China's post-Mao economic reform continues to be carried out under the leadership of those committed to the philosophy of Deng Xiao Ping for building a modernized China. The main feature of the reform is to change a planned economy to a market economy -- the primary difference being the degree to which economic power is concentrated or decentralized. In other words, the success of changing from a planned to a market economy depends on transferring power from the central government to industrial enterprises.Yet China's economic system has three levels: the central government, the intermediate local governments, and the industrial enterprises. Scholars disagree over whether the central government's power is transferring to the intermediate local government level or to the enterprises as the reform intended. The major consideration in this book is to test whether economic decision-making power was transferred to industrial enterprises after 1978 as most Chinese scholars believe, or whether local governments instead gained some or all of the decision-making power as generally claimed by Western scholars.

China's dramatic economic growth in the last two decades of the last century and the prospect of its rise as a great power in this new one have greatly increased its weight and importance in world affairs. Consequently the progress, or lack of progress, of China's transition to democracy has become a central concern of the international community. This timely collection brings together many well-known scholars to systematically explore China's current government and assess that transition toward democracy. The contributors seek to bridge the gap between normative theories of democracy and empirical studies of China's political development by providing a comprehensive overview of China's domestic history, economy, and public political ideologies. Overall the volume contends that Chinese culture and Confucianism are not the obstacles to democratic transition that some scholars have said they are, and that the success of market reforms has eroded authoritarian rule. This weakening does not guarantee a successful transition, however, and the contributors show that there are many reasons to be skeptical about the short-term prospects for democracy in China, including historical failures, the underdevelopment of civil society, political apathy, and competing social values. Though China's political culture is essentially neither anti-democratic not pro-democratic, it must still overcome many obstacles in order to achieve democracy.

Analysing the transformations that China has undertaken since 1989, Wang Hui argues that it features elements of the new global order as a whole in which considerations of economic growth and development have trumped every other concern, particularly democracy and social justice.

Analysing post-Mao China is not an easy task, but it is essential in order to understand the rationale and scope of the reform process started by the Chinese leadership under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping at the end of the 1970s. Thirty years after the beginning of the reform process China has become a major actor in the global economic and political system and the 21st century is generally held to the one in which China will become the major world power. In this book Paolo Urio presents a balanced picture of the reform process, analysing the economic, social, environmental, legal, political and cultural aspects of the process and showing the interconnections between them. As well as analysing the achievements realised thus far by the reform process, this book looks ahead at the difficulties the Chinese leadership will have to face in the years to come. As such, it will be essential reading for students and scholars of Chinese politics, public management and economics alike.

This book examines China's process of democratic transition, and the role of state and society in this process.

A significant contribution to both political theory and China studies, this volume provides a critical assessment of the past and future Chinese socialism.

China's transition from a planned economy to a market economy has succeeded in producing more than a decade of phenomenal growth. Whilst similar reforms in countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have seen an initial downturn in production, usually with a significant rise in unemployment, the success of the approach taken by China has been remarkable. However, China embarked upon the process, without a well-designed blueprint at the outset. The resulting piecemeal, partial, incremental, and often experimental approach has proved complicated to implement - requiring a complex melding of politics and economics, internal and foreign affairs, government and market. How the difficult task of balancing the diverse array of often competing concerns has been achieved is the subject of this book, which examines the dismantling of the centrally planned system and the mechanism of institutional change in Chinese transition.