerners witnessing this astonishing national transformation over the past three decades are familiar with the general outlines of the story of China's economic miracle. But few people - even within China - know the story behind the story. Who were the people who actually made this happen? What were the inside machinations that to China's shift from a planned to a market-oriented economy? By what political and policy processes were the special economic zones, which paved the way to international trade and economic growth, approved and allowed to flourish? Li Lanqing, a senior Chinese official at the forefront of the economic reforms revealed this story for the first time to Chinese readers in 2008, in his acclaimed book Breaking Through. This English edition now offers English readers a rare window onto one of the greatest economic stories of the twentieth century. Li Lanqing, former Minister for Foreign Economic Relations and Trade, among his numerous other official titles, makes a perfect guide to the players and key events of the early days of reform. He was present at the drafting table for many of China's chief decision about the open door policy - including China's first joint venture law - and was present at the negotiating table for the earliest foreign joint ventures, as well as China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This book is informed, not only by Li's personal experience as a trailblazer and a decision-maker, but also by some 330 declassified files, documents and hand-written scripts hitherto unavailable to the public. Breaking Through is not only an historically important book - comprehensive and meticulously detailed - it is also filled with bittersweet and often-amusing personal anecdotes about China's challenges before and during the reform years (from 1977 onwards). This book is a fitting commemoration and tribute to all the stalwart figures who played a role in China's debut onto the world economic scene, upon the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of China's Opening and Reform Policy.

Breaking through : the birth of China's opening-up policy

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Breaking through : the birth of China's opening-up policy

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嵐清李