Dancing with the Devil

Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-0-19-068282-8
Verlag: ACADEMIC

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 593 g

From 1978 through the turn of the century, China was transformed from a state-owned economy into a predominantly private economy. This fundamental change took place under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is ideologically mandated and politically predisposed to suppress private ownership.

In Dancing with the Devil, Yi-min Lin explains how and why such an ironic and puzzling reality came about. The central thesis is that private ownership became a necessary evil for the CCP because the public sector was increasingly unable to address two essential concerns for regime survival: employment and revenue. Focusing on political actors as a major group of change agents, the book examines how their self-interested behavior led to the decline of public ownership. Demographics and the state's fiscal system provide the analytical coordinates for revealing the changing incentives and constraints faced by political actors and for investigating their responses and strategies. These factors help explain CCP leaders' initial decision to allow limited private economic activities at the outset of reform. They also shed light on the subsequent growth of opportunism in the behavior of lower level officials, which undermined the vitality of public enterprises. Furthermore, they hold a key to understanding the timing of the massive privatization in the late 1990s, as well as its tempo and spread thereafter.

Dancing with the Devil illustrates how the driving forces developed and played out in these intertwined episodes of the story. In so doing, it offers new insights into the mechanisms of China's economic transformation and enriches theories of institutional change.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lin

Lin, Yi-min

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Öffentliche Finanzwirtschaft, Besteuerung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Entwicklungspolitik, Nord-Süd Beziehungen
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Entwicklungsökonomie & Emerging Markets
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Finanzsektor & Finanzdienstleistungen Bankwirtschaft
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftssysteme, Wirtschaftsstrukturen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- Privatization and Institutional Change: Toward an Eclectic Perspective

- Driving Forces of Privatization

- Political Actors as Change Agents: The Main Storyline

- Note on Statistical Analyses, Data Sources and Chinese Materials

- 1. The Changing Fate of Private Ownership since 1949

- Socialist Transformation and the Mao Era

- From Getihu to "Equal Protection" of Public and Private Property Rights

- Reversal or Moderation of Privatization?

- Broad Trends of Change

- Summary and Questions

- 2. Demographic Pressures

- Structure and Change of the Post-1949 Population

- Buildup of Employment Pressures

- Labor Market: Occupational and Spatial Movements

- Ageing and Old Age Support

- Summary

- 3. The Evolving Structure of Public Finance

- "Unified Revenue and Spending"

- Fiscal Contracts

- Revenue Partitioning

- Implications

- 4. Careerism and Moral Hazard in Early Marketization

- Large Is Beautiful: Political Performance Assessment under Economic Decentralization

- The TVE Spectacle

- The SOE Sideshow

- Summary

- 5. Rule Bending for the Necessary Evil

- Uneven Paces of Early Privatization

- The Wenzhou Story Retold

- Beyond Wenzhou

- Summary

- 6. FDI and Privatization

- Centrally Imposed Constraints and Local Rule Bending

- FDI Entry Mode and Resource Dependence

- Bi-polar Concentration of Risk Taking

- Summary

- 7. The Tipping Point and Beyond

- The Triggers

- The Political Bandwagon

- From Industrial Development to Urbanization

- Asset Stripping and Insider Control

- The End Game: SASAC and the Remaining SOEs

- Summary

- Conclusion

- Institutional Stability and Unintended Consequences of Rule Compliance

- Non-compliance and Political Risk Management

- Path Dependence in Endogenous Institutional Change

- Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Yi-min Lin is Associate Professor in the Social Science Division, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include political economy, organizations and institutions. He is also the author of Between Politics and Markets: Firms, Competition, and Institutional Change in Post-Mao China, published by Cambridge University Press.