China's Reform: History, Logic, and Future, (with Xudong Chen), Springer (joint with SJTUP), 2022.
Department of Economics | Texas A&M University | 4228 TAMU | College Station, TX 77845-4228 | USA
This book is about where to go and what to do in China's reform. It reviews and grasps China's reform through a qualitative analysis of economic theories and an empirical analysis of statistics from a historical perspective spanning over 180 years. We provide valuable insights and formulate institutional reform suggestions on how China realizes a successful social transformation and achieves benign and sustainable economic development, social harmony, democracy, and the rule of law in order to integrate peacefully into the global system and become a world power trusted and supported by other nations.
It proposes three indispensable elements of comprehensive state governance and benign development—inclusive economic institutions; the state capacity to plan and implement policies and laws; and an inclusive and transparent civil society with democracy, the rule of law, fairness, and justice—for both short-term responses and long-lasting order and stability. These three elements can explain the rise and fall of any nation in any period, while previous studies (e.g., Acemoglu and Robinson (2012), Why Nations Fail) may not answer why countries like China have achieved long-term growth (China has been one of the world's top economies for most of the last 2000 years but meanwhile its dynasties frequently changed, causing social upheaval, along with a sharp decline in population and huge property losses each time). Indeed, world history has repeatedly shown that all economic and social achievements have been due to improvements in some aspects of these three elements and that all problems have been caused by some deficiency in them.
Our analysis applies mechanism design theory through the two core ideas of information and incentives that must be duly considered in any institutional design, and employs a research methodology of "three dimensions (theoretical logic, practical knowledge, and a historical perspective) and six natures (scientific, rigorous, realistic, pertinent, forward-looking, and thought-provoking)" to address China's reform and development, especially in 13 key fields such as the political system, rule of law system, state-owned enterprise reform and private economy development. This book is proposed to be an important reference for understanding the past, present, and future of China's reform and development.
An early version of the book was published in Chinese in 2014, which received the 16th Sun Yefang Prize, the highest prize honor in economic science in China. The e-Book is downloadable (full text/each chapter) at the SpingerLink: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-5470-2.
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Alfred F. Chalk Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Texas A&M University
