Overview

In this incisive analysis of one of the most spectacular economic breakthroughs in the Deng era, Jean C. Oi shows how and why Chinese rural-based industry has become the fastest growing economic sector not just in China but in the world. Oi argues that decollectivization and fiscal decentralization provided party officials of the localities-counties, townships, and villages-with the incentives to act as entrepreneurs and to promote rural industrialization in many areas of the Chinese countryside. As a result, the corporatism practiced by local officials has become effective enough to challenge the centrality of the national state. Dealing not only with the political setting of rural industrial development, Oi's original and strongly argued study also makes a broader contribution to conceptualizations of corporatism in political theory. Oi writes provocatively about property rights and principal-agent relationships and shows the complex financial incentives that underpin and strengthen the growth in local state corporatism and shape its evolution. This book will be essential for those interested in Chinese politics, comparative politics, and communist and post-communist systems.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jean C. Oi
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.363kg
ISBN:  

9780520217270

ISBN 10:   0520217276
Pages:   259
Publication Date:   17 May 1999
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables Acknowledgments Note on Measures and Transliteration 1. Institutional Foundations of Chinese Economic Growth: An Introduction State and Development A Problem of Agency Property Rights and Economic Growth Local State Corporatism Institutional Reform, Incentives, and Change Precis of the Study 2. Reassigning Property Rights over Revenue: Incentives for Rural Industrialization Dividing Property Rights Decollectivization and the Loss of Income Fiscal Reform and Rights to the Residual Credible Commitment From Limited Indirect Extractions to Direct Taxation Fiscal Incentives for Local Development 3. Strategies of Development: Variation and Evolution in Rural Industry Intervening Incentives The Character of Rural Industrial Growth in the 1980s The Logic of Collectively Owned Enterprise Development Management and Ownership in the 1990s Changing Ownership Forms in Rural Industry 4. Local State Corporatism: The Organization of Rapid Economic Growth Maoist Legacy as the Foundation The Local Corporate State Adapting Maoist Institutions to Market Production Adapting Local State Corporatism to Private Enterprise The Evolution of Local State-Led Development 5. Principals and Agents: Central Regulation or Local Control Overlapping Lines of Authority The Corporate Nature of Local Regulation Local Appropriation of Central Controls 6. From Agents to Principals: Increasing Resource Endowments and Local Control Regulation of Extra budgetary Funds Economic Retrenchment and a Test of Central Control The Erosion of Credit Controls Local Corporate Interests and Collusion Nonbank Sources of Capital The Limits of Central Control in a Changing Economic Context 7. The Political Basis for Economic Reform: Concluding Reflections The Security of Property Rights and Economic Growth The Political Consequences of Economic Reform Local State Corporatism and Central Control in a Transitional System Remaining Questions Appendix A. Research and Documentation The Interview Sample The Interview Procedure Limitations Appendix B. Changes in China's Fiscal System Bibliography Index

Reviews

An extraordinarily lucid, coherent, and compelling explanation of China's rural industrial transformation. . . . A striking insight that emerges from the book is how far socialist institutions and thought go towards explaining developments in current-day China. -- Journal of Asian Studies

Author Information

Jean C. Oi is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and author of State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government (California, 1989).

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