China's Pathways to Prosperity

Shifting gears between the most abstract (invisible) and the most concrete (visible) world, this book contains one unifying theoretical construct and six milestone stories to shed light on Chinas pathways towards building a moderately prosperous society since 1949. Today, Chinas GDP per capita is about US$ 12,000; it was only about US$ 150 in the late 1970s, that is, before the reform era. That is a very dramatic increase, lifting over 700 million people out of poverty in the process! What is unique about this book is that the six stories, when read together, systematically unfold a simple coherent logic as well as a rich history of economic development in the complex institutional setting of politics, economics and sociology that is uniquely Chinese. A key educational feature of the book is for the reader to learn and appreciate both the universals (or global vision) and the particulars (or local knowledge) of these stories so as to gain a deeper understanding of Chinas development trajectory in a global setting in the past several decades. In other words, for Chinas growth strategies to work, theories must be contextualized dynamically by local conditions. This book will be appreciated by students and educators alike.