Wang proposes and applies an innovative analytical framework to study the institutional continuity and changes in China. More specifically, this study examines and explains the peculiar premodernity and the profound modernization process of China. On the track of a state-led modernization, the dragon of China is found to be institutionally entering the nets of the market economy. An inquiry of China's labour allocation patterns and their changes serves as the indicator for the institutional analysis.

This edited volume is based on original essays first presented at seminars in complexity economics, Sichuan University, China, in November 2018 and May 2019, and at the 12th International Conference on the Chinese Economy, University of Clermont-Ferrand, France, in October 2019. It also includes three contributions written especially for this volume. This research benefited from three French grants 'Hubert Curien Research Fellowship' (Program Campus France 2019, 2020, 2021). All chapters assess the recent take-off of the Chinese economy from a historical perspective, enlarging the economic evidence that China's capitalism is a matter of institutional revolution.Institutional Change and China Capitalism aims to provide a radically new view of the rise of Chinese capitalism by drawing on recent developments in cliometrics and complexity economics, macroeconomic dynamics, network analysis and behavioral finance to illustrate the various facets of China's transition to capitalism. The chapters within innovate the study of China's take-off using the frontier of research in institutional cliometrics and complexity economics. Thus, the book is structured in three sections that seek to address — empirically, theoretically, and in terms of network structure, the profound institutional change that led China to progressively adopt capitalism.Together these papers attest to the vitality of current research in cliometrics and complexity economics.

China's urban sprawl has led to serious social cleavages. Unclear land and property rights have resulted in an uneasy alliance between real estate companies and local authorities, with most willing to strike illegal deals over land. The results have been devastating. Farmers live in fear that the land they till today will be gone tomorrow, while urban citizens are regularly evicted from their homes to make way for new skyscrapers and highways. These shocking incidents underscore the urgency of the land question in China. The recent conviction of the Chinese Minister for Land Resources and the forced evictions that have led to the injury and death of ordinary Chinese citizens highlight the case for land reform. Against this backdrop, many scholars criticize China's lack of privatization and titling of property. This monograph, however, demonstrates that these critically depend on timing and place. Land titling is imperative for the wealthier regions, yet, may prove detrimental in areas with high poverty. The book argues that China's land reform can only succeed if the clarification of property rights is done with caution and ample regard for regional variations.

The book mainly uses the New Institutional Economics Approach (NIE) to examine the formation and development of industrial clusters in China through multiple case studies of textile and clothing clusters in the Zhejiang province. The micro case studies illustrate the interaction between institutional change and the industrial development of China in transition.It also attempts to fill the information gap through an analysis of the typical institutional factors leading to the development and upgrading of industrial clusters, and provides a better understanding of the changing nature of the public-private interface in the process of cluster development in China.

China’s 30-year market transition and its integration into the world economy provide a unique opportunity for exploring the nature of large-scale economic and political transformation and the mechanisms underlying organizational behavior during such a transition. Management and Organizations in Transitional China explores how managers and firms cope with transition-related challenges by adapting to, manipulating, or even creating the complex institutional environment. This book examines the way transitional institutions shape individual decisions and organizational strategies, the mechanisms that promote the diffusion of innovative management practices and economic policies, and the formation and evolution of interfirm networks. Based on a comprehensive review of the studies on market transition, this book investigates how firms manage their relationship with important stakeholders in the environment. It highlights the importance of network-based strategies for institutionally less-advantaged actors (like private firms, foreign entrants, and entrepreneurs) to establish legitimacy, gain institutional support, and mobilize financial resources. Moreover, this book studies the mechanisms that facilitate the adoption of innovative management practices and economic policies in the transitional context, comparing the mainstream diffusion theories and evaluating the relative potency of the diffusion drivers. Furthermore, Management and Organizations in Transitional China provides empirical analyses using longitudinal data of alliance formation, network evolution, and the effect of both alliance formation and network evolution on firm decision-making and performance. Combining theory, data analysis, and rich contextual description to provide a comprehensive understanding of the organizational transition process, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners in general management, organizational studies, international business, entrepreneurship, and related disciplines.

Part of "Advances in International Management" series, this title presents contemporary research by leading and emerging scholars working on institutional theory. It also presents theoretical frameworks of institutions and proposes interesting ideas that provide the foundation for doctoral dissertations and research projects.

China’s rise as an economic power has posed some challenging questions: how did China achieve GDP growth that was even faster than the Four Asian Tigers? Is the "Chinese model" superior? Why hasn’t the rapid economic growth lead to democracy in the country as many observers expected? And can China sustain its rapid economic growth with its existing social system? Institutions and Chinese Economic Development: A Comparative Historical Approach explores these questions by studying the historical relationship between institutions and economic development in China, drawing comparisons with England, Japan and other Asian economies as appropriate. The investigation focuses on several junctures in China’s economic development: the starting point of the divergence between China and the West; the externally-provoked industrial development in the late 19th century; and the contemporary Chinese Miracle. The analysis foregrounds the role played by Chinese institutions and examines their effects on both the country’s failure to industrialize in the past and its economic achievements in recent time. The book also asks whether, without reform to the existing state institutions, China might still be subject to the historical dynastic cycles today, despite its recent economic success. This work is of great interest to students and scholars of the Chinese economy, economic history and institutional economics, as well as comparative history and Chinese studies more broadly.

A noted Chinese economist examines the mechanisms behind China's economic reforms, arguing that universal principles and specific implementations are equally important. As China has transformed itself from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, economists have tried to understand and interpret the success of Chinese reform. As the Chinese economist Yingyi Qian explains, there are two schools of thought on Chinese reform: the “School of Universal Principles,” which ascribes China's successful reform to the workings of the free market, and the “School of Chinese Characteristics,” which holds that China's reform is successful precisely because it did not follow the economics of the market but instead relied on the government. In this book, Qian offers a third perspective, taking certain elements from each school of thought but emphasizing not why reform worked but how it did. Economics is a science, but economic reform is applied science and engineering. To a practitioner, it is more useful to find a feasible reform path than the theoretically best way. The key to understanding how reform has worked in China, Qian argues, is to consider the way reform designs respond to initial historical conditions and contemporary constraints. Qian examines the role of “transitional institutions”—not “best practice institutions” but “incentive-compatible institutions”—in Chinese reform; the dual-track approach to market liberalization; the ownership of firms, viewed both theoretically and empirically; government decentralization, offering and testing hypotheses about its link to local economic development; and the specific historical conditions of China's regional-based central planning.

Economic liberalisation processes and the rapid development of the private sector are widely visible signs of over thirty years of reform policies in the People’s Republic of China. Nevertheless, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has managed to preserve the basic political institutions of the Leninist Party-state, including its own unrestrained position of political power. Against this background, this book investigates the interrelationship between processes of marketisation and commercialisation, and the stability of the CCP regime. The aim of the book is to complement existing literature on adaptive governance in China and on the reasons for the CCP regime’s relative stability, while providing new information about the relationship between the Chinese party-state and private entrepreneurs. Taking case studies from the film and music industries, the book gives a detailed account of the political and economic history of these industries in China, with special attention given to the role played by private production companies as intermediaries between artistic creation, political and ideological constraints, and the market. A historical institutionalist approach is employed to trace the effect of Chinese policies on popular culture and the institutions of administrative, economic, political and ideological control over the film and music industries back to the 1950s, revealing the mechanisms and prospects of CCP hegemony in the cultural sector. Examining the effects of the marketisation and commercialisation processes on the communist regime and vice versa, this book also offers a fresh perspective on the origins of today’s Chinese popular cultural mainstream. It will therefore be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics, Chinese culture and media and Chinese government-business relations.

Pt. 1. Setting the stage -- part 2. Firms, finance, innovation, and international competitiveness -- part 3. State, capital, and political interests -- part 4. China in the global capitalist system.