Markets Over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China

China's transition to a market economy has propelled its remarkable economic growth since the late 1970s. In this book, Nicholas R. Lardy, one of the world's foremost experts on the Chinese economy, traces the increasing role of market forces and refutes the widely advanced argument that Chinese economic progress rests on the government's control of the economy's "commanding heights." In another challenge to conventional wisdom, Lardy finds little evidence that the decade of the leadership of former President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao (2003–13) dramatically increased the role and importance of state-owned firms, as many people argue. This book offers powerfully persuasive evidence that the major sources of China's growth in the future will be similarly market rather than state-driven, with private firms providing the major source of economic growth, the sole source of job creation, and the major contributor to China's still growing role as a global trader. Lardy does, however, call on China to deregulate and increase competition in those portions of the economy where state firms remain protected, especially in energy and finance.

Nicholas R. Lardy, called "everybody's guru on China" by the National Journal, is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He joined the Institute in March 2003 from the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program (1995-03) and served as interim director of Foreign Policy Studies (2001). Lardy has written numerous articles and books on the Chinese economy including Debating China's Exchange Rate Policy (2008), China: The Balance Sheet (2006), Prospects for a US-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement (2004), Integrating China into the Global Economy (2002), and China's Unfinished Economic Revolution (1998). Lardy is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a member of the editorial boards of the China Quarterly, Journal of Asian Business, China Review, and China Economic Review.