The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China

by Shirk, Susan L.

• ISBN13: 9780520077072
• ISBN10: 0520077075
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-07-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr on Demand

Summary

In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts were. Shirk pioneers a rational choice institutional approach to analyze policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country and to explain the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, she pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions. Combining theoretical ambition with the flavor of on-the-ground policy-making in Beijing, this book is a major contribution to the study of reform in China and other communist countries.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Formal Authority Relations Among Central Communist Party and Government Institutions in the People's Republic of China
Introduction	p. 1
The Political Logic of Economic Reform	p. 3
The Prereform Chinese Economy and the Decision to Initiate Market Reforms	p. 23
Chinese Political Institutions	p. 53
Authority Relations: The Communist Party and the Government	p. 55
Leadership Incentives: Political Succession and Reciprocal Accountability	p. 70
Bargaining Arena: The Government Bureaucracy	p. 92
Who Is Enfranchised in the Policy-making Process?	p. 107
Decision Rules: Delegation by Consensus	p. 116
Chinese Political Institutions and the Path of Economic Reforms	p. 129
Economic Reform Policy-Making	p. 147
Playing to the Provinces: Fiscal Decentralization and the Politics of Reform	p. 149
Creating Vested Interests in Reform: Industrial Reform Takeoff, 1978-81	p. 197
Leadership Succession and Policy Conflict: The Choice Between Profit Contracting and Substituting Tax-for-Profit, 1982-83	p. 221
Building Bureaucratic Consensus: Formulating the Tax-for-Profit Policy, 1983-84	p. 245
The Power of Particularism: Abortive Price Reform and the Revival of Profit Contracting, 1985-88	p. 280
Conclusion	p. 331
The Political Lessons of Economic Reform in China	p. 333
Bibliography	p. 351
Index	p. 385
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