China s Crony Capitalism (First Printing) The Dynamics of Regime Decay

Pei, Minxin

ISBN 10: 0674737296 / ISBN 13: 9780674737297

Published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2016

About this Item

5.75 X 1.25 X 8.5 inches; 365 pages; light pencil markings in the margins on about 50% of pages. Some underlining. Very Good condition otherwise. No other noteworthy defects. ; - Your satisfaction is our priority. We offer free returns and respond promptly to all inquiries. Your item will be carefully cushioned in bubble wrap and securely boxed. All orders ship on the same or next business day. Buy with confidence.

Seller Inventory # HVD-66906-A-0

Bibliographic Details

• Title: China s Crony Capitalism (First Printing) The Dynamics of Regime Decay
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674737296
• ISBN 13: 9780674737297
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition; First Printing.
• Condition: Fair
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good+

About this title

Synopsis

When Deng Xiaoping launched China on the path to economic reform in the late 1970s, he vowed to build “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” More than three decades later, China’s efforts to modernize have yielded something very different from the working people’s paradise Deng envisioned: an incipient kleptocracy, characterized by endemic corruption, soaring income inequality, and growing social tensions. China’s Crony Capitalism traces the origins of China’s present-day troubles to the series of incomplete reforms from the post-Tiananmen era that decentralized the control of public property without clarifying its ownership.

Beginning in the 1990s, changes in the control and ownership rights of state-owned assets allowed well-connected government officials and businessmen to amass huge fortunes through the systematic looting of state-owned property―in particular land, natural resources, and assets in state-run enterprises. Mustering compelling evidence from over two hundred corruption cases involving government and law enforcement officials, private businessmen, and organized crime members, Minxin Pei shows how collusion among elites has spawned an illicit market for power inside the party-state, in which bribes and official appointments are surreptitiously but routinely traded. This system of crony capitalism has created a legacy of criminality and entrenched privilege that will make any movement toward democracy difficult and disorderly.

Rejecting conventional platitudes about the resilience of Chinese Communist Party rule, Pei gathers unambiguous evidence that beneath China’s facade of ever-expanding prosperity and power lies a Leninist state in an advanced stage of decay.

About the Author

Minxin Pei is the author of several books on Chinese politics, including China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. He is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College.