China has used industrial policies to try to build large corporations that can challenge those based in more advanced countries. By the late 1990s the operational mechanism of China's large firms had seen large advances. Simultaneously, a revolution has taken place in global business systems, and China's large firms are even further behind the global leaders than when they began their reforms. The WTO will require China to operate rapidly on the 'global playing field' in competition with the world's leading corporations, and this increased gap presents a deep challenge for China's business and political leaders. Peter Nolan presents here the first in-depth case studies of China's large corporations under economic reform, combined with systematic benchmarking of these firms against the world's leading corporations. The book is an unrivalled resource of information on Chinese businesses, and also leads the reader to consider the impact of China's response to its current challenges not only on China itself, but on the wider global economy.

Focusing on the domestic appliance industry, this book examines the formation and evolution of industrial policies in China, at both the local and the national level.

Using empirical data from the supply chain of aerospace, beverages and retail this text develops an original framework, the 'cascade effect', to explain changes in industrial concentration. This provides an original insight into the determinants of industrial structure and has vital implications for firms and policy-makers in developing countries.

China has achieved remarkable, sustained economic growth under the policies of ‘reform and opening up’ put into place since the late 1970s. China’s industrial policies have nurtured a large group of firms with high profits and a high market capitalisation. However, few people in the West can name a single Chinese firm. During the modern era of capitalist globalisation firms from the high income countries have spread their business systems across the world. This has presented a profound challenge for industrial policy in developing countries, including even China, the world’s second largest economy. China is unique among large latecomer developing countries in having reached the position of being a huge, fast-growing economy, with a tremendous impact on the rest of the world, but lacking a substantial group of globally competitive firms. This volume explores this paradox. Fully understanding the industrial policy challenge that the era of capitalist globalisation has produced for China is essential for harmonious international relations.

At the end of the 1970s, China was a poor country with a huge population, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. The domestic economy was organized through direct administrative instructions and was isolated from the international economy. After a quarter of a century, China has been transformed beyond imagination. In the course of this transformation, China's policymakers have faced enormous challenges. The essays in this book address different aspects of those challenges. The 'development' challenge involved devising policies that would raise the mass of the Chinese people out of poverty and avoid the disasters that had, in the worst cases, caused millions of deaths through famine. The 'transition' challenge involved, firstly, resolving the relationship between changes in the economic and political systems; and secondly, finding the correct sequence and nature of reforms necessary to improve economic performance. The 'globalization' challenge involved identifying the best way in which to integrate China's economic system with the international economy at a time of revolutionary change in the global business system. These essays seek both to enhance understanding of China's immense success in meeting these challenges in the past and to provide an indication of the challenges that still lie ahead. China's system reforms have been described as 'groping for stones to cross the river'. The journey across the river is far from over, and the other bank is only dimly visible.

This timely collection of essays from Peter Nolan offers deep insight into the challenges faced in integrating China with the global political economy.

An international team of contributors analyzes the state of European, Japanese and American scholarship on China over the last decade, exploring in depth the main subjects and trends in research being done on contemporary Chinese politics, economy, foreign affairs and security studies.

China is the world’s largest ICT exporter, having overtaken Japan, the European Union and the United States, and China’s ICT industry is the largest manufacturing sector within the Chinese economy. This book examines how China has attained this leading position in one of the most capital and high technology intensive industries.

China has become the world's second biggest economy and its largest exporter. It possesses the world's largest foreign exchange reserves and has 29 companies in the FT 500 list of the world's largest companies. ‘China's Rise' preoccupies the global media, which regularly carry articles suggesting that it is using its financial resources to ‘buy the world'. Is there any truth to this idea? Or is this just scaremongering by Western commentators who have little interest in a balanced presentation of China's role in the global political economy? In this short book Peter Nolan - one of the leading international experts on China and the global economy - probes behind the media rhetoric and shows that the idea that China is buying the world is a myth. Since the 1970s the global business revolution has resulted in an unprecedented degree of industrial concentration. Giant firms from high income countries with leading technologies and brands have greatly increased their investments in developing countries, with China at the forefront. Multinational companies account for over two-thirds of China's high technology output and over ninety percent of its high technology exports. Global firms are deep inside the Chinese business system and are pressing China hard to be permitted to increase their presence without restraints. By contrast, Chinese firms have a negligible presence in the high-income countries - in other words, we are ‘inside them' but they are not yet ‘inside us'. China's 70-odd ‘national champion' firms are protected by the government through state ownership and other support measures. They are in industries such as banking, metals, mining, oil, power, construction, transport, and telecommunications, which tend to make use of high technology products rather than produce these products themselves. Their growth has been based on the rapidly growing home market. China has been unsuccessful so far in its efforts to nurture a group of globally competitive firms with leading global technologies and brands. Whether it will be successful in the future is an open question. This balanced analysis replaces rhetoric with evidence and argument. It provides a much-needed perspective on current debates about China's growing power and it will contribute to a constructive dialogue between China and the West.

Chinese state banks, which were considered technically insolvent in the 1990s, are at present among the largest and most important banks in the world. This book, based on the author’s research and also on his extensive experience of working in Chinese banks, explores how Chinese banks’ technical efficiency and organisational flexibility have been achieved whilst ownership and control by the Chinese Communist Party have continued. The author reveals a distinctly non-Western approach to corporate governance, but one that has nevertheless worked very well.