A provocative book that demystifies China’s great democratic leap backward under Xi Jinping, revealing why the country’s embrace of capitalism has given rise to hard authoritarianism, mass surveillance, and one-man rule instead of democracy as many in the West had hopedWhen China embarked on its transformative journey of modernization in 1979, many believed the country’s turn toward capitalism would put its totalitarian past to rest and mark the birth of a democrat...

China watchers long argued that economic liberalization and prosperity would be harbingers of democracy. Instead, the Communist Party's grip has strengthened. How? The answer lies in the effectiveness of the surveillance state. And the source of that effectiveness is not just facial recognition AI and phone tracking. Technology is important, but what matters more is China's vast army of domestic spies.Central government surveillance data is confidential, so Minxin Pei turned to loc...

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 troub...

Countering recent hype around technology, a leading expert argues that the endurance of dictatorship in China owes less to facial recognition AI and GPS tracking than to the human resources of the Leninist surveillance state.China watchers long argued that economic liberalization and prosperity would be harbingers of democracy. Instead, the Communist Party’s grip has strengthened. How? The answer lies in the effectiveness of the surveillance state. And the source o...

The rise of China as a great power is one of the most important developments in the twenty-first century. But despite dramatic economic progress, China’s prospects remain uncertain. In a book sure to provoke debate, Minxin Pei examines the sustainability of the Chinese Communist Party’s reform strategy—pursuing pro-market economic policies under one-party rule.Pei casts doubt on three central explanations for why China’s strategy works: sustained economic development will lead to p...

"A clearheaded, multidimensional tour of China's political, economic, and social landscapes." — Current History"Packed with facts and figures, but enlivened with firsthand observations. . . . An excellent introduction to China for anyone in search of solid but concise information about that complicated country." — The New York Times Book ReviewFor more than a decade, John Bryan Starr's indispensable guide has introduced un...

China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly ins...

Hong Kong is among the richest cities in the world. Yet over the past 15 years, living conditions for the average family have deteriorated despite a robust economy, ample budget surpluses, and record labour productivity. Successive governments have been reluctant to invest in services for the elderly, the disabled, the long-term sick, and the poor, while education has become more elitist. The political system has helped to entrench a mistaken consensus that social spending is a threat to f...

Rising superpower China duly anointed a new generation of leaders led by Xi Jinping at the Communist Party's 18th National Congress held in November 2012. While the conclave itself passed off with smoothly choreographed efficiency, the months leading up to this once-a-decade transition were anything but orderly. Intense factional wrangling behind the scenes was accompanied by scandals very much in public view. In the most spectacular furore the political aspirations of Communist aristocrat...

Like elsewhere in Europe, the crisis has affected economic developments in the Western Balkans, from Croatia in the north to Albania in the south. The countries in the region face difficulties such as high unemployment, decreased availability of bank credit and reduced trade. Furthermore, the inability of their political institutions to deal immediately with these economic challenges has reinforced the negative effects of the crisis. What does this mean for the Western Balkans’ accession t...

Presents a story of two Chinas – an entrepreneurial rural China and a state-controlled urban China. In the 1980s, rural China gained the upper hand. In the 1990s, urban China triumphed. In the 1990s, the Chinese state reversed many of its rural experiments, with long-lasting damage to the economy and society. A weak financial sector, income disparity, rising illiteracy, productivity slowdowns, and reduced personal income growth are the product of the capitalism with Chinese characteristics...

In the mid-1990s, as many as one million North Koreans died in one of the worst famines of the twentieth century. The socialist food distribution system collapsed primarily because of a misguided push for self-reliance, but was compounded by the regime's failure to formulate a quick response-including the blocking of desperately needed humanitarian relief.As households, enterprises, local party organs, and military units tried to cope with the economic collapse, a grassroots proces...