This book examines a wide range of governance reforms in the People's Republic of China, including administrative rationalization, divestiture of businesses operated by the military, and the building of anticorruption mechanisms, to analyze how China's leaders have reformed existing institutions and constructed new ones to cope with unruly markets, curb corrupt practices, and bring about a regulated economic order.

This is the first book-length treatment of the political causes and consequences of the Great Leap Famine (1959-61), one of the worst tragedies in human history.

The era of globalization saw China emerge as the world's manufacturing titan. However, the "made in China" model—with its reliance on cheap labor and thin profits—has begun to wane. Beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese state shifted from attracting foreign investment to promoting the technological competitiveness of domestic firms. This shift caused tensions between winners and losers, leading local bureaucrats to compete for resources in government budget, funding, and tax breaks. While bureaucrats successfully built coalitions to motivate businesses to upgrade in some cities, in others, vested interests within the government deprived businesses of developmental resources and left them in a desperate race to the bottom. In Manipulating Globalization, Ling Chen argues that the roots of coalitional variation lie in the type of foreign firms with which local governments forged alliances. Cities that initially attracted large global firms with a significant share of exports were more likely to experience manipulation from vested interests down the road compared to those that attracted smaller foreign firms. The book develops the argument with in-depth interviews and tests it with quantitative data across hundreds of Chinese cities and thousands of firms. Chen advances a new theory of economic policies in authoritarian regimes and informs debates about the nature of Chinese capitalism. Her findings shed light on state-led development and coalition formation in other emerging economies that comprise the new "globalized" generation.

Examines the many attempts to capitalize on "the last big market in the world" stretching back seven hundred years and includes an analysis of the present unprecedented expansion.

With many predicting the end of US hegemony, Russia and China's growing cooperation in a number of key strategic areas looks set to have a major impact on global power dynamics. But what lies behind this Sino-Russian rapprochement? Is it simply the result of deteriorated Russo–US and Sino–US relations or does it date back to a more fundamental alignment of interests after the Cold War? In this book Alexander Lukin answers these questions, offering a deeply informed and nuanced assessment of Russia and China’s ever-closer ties. Tracing the evolution of this partnership from the 1990s to the present day, he shows how economic and geopolitical interests drove the two countries together in spite of political and cultural differences. Key areas of cooperation and possible conflict are explored, from bilateral trade and investment to immigration and security. Ultimately, Lukin argues that China and Russia’s strategic partnership is part of a growing system of cooperation in the non-Western world, which has also seen the emergence of a new political community: Greater Eurasia. His vision of the new China–Russia rapprochement will be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding this evolving partnership and the way in which it is altering the contemporary geopolitical landscape.

Gradual change has been a hallmark of the Chinese reform experience, and China's success in its sequential approach makes it unique among the former command economies. Since 1979, with the inception of the continuing era of reform, the Chinese economy has flourished. Growth has averaged nine percent a year, and China is now a trillion dollar economy. China has become a major trading power and the predominant target among developing countries for foreign direct investment. Despite all this, China remains poor and the reform process unfinished. This book takes its defining theme from Deng Xiaopeng's famous metaphor for gradual reform: “feeling the stones to cross the river.” How far has China progressed in fording the river? The experts who contributed to this volume tackle many aspects of that question, assessing Chinese progress in policy reform, priorities for further reform, and the research still needed to inform policymakers’ decisions.

Written by a respected scholar in the field, this book provides a thorough discussion of the process of democratization in China and Taiwan.

The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world’s largest democracies – Brazil, India, and the United States – now have a radical right leader, while far-right parties continue to increase their profile and support within Europe. In this timely book, leading global expert on political extremism Cas Mudde provides a concise overview of the fourth wave of postwar far-right politics, exploring its history, ideology, organization, causes, and consequences, as well as the responses available to civil society, party, and state actors to challenge its ideas and influence. What defines this current far-right renaissance, Mudde argues, is its mainstreaming and normalization within the contemporary political landscape. Challenging orthodox thinking on the relationship between conventional and far-right politics, Mudde offers a complex and insightful picture of one of the key political challenges of our time.

This book contrasts experiences of mainland China and Hong Kong to explore the pressing question of how governments can transform a culture of widespread corruption to one of clean government. Melanie Manion examines Hong Kong as the best example of the possibility of reform. Within a few years it achieved a spectacularly successful conversion to clean government. Mainland China illustrates the difficulty of reform. Despite more than two decades of anticorruption reform, corruption in China continues to spread essentially unabated. The book argues that where corruption is already commonplace, the context in which officials and ordinary citizens make choices to transact corruptly (or not) is crucially different from that in which corrupt practices are uncommon. A central feature of this difference is the role of beliefs about the prevalence of corruption and the reliability of government as an enforcer of rules ostensibly constraining official venality. Anticorruption reform in a setting of widespread corruption is a problem not only of reducing corrupt payoffs, but also of changing broadly shared expectations of venality. The book explores differences in institutional design choices about anticorruption agencies, appropriate incentive structures, and underlying constitutional designs that contribute to the disparate outcomes in Hong Kong and mainland China.

The description for this book, Policy Making in China, will be forthcoming.