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Dancing with the Devil

The Political Economy of Privatization in China

Yi-min Lin author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:15th Jun '17

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Dancing with the Devil cover

From 1978 through the turn of the century, China was transformed from a state-owned economy into a predominantly private economy. This fundamental change took place under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is ideologically mandated and politically predisposed to suppress private ownership. In Dancing with the Devil, Yi-min Lin explains how and why such an ironic and puzzling reality came about. The central thesis is that private ownership became a necessary evil for the CCP because the public sector was increasingly unable to address two essential concerns for regime survival: employment and revenue. Focusing on political actors as a major group of change agents, the book examines how their self-interested behavior led to the decline of public ownership. Demographics and the state's fiscal system provide the analytical coordinates for revealing the changing incentives and constraints faced by political actors and for investigating their responses and strategies. These factors help explain CCP leaders' initial decision to allow limited private economic activities at the outset of reform. They also shed light on the subsequent growth of opportunism in the behavior of lower level officials, which undermined the vitality of public enterprises. Furthermore, they hold a key to understanding the timing of the massive privatization in the late 1990s, as well as its tempo and spread thereafter. Dancing with the Devil illustrates how the driving forces developed and played out in these intertwined episodes of the story. In so doing, it offers new insights into the mechanisms of China's economic transformation and enriches theories of institutional change.

"The author carefully studies the interactions among the political actors in this important era and offers insights on institutional change using China as a case study. The title is particularly suitable for readers interested in the political economy of modern China. Accessible to all readers." -- CHOICE "Yi-min Lin's study illuminates the underlying economic and political forces that led the Chinese Communist Party to tolerate and even encourage the growth of private businesses, which he estimates accounted for about two-thirds of China's economic activity by 2014." -- Nicholas R. Lardy, Anthony M Solomon Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics "This carefully researched book offers a new and compelling explanation on how and why public ownership has declined in socialist China over the last 30 some years." -- Shaoguang Wang, Department of Government and Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong

ISBN: 9780190682828

Dimensions: 160mm x 239mm x 23mm

Weight: 601g

288 pages