Rapid growth in the Chinese economy over the past three decades poses puzzles and challenges to neo-classical economic theory, as policies implemented during the reform process were often unorthodox. Although the Chinese experience has been widely studied, myths and questions about these reforms remain. To fill in the knowledge gap, and to inform a process of learning from China's development successes, this book features a series of case studies on the policy process of different initiatives, including rural industrialization, dual-track price reform, migration policy, village elections and fiscal reform. Uniquely, many of the authors of the case studies were deeply involved in these reforms, either through direct policymaking or through providing analytical and technical support that led to these policy changes. They provide a first-hand account of how the political processes occurred, how social and political entrepreneurs shaped the choices and sequences of various reforms, and how the rigidities and sometimes erroneous beliefs were overcome.

China has grown rapidly since the reform initiation of the 1970s. China’s Economic Growth Prospects narrates the contribution of demographic transition to recent economic growth in China, and provides suggestions for ways in which it can sustain growth over the next few decades. The expert author provides reasons for the economic slowdown since the second decade of the twenty-first century; explores the challenges facing China’s long-term sustainability of growth with the disappearance of demographic dividend; and proposes policy suggestions. He concludes that, in order to avoid the middle-income trap, economic growth in China must transform from an inputs-driven pattern, to a productivity-driven pattern. Academics, researchers and students of economics and business, particularly those specialising in China, will find this book to be a useful resource. Investment bankers, journalists, politicians and policy makers will find the discussions of past experience and the future potential of the Chinese economy to be of interest.

Ch. 1. Introduction : policy reforms as a process of learning / Xiaobo Zhang, Arjan de Haan and Shenggen Fan -- ch. 2. The course of China's rural reform / Du Runsheng -- ch. 3. Collective learning capacity and choice of reform path - theoretical reflections on the dual-track system of price reform process / Luo Xiaopeng -- ch. 4. The formation and evolution of China's migrant labor policy / Cai Fang -- ch. 5. Narratives of Wenzhou's industrial privatization / Zhu Kangdui -- ch. 6. The process of establishing and extending direct elections in rural China / Wang Zhenyao -- ch. 7. The historical opportunity of the fiscal reform / Liu Zhongli -- ch. 8. Fiscal reform : the Zhejiang experience / Weng Lihua -- ch. 9. China's reforms : are there lessons for other countries? / Arjan de Haan, Xiaobo Zhang and Shenggen Fan

China's rise as an economic powerhouse raises a number of questions that are the subject of lively debate. How did the country do it? How applicable are the lessons of China's economic reform of the past thirty years to the challenges it faces in the next three decades? What does the detailed pattern of China's success and challenges look like at the sub-sectoral and sub-national levels, and what does this mean for future policy? How will China's role as a global economic player evolve? The Oxford Companion to the Economics of China presents an original collection of perspectives on the Chinese economy's past, present, and future: 99 entries written by the leading China analysts of our time. The topics covered include: the China model, future prospects for China , China and the global economy, trade and the Chinese economy, macroeconomics and finance, urbanisation, industry and markets, agriculture and rural development, land, infrastructure, and environment, population and labour, dimensions of wellbeing and inequality, health and education, gender equity, regional divergence in China, and a selection of perspectives on some of China's provinces. The Editors are four global leaders in Chinese economic analysis and policy who between them have held or hold the following positions: Director General, International Food Policy Research Institute; Co-Editor, China Economic Review; President Chinese Economists Society; Assistant Director of Research at the IMF; Principal Adviser to the Chief Economist of the World Bank; and Professors of Economics at Ivy League Universities.

This English-language volume is an edited collection of articles from the 2010 Chinese-language volume of the Green Book of Population and Labor. It examines recent developments in the Chinese demographic transition and its implications, especially for the labor market.

China's economic development offers a backdrop for developing alternative viewpoints on these issues.

Caring in Times of Precarity draws together two key cultural observations: the increase in those living a single life, and the growing attraction of creative careers. Straddling this historical juncture, the book focuses on one particular group of ‘precariat’: single women in Shanghai in various forms of creative (self-)employment. While negotiating their share of the uncanny creative work ethos, these women also find themselves interpellated as shengnü (‘left-over women’) in a society configured by a mix of Confucian values, heterosexual ideals, and global images of womanhood. Following these women’s professional, social and intimate lives, the book refuses to see their singlehood and creative labour as problematic, and them as victims. It departs from dominant thinking on precarity, which foregrounds and critiques the contemporary need to be flexible, mobile, and spontaneous to the extent of (self-)exploitation, accepting insecurity. The book seeks to understand– empirically and specifically–women’s everyday struggles and pleasures. It highlights the up-close, everyday embodied, affective, and subjective experience in a particular Chinese city, with broader, global resonances well beyond China. Exploring the limits of the politics of precarity, the book proposes an ethics of care.