Am. J. Agr. Econ. (2014) 96 (2): 612-613 first published online January 30, 2014
Lu, Ming, Chen Zhao, Yongqin Wang, Yan Zhang,Yuan Zhang, and Changyuan Luo.
China’s Economic Development: Institutions, Growth and Imbalances. Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar. 2013, 240 pp., $110.00.
This book is a translation from the original book published in Chinese under the title of China’s Development Path as a Large Country by China Encyclopedia Press, Beijing, but the translation features a few updates. Compared to other related works, this book clearly benefited from the authors’ deep-rooted understanding of China’s social, economic and political culture. The lead author was trained in China, but has an extensive understanding of other economies throughout the world. The book has a central logical framework that explains China’s development not through mundane theory, but by adapting theory to China’s reality. After finishing the book, readers should be able to appreciate the unique perspective the authors adopted to evaluate China’s unprecedented growth in recent decades. This perspective can be regarded as a political, socioeconomic approach that draws upon economic theory, but describes it in congruence with social reality and places it against the political backdrop specific to China.
The first chapter of the book is a must read for any individual who wishes to gain an untainted understanding of China’s reform over the past 30 years. This chapter offers a summary of the paths that China took and focuses on the current challenges the country faces by highlighting seven of the most important relationships and conflicts related to sustainability, government intervention, rural development, and income disparity.
The authors also note that it is these conflicts that defined China in modern history, and in fact inevitably pushed China forward. These conflicts will keep shaping China in the future, and they have raised the need to seek new solutions. In this chapter, the authors summarize the main concept of their book: the development triangle—that is, the relationship between political institutions, economic growth, and social imbalances. The rest of the chapters in the book each single out a separate problem and offer the authors’ interpretation of the cause, the result, and the way out.
The second chapter describes the interaction between economic development and the political and social structure within the Chinese context. This chapter draws heavily on a key set of previous publications by the authors. What is especially interesting is that the authors point out why China has managed to achieve strong economic development in the past decades even when the society was permeated with relationship-based transactions that did not appear to satisfy any basic economic theory governing efficient resource allocation. Not surprisingly, this has puzzled many scholars for decades. While not claiming to have discovered a theoretical justification, the authors do unearth deep-layered social insights. Meanwhile, like many other scholars, the authors also advocate that building a more rule-based society is imperative to China.
The discussion in chapter three should hold the most interest for agricultural economists, as it touches on the impact of urbanization and industrialization on China’s rural economy. One of the direct consequences the authors mention is the rise of agribusinesses. While recognizing the average size of each rural enterprise is small, the chapter includes an overview of the increasing role that agribusinesses play in local economic landscapes, noting that value added production and job opportunities are on the rise. As is customary for the authors, they do not stop at describing only economic conditions, but delve deeper, and allude to the dooming effect of extreme social separation in the process of rural industrialization. At the end of the chapter the authors describe a means to reduce segregation and achieve integration.
Chapters four through six follow the same line of discussion, and emphasize imbalances and gaps in regional development, public service coverage, as well as wealth distribution and redistribution. Chapter six specifically illustrates regional gaps in individual household incomes and local government GDPs within China, and the imbalances in the Chinese currency exchange rate and foreign trade. This chapter calls for coordination between political and social forces to address these economic imbalances. Instead of attempting the impossible task of recommending overarching solutions to the many challenges described in the book, in chapter 7 the authors present an outlook of the future direction of China’s growth. Due courses of action are presented.
This book borrows theory from the field of economics, political science, and sociology, but its intention is neither to describe theory nor is it to saturate the readers with econometric data analysis. The goal is rather to educate readers on the past, present, and future economic development in China with a candid and realistic approach. As a result, this book is suitable for a beginning-level development economics course. It should also be read by anyone with an interest in issues associated with China’s economic growth. Finally, the book could benefit from a more detailed table of content.
Wuyang Hu
University of Kentucky
doi:10.1093/ajae/aat101
链接地址：http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/content/96/2/612.full?sid=1350d72c-0d09-496f-b3ed-54f002074359
著作链接：http://www.flcds.fudan.edu.cn/article.aspx?id=20133851161452972239
