This book presents a balanced picture of the Chinese reform process, analysing the economic, social, environmental, legal, political & cultural aspects of the process & showing the interconnections between them.

Analysing post-Mao China is not an easy task, but it is essential in order to understand the rationale and scope of the reform process started by the Chinese leadership under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping at the end of the 1970s. Thirty years after the beginning of the reform process China has become a major actor in the global economic and political system and the 21st century is generally held to the one in which China will become the major world power. In this book Paolo Urio presents a balanced picture of the reform process, analysing the economic, social, environmental, legal, political and cultural aspects of the process and showing the interconnections between them. As well as analysing the achievements realised thus far by the reform process, this book looks ahead at the difficulties the Chinese leadership will have to face in the years to come. As such, it will be essential reading for students and scholars of Chinese politics, public management and economics alike.

China today has the largest communist political regime and one of the most dynamic, fastest-growing, and largest economies in the world. Using a case study of China’s tobacco industry, this book analyses how the Chinese government was able to cultivate big state-owned firms that have successfully embraced the global market. The success of the Chinese economy and the many state-owned firms within it have given rise to a "Beijing Consensus," challenging almost every principle enshrined in the so-called "Washington Consensus" that espouses private ownership, free markets, and democracy. By examining two important political processes in contemporary China, ‘local state competition’ and ‘global-market building’, the book argues that the first process serves as a crucial basis for the second. It illustrates how the local governments involved themselves in building and shaping the tobacco market throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and how these domestic market dynamics created conditions for China’s recent embrace of the international market. Offering an in-depth exploration of the political-economic processes in a key Chinese state industry, the book emphasizes that the key to understanding China’s political transition is to look at how the state has been shaped by its market-building projects both domestically and globally. It presents an important contribution to studies on Chinese Business and International Political Economy.

This book includes research presented at the Global Chinese Management Studies Conferences held in Singapore between 2011 and 2014. It covers managerial themes from China that are associated with eco-labels, institutional changes in the context of governance, fusion accounting information, consumers on insuring, corporate social responsibility, financial warning systems, new product development, entrepreneurship, polycentric patterns and even destructive leadership. The papers were written by leading academics from Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore whose perspectives represent a departure from conventional managerial practices. Diversity of Managerial Perspectives from Inside China is essential reading for all researchers interested in the development and significance of management-related topics in the Chinese market.

The objective of this book is to take stock of the research Paolo Urio has conducted since 1997 on the rise of modern China, with emphasis on strategic public management. The starting point of the book is China’s will to recover world power status. This objective is of paramount importance for understanding the policies implemented since 1949, their rationale, content, and consequences upon Chinese society and economy, as well as their sequence in time, i.e. the underlying grand strategy. Starting from these premises, the book proposes an analysis of the contradictions that have developed within China since 1949, the positive and the negative consequences of the public policies implemented to overcome these imbalances, i.e.: the Communist Party’s loss of reputation at the end of Mao era; the introduction of market mechanisms by Deng and the resulting imbalances within Chinese economy, society and environment; the rebalances policies of the Hu Jintao era; and finally the assertive power policies of Xi Jinping, both nationally, e.g. the fight against corruption, and internationally, i.e. China’s new role in the world, especially as a competitor of the Unites States.

Using both Chinese and Western theoretical approaches, this book analyses the strategies implemented by China for reclaiming power in the international domain. Examining domestic measures taken by China to assure its economic and social development, it also considers the strengths and weaknesses of its major international opponent, the US, and analyses their competing approaches to developing power resources and leadership dominance. It studies the foreign policies of both China and the US, first by going back to the historical origins of their ideological foundations and secondly by analysing their power building from the nineteenth century to the Trump and Xi Jinping presidencies. Finally, this book focuses on the One Belt One Road Initiative as China’s response to putting an end to the ‘world America made’ and debates the question of whether China will emerge as a new capitalist country embedded in the liberal capitalist world system, or as an authoritarian state with a socialist market economy, able to change the rules of the international order. Providing a comparison of the two major world powers and a comprehensive overview of their relationship, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics and international relations, as well as Chinese Studies more generally.