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21 - China’s Great Boom as a Historical Process

from Part II - 1950 to the Present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2022

By
Loren Brandt  and
Thomas G. Rawski
Edited by
Debin Ma  and
Richard von Glahn
Debin Ma
Affiliation:
Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Richard von Glahn
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

Beginning in the late 1970s, China’s economy produced the largest growth spurt in recorded history. This striking departure from the economic experience of the previous 200 years encourages onlookers to view recent economic success as a “miracle” that requires neither economic nor historical explanation. Such thinking ignores common elements that have shaped China’s long-term economic trajectory: forces propelling spurts of innovation and growth, restrictions that often impede these dynamic forces, and enduring features of China’s polity that generate tensions between centralized authoritarian power and economic growth. Neglect of these historical legacies invites misconceptions about the current boom’s origin and the economy’s likely future path. History and economics figure prominently in our analysis of both.

Keywords

Chinaeconomic boomgrowth constraintsauthoritarian ruleelite networksgovernmental weaknessinnovationproductivity
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Economic History of China , pp. 775 - 828
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Breznitz, D., and Murphree, M., Run of the Red Queen: Government, Innovation, Globalization and Economic Growth in China (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Elvin, M., and Skinner, G.W. (eds.), The Chinese City between Two Worlds (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1974).Google Scholar
Huang, Y.S., Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Mülhahn, K., Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Rozelle, S., and Hell, N., Invisible China: How the Urban–Rural Divide Threatens China’s Rise (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2020).Google Scholar
Schell, O., and Delury, J., Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century (New York, Random House, 2013).Google Scholar
Skinner, G.W. (ed.), The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1977).Google Scholar
So, B.K.L., and Myers, R.H. (eds.), The Treaty Port Economy in Modern China: Empirical Studies of Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Berkeley, University of California Institute of East Asian Studies, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walder, A.G., China under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Walter, C., and Howie, F., Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise (Hoboken, John Wiley, 2011).Google Scholar
Whiting, S.H., Power and Wealth in Rural China (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009).Google Scholar
Zelin, M., Ocko, J.K., and Gardella, R. (eds.), Contract and Property in Early Modern China (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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