The Jingshan Report is a collection of research papers on key issues for China’s financial opening, including reform of the RMB exchange rate regime, management of cross-border capital flows and financial support for the Belt and Road Initiative. Authored by leading experts in the relevant fields, the report examines the evolution, current status and problems with the financial opening policy over the past four decades, and puts forward policy recommendations on how to steadily push forward China’s financial opening.

" In 1978, China launched economic reforms that have resulted in one of history’s most dramatic national transformations. The reforms removed bureaucratic obstacles to economic growth and tapped China’s immense reserves of labor and entrepreneurial talent to unleash unparalleled economic growth in the country. In the four decades since, China has become the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, and a leading force in international trade and investment. As the contributors to this volume show, China also faces daunting challenges in sustaining growth, continuing its economic ransformation, addressing the adverse consequences of economic success, and dealing with mounting suspicion from the United States and other trade and investment partners. China also confronts risks stemming from the project to expand its influence across the globe through infrastructure investments and other projects under the Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, appears determined to make his own lasting mark on the country and on China’s use of its economic clout to shape the world around it. "

Western evangelists have long been fascinated by China, a vast mission field with a unique language and culture. One of the most intrigued was also one of the most intriguing: Karl F. A. Gützlaff (1803-1851). In this erudite study Jessie Gregory Lutz chronicles Gützlaff's life from his youth in Germany to his conversion and subsequent turn to missions to his turbulent time in Asia. Lutz also includes a substantial bibliography consisting of (1) archival sources, (2) selected books, pamphlets, tracts, and translations by Gützlaff, and (3) books, periodicals, and articles. This is truly an important reference for any student of the history of China or missions.

An “immensely readable” journey through modern Chinese history told through the experiences of the author’s extended family (Christian Science Monitor). When journalist Scott Tong moved to Shanghai, his assignment was to start the first full-time China bureau for “Marketplace,” the daily business and economics program on public radio stations across the US. But for Tong the move became much more: an opportunity to reconnect with members of his extended family who’d remained there after his parents fled the communists six decades prior. Uncovering their stories gave him a new way to understand modern China’s defining moments and its long, interrupted quest to go global. A Village with My Name offers a unique perspective on China’s transitions through the eyes of regular people who witnessed such epochal events as the toppling of the Qing monarchy, Japan’s occupation during WWII, exile of political prisoners to forced labor camps, mass death and famine during the Great Leap Forward, market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, and the dawn of the One Child Policy. Tong focuses on five members of his family, who each offer a specific window on a changing country: a rare American-educated girl born in the closing days of the Qing Dynasty, a pioneer exchange student, a toddler abandoned in wartime who later rides the wave of China’s global export boom, a young professional climbing the ladder at a multinational company, and an orphan (the author’s daughter) adopted in the middle of a baby-selling scandal fueled by foreign money. Through their stories, Tong shows us China anew, visiting former prison labor camps on the Tibetan plateau and rural outposts along the Yangtze, exploring the Shanghai of the 1930s, and touring factories across the mainland—providing a compelling and deeply personal take on how China became what it is today. “Vivid and readable . . . The book’s focus on ordinary people makes it refreshingly accessible.” —Financial Times “Tong tells his story with humor, a little snark, [and] lots of love . . . Highly recommended, especially for those interested in Chinese history and family journeys.” —Library Journal (starred review)

This book first shows that the past 40 years of China's economic reform and opening up represents the greatest magnitude of economic growth in history. Based on field trips, extensive and intensive interviews and literature surveys, this book argues that there are five general lessons for a rapid growing economy from China's economic reform and opening up, all in the area of the relationship between the government and the economy. First, the local governments need to be incentivized to help rapid entry and development of enterprises. Second, local governments need to be incentivized to help rapid land conversion from agricultural to non-agricultural. Third, financial deepening is vital; that is, inducing households to hold more and more financial assets in local currency. Financial deepening is essential to convert savings into investments. This requires financial stability, which is crucial. Fourth, the learning through opening up is the key to endogenous economic growth. The fundamental benefit of opening up is learning rather than enjoying comparative advantage. The fifth and final lesson from China is that the central government must proactively manage the macroeconomy. The rationale is that enterprises compete with each other in games of industrial organization. In order to resolve this problem, proactive measures including market-oriented means, administrative orders and reform measures should be implemented. Overall, the main lesson from China's past 40 years of reform and opening up is that proper incentives and behavior of the government, local and central, are important for economic growth. China has been conducting reforms in this regard and as a result, the government more or less has been playing the role of a "helping hand" regarding economic growth, although China's economic system is far from perfect and many reforms are still needed.

In the last 30 years, China’s record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people’s health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce. With China’s urban population projected to rise to about one billion – or close to 70 percent of the country’s population – by 2030, China’s leaders are seeking a more coordinated urbanization process. Urban China is a joint research report by a team from the World Bank and the Development Research Center of China’s State Council which was established to address the challenges and opportunities of urbanization in China and to help China forge a new model of urbanization. The report takes as its point of departure the conviction that China's urbanization can become more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable. However, it stresses that achieving this vision will require strong support from both government and the markets for policy reforms in a number of area. The report proposes six main areas for reform: first, amending land management institutions to foster more efficient land use, denser cities, modernized agriculture, and more equitable wealth distribution; second, adjusting the hukou household registration system to increase labor mobility and provide urban migrant workers equal access to a common standard of public services; third, placing urban finances on a more sustainable footing while fostering financial discipline among local governments; fourth, improving urban planning to enhance connectivity and encourage scale and agglomeration economies; fifth, reducing environmental pressures through more efficient resource management; and sixth, improving governance at the local level.

Winner of the Lionel Gelber Prize National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist An Economist Best Book of the Year | A Financial Times Book of the Year | A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year | A Washington Post Book of the Year | A Bloomberg News Book of the Year | An Esquire China Book of the Year | A Gates Notes Top Read of the Year Perhaps no one in the twentieth century had a greater long-term impact on world history than Deng Xiaoping. And no scholar of contemporary East Asian history and culture is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the many contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China’s boldest strategist. Once described by Mao Zedong as a “needle inside a ball of cotton,” Deng was the pragmatic yet disciplined driving force behind China’s radical transformation in the late twentieth century. He confronted the damage wrought by the Cultural Revolution, dissolved Mao’s cult of personality, and loosened the economic and social policies that had stunted China’s growth. Obsessed with modernization and technology, Deng opened trade relations with the West, which lifted hundreds of millions of his countrymen out of poverty. Yet at the same time he answered to his authoritarian roots, most notably when he ordered the crackdown in June 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Deng’s youthful commitment to the Communist Party was cemented in Paris in the early 1920s, among a group of Chinese student-workers that also included Zhou Enlai. Deng returned home in 1927 to join the Chinese Revolution on the ground floor. In the fifty years of his tumultuous rise to power, he endured accusations, purges, and even exile before becoming China’s preeminent leader from 1978 to 1989 and again in 1992. When he reached the top, Deng saw an opportunity to creatively destroy much of the economic system he had helped build for five decades as a loyal follower of Mao—and he did not hesitate.

An innovative approach to early Chinese history, now updated and expanded up to 1800.