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Dr. Hu Biliang's book provides valuable insights into how rural development at the village-level actually worked in China when market distortions were gradually removed from the late 1970s. His in-depth empirical work helps us understand better how traditional governance structures in rural China, spontaneous cultural adaptations and the rise of informal local institutions such as village credit associations, reinforced the positive effects of the removal of policy distortions and the other elements of economic liberalization. His work is an important contribution both to our understanding of the Chinese reform process and to the relationship between institutions and rural development in general. - Dwight H. Perkins (Harvard University, US) Hu Biliang's remarkable insights in grassroots rural development are based on exhaustive village-level empirical research in different parts of China. A highly original and scholarly effort to track, over many years, the positive influence of cultural factors such as village trust, guanxi networks and informal local institutions such as rotating credit associations on rural modernization since the start of China's market reforms in the late 1970s. Hu describes how in one of his villages, the spontaneous integration of traditional village governance structures and modern corporate management structures powerfully stimulated local development. The example is no doubt representative of numerous such cases in many parts of China. This book is at once an important contribution to our understanding of how rural development actually works in China and to the theory of institutional economics. - Pieter Bottelier (Johns Hopkins University, US) A long time study of China's rural development, Dr. Hu Biliang's new book combines new theories from economics and solid empirical evidence to re-examine China's path of rural development success. Beyond the familiar role of formal policies pushed by the central government, Dr. Hu argues that informal institutions were equally instrumental in helping the rural economy grow and transform. This is a book that should be read by those interested in China and those interested in development more generally. - Scott Rozelle (Stanford University, US)

Author Information

Biliang Hu is Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Senior Research Fellow of the Academy's Rural Development Institute. He received his Doctorate of Economics from the School of Economics and Management, Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. His main academic interests are in institutional analysis in relation to village governance and rural development.

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