Friday, January 9, 2009

GlobalisationMeetsitsMatch

GlobalisationMeetsitsMatch:Lessonsfromchina’seconomicTransformationDic Lo, Yu Zhang1 The‘chinaanomaly’inGlobalisationViewed from the perspective of globalisation, China’s experienceof economic transformation over the past three decades appearsto be anomalous – indeed paradoxical. The sustained and rapid growth of the Chinese economy has been in sharp contrast to theprolonged stagnation in most parts of the non-western world.The mixed economic system that has persisted despite marketreforms further contradicts the orthodox doctrines of globalisa-tion, that is, the doctrines of market fundamentalism commonlyknown as the Washington Consensus.There is of course no shortage of defendants of the WashingtonConsensus who have attempted to interpret the Chinese experi-ence in a way that is consistent with the orthodox doctrines.There is a recurring proposition which states that China’s economicsystem is a mix of market-conforming and market-supplantingelements, that its developmental achievements can be ascribed to the conforming elements while its accumulated problems canbe attributed to the supplanting elements, and that the problems tend to outweigh the achievements as the country’s economictransition proceeds from the allegedly easy phase to the difficultphase (The Economist 1998; IMF 2000; OECD 2005; World Bank 2002). Essentially, this proposition is based on the belief that eco-nomic development is dictated by principles of the market, andthat the actual working of the world market is somehow naturalor easy. This is the notion of the “natural path of development”,the ultimate promise of globalisation.It is interesting that this interpretation of the Chinese experienceis shared by many in the critical, anti-globalisation camp. Thereis a widely held view in this camp that rather than fundamentallydeviating from principles of the market, China has actually fol-lowed through capitalist transformation. Indeed, it is posited thatChina is following an extreme form of capitalist transformation,namely, neoliberalisation. What distinguishes these critical scholars from the orthodoxy is their terms of assessment. Theyoften argue that China’s seemingly phenomenal performance is mainly based on “super-exploitation” of Chinese labour (and thenatural environment), as well as on “under-cutting” the world working class as a whole (Hart-Landsberg and Burkett 2004;Harvey 2005; Walker and Buck 2007). That these writers une-quivocally deny that China’s sustained and rapid economicgrowth is real appears to reflect the belief that capitalism cannever deliver development on a significant scale. This belief canbe called the “natural path of underdevelopment”.The objective of this essay is mainly to take on the orthodox,market-fundamentalist discourse on China, while also attemptingThesustainedandrapidgrowthoftheChineseeconomyin the last three decades has been in sharp contrast totheprolongedstagnationinmostpartsofthenon-western world. The persistence of a mixed economicsystem despite market reforms further contradicts theorthodoxdoctrinesofglobalisation.ThisstudyarguesthatChina’seconomictransformationhasbeenmainlybased on productivity improvement and is thus toa significant extent a real development. It has beenachievedmainlythroughaprocessof“governingthemarket” by a set of structural-institutional factors thatare China-specific but can be of general importance forlatedevelopmentworldwide.Dic Lo (diclo@soas.ac.uk) is with the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies, University of London, and the Centre of Research inComparative Political Economy, Renmin University of China. Yu Zhang(laoaozhang@yahoo.com.cn) is with the Renmin Universityof China.
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china since 1978december 27, 2008EPWEconomic & Political Weekly98Table:averageannualGrowthRates(%)ofchina’sRealGDP,employmentandLabourForce(a) (b) (c) (a)-(b)(b)-(c)Real GDP Employment Labour Force1978-20079.822.27 2.307.55-0.031978-19959.853.153.146.700.011995-20079.771.031.118.74-0.08Sources: National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 2008.to engage with the critical scholarship. Specifically, this essayseeks to construct an alternative, analytical account of China’s economic transformation, in the form of the following twofold proposition. First, China’s economic transformation has beenmainly based on productivity improvement and is thus to asignificant extent a real development. Second, the developmenthas been achieved mainly through a process of “governing themarket” by a set of structural-institutional factors that are China-specific but can be of general importance for late developmentworldwide. Based on this proposition, this study will also attemptto explore the future prospects for China’s economic transforma-tion and draw some lessons for late development.2 evolution of the economic Growth PathChina’s sustained and rapid economic growth over the marketreform era is a phenomenal event. As can be seen from the num-bers in the accompanying table, between1978 and 2007, the average annual growth rate of Chinese GDP reached ahigh of 9.8%. And this has been mainlybased on productivity growth, with theaverage annual growth rate per workerGDP registering 7.6% during the period.On the face of it, there should be no mistake that the immedi-ate dynamics behind the growth is a process of rapid industriali-sation. Figure 1 charts the levels of relative labour productivityof industry vis-à-vis the rest of the Chinese economy. It is of note that the curve representing relative labour productivitycalculated at constant prices has persistently and substantiallyexceeded that representing relative labour productivity calcu-lated at current prices. This implies a transfer of the gains in pro-ductivity improvement, via the effect of changing relative prices,from industry to the rest of the economy. And the progressivelywidening gap between the two curves implies that, over time,the indicated productivity transfer has tended to accelerate alongwith the progress in industrialisation. The contribution of indus-trialisation to China’s overall economic growth is thus not simplya reflection of the fact that industry is part of the economy. Itrather reflects a dynamic process where industry serves as anengine of growth of the non-industrial sector.A further observation from Figure 1 is that the two curves repre-senting the relative productivity of industry vis-à-vis non-industryboth moved downwards in the 1980s and early 1990s but thereaf-ter tended to move upwards. The downward movement of thecurves in the first half of the reform era seems anomalous,because, according to the relevant theo-ries in the literature (notably theories associated with the “Kaldor-VerdoornLaws”), industry is typically character-ised by faster productivity growth thannon-industry. The likely explanation ofthe anomaly is that Chinese economicgrowth during this period was propelled by labour transfer on amassive scale from agriculture to industry. This movement,while being in line with China’s relative scarcity, did have anegative impact on the relative labour productivity of industry:the new entrants to the industrial workforce were mainly unskilled and the rapid expansion of the workforce exerted downward pressure on the capital-labour ratio of industry. Conversely, theupward movement of the curves since the early 1990s indicates the resurgence of a capital-deepening path of industrialisationand economic growth.The inference above is confirmed by what is clearly observablein Figure 2. It can be seen that the incremental capital-outputratio of the Chinese economy decreased steadily up until the early1990s, but thereafter tended to move upwards. The downward movement of the ratio in the first phase most likely reflects a ten-dency of substituting labour for capital. This substitution was made possible by the combination of two important structural conditions. First, the existence of surplus labour in the context of a developing economy. Second, the pre-existence of a heavyindustrial sector in the context of a Soviet-type economy. As is well known, a characteristic of the development strategy ofSoviet-type economies is the emphasis on heavy industrialisation,and the associated capital accumulation makes it feasible topursue a new strategy of substituting labour for capital in thefirst stage of the reform era. Conversely, on the exhaustion of theopportunities provided by the pre-reform capital accumulation, acapital-deepening path of industrialisation and economic growthmight well be reasonable in terms of feasibility.In terms of efficiency attributes, the capital-deepening develop-ment path most likely contradicts the relative scarcity, and hencecomparative advantage, of the Chinese economy. Nevertheless,theoretically, the development path could be characterised by fasttechnological progress and strong increasing returns. Whether or2.003.004.005.006.007.0076543219781982198619901994199820022006(Yi/Li)/(Yn/Ln)(Yi*/Li)/(Yn*/Ln)Y = GDP and its components at current prices, with *denoting data at 1978 constant prices.L = total labour employment. The subscripts i and n denote the secondary sector (i e, industryplus construction) and the rest of the Chinese economy, respectively.Source: China State Statistical Bureau, China Statistical Yearbook, various issues.Figure1:RelativeLabourProductivityofindustry1.52.02.53.03.54.04.51980198519901995200020054.543.532.521.5198019851990199520002005Figure2:incrementalcapital-OutputRatio(5-YearMovingAverages)(dK/dY)*Incremental Capital-Output Ratio = dK/dY, where dK = total fixed-asset investment,dY = GDP of current year minus GDP of last year.Source: China State Statistical Bureau, China Statistical Abstract 2007.
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china since 1978Economic & Political WeeklyEPWdecember 27, 200899not the sacrifice of allocative efficiency can be more than compen-sated for by an improvement in productive efficiency is of coursean empirical question. It can be argued that this is indeed the casein China’s economic growth since the early 1990s. As is indicated by the table, labour productivity growth in the second half of thereform era clearly exceeds that of the first half. Further, morecomprehensive studies support this judgment (Lo and Li 2006).3 The structural conditions of economic GrowthTheoretically, China’s industry-led economic growth can beexplained by what are known as the “Kaldor-Verdoorn Laws” in therelevant literature. Productivity growth in an economy is typi-cally generated by the interaction between particular structural-institutional arrangements and the demand environment – thetwo aspects combine to form a particular path of economicgrowth (Lo and Smyth 2004 give a synthesising review of the lit-erature). Hence, further investigation into the underlying dynam-ics of China’s economic growth needs to take as its point of depar-ture the following question: what is the source of demand thathas underpinned Chinese industrialisation over the reform era?It is noted that, on the world scale during the era of globalisation,a main factor that has impeded late industrialisation is demand-side constraints. It is further of note that China’s rapid industrialgrowth has been achieved in the context of starting in the late1970s with one of the highest industry-to-GDP ratios in the world.There must exist some peculiarities in China’s economic growthpath in the reform era such that the accelerating pace of industri-alisation has found its necessary demand conditions.Figure 3 charts out the composition of Chinese GDP by expen-ditures. It is clearly evident that of China’s aggregated demand,consumption accounted for a substantially bigger share in1978-92 than in 1993-2007. The opposite was true for the share of aggregate demand accounted for by investment. This change inthe composition of demand corresponds to the observationmade above that Chinese economic growth switched from alabour-intensive path in the first half of the reform era to a capital-deepening one in the second half.In this connection, it is noted that a prominent feature of Chineseindustrialisation throughout the reform era is a process of struc-tural change within the industrial sector itself: the rapid expan-sion of the output share of heavy manufacturing industries, alongwith the shrinkage of extraction industries and light industries that use farm products as raw materials. A closer look at the evo-lution reveals that it is the broad machinery sector, particularlythe electronics industry, which has had the biggest gain in outputshare (Lo 2006). This seems unusual. For, traditionally, it is anotorious character of the Soviet-type centrally planned systemthat the machinery sector plays a leading role in the economy. Inthe case of China, by 1980, the sector had already expanded tothe extent of accounting for up to a quarter of the total output of Chinese industry. Does the further expansion of the sector in thereform era, therefore, signify a continuation of the Soviet-typeFeldman-Mahalanobis model of economic growth – that is, agrowth path that is based on “producing investment goods forproducing investment goods”? In view of the actual situation,and of our preceding discussion on the inferences from Figures 1and 3, the answer appears to be “no” for the first half of thereform era and probably “yes” for the second half.In the first half of the reform era, the massive expansion of themachinery sector (and light industries using non-farm productsas inputs) was associated with a phenomenal development thatwas felt by the entire Chinese population: a “consumption revo-lution” signified by the explosive growth of a very wide range of consumer durables, ranging from electrical and electronic homeappliances in the 1980s to mobile phones, personal computers and the like in the 1990s. These products are not investment goods,but they do belong to the mechanical and electronics industry. Itwas the explosive growth of these new consumer durables thataccounted for the expansion of the machinery sector in the1978-92 period. And the machinery sector was the driving forcebehind the growth of Chinese industry as a whole, as well as thetransfer of productivity gains from industry to the rest of theeconomy via changes in relative prices and other mechanisms.In terms of technical and economic characteristics, the newconsumer durables belong to mass-production industries that arecharacterised by rapid technological change, extensive backward and forward linkages and high income elasticity of demand.Their explosive growth in the first half of the reform era was sustained by mass consumption in the domestic market. Moregenerally, it may be argued that China’s rapid economic growthin the 1978-92 period was based on a nexus of causal relation-ships that could be characterised as the following: consumptioninduced investment and thereby overall demand expansion, thus making it possible to absorb labour transfer from agriculture andto improve industrial productivity via dynamic increasingreturns. There was a virtuous circle between consumption and production, and between industry and the economy.The nexus of causal relationships of China’s economic growthover the first half of the reform era, characterised above, presup-poses the existence of a necessary condition: an egalitarian patternof income distribution, which underpins mass consumption, therebyinducing investment and overall demand expansion. Income dis-tribution covers the total of both money and non-money incomes706050403020100-10-10.00%0.00%10.00%20.00%30.00%40.00%50.00%60.00%70.00%1978198219861990199419982002200619781982198619901994199820022006C = final consumption; I = investment; NX = net export of goods and services.Sources: China State Statistical Bureau, China Statistical Yearbook, various issues.Figure 3 : composition of GDP by expenditures (in%)CINX
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china since 1978december 27, 2008EPWEconomic & Political Weekly100for Chinese people, particularly for urban residents, in the firsthalf of the reform era. The degree of egalitarianism is thus diffi-cult to be gauged by conventional measures of income distribu-tion such as the Gini index. Perhaps much more appropriatemeasures would be social development indicators such as lifeexpectancy at birth, the infant mortality rate, and the adult illit-eracy rate. It is well known that in these measures China’s per-formance in the late 1970s was very close to the average of all middle-income economies in the world, in spite of it being a low-income economy. In the early years of the 21st century, China’s performance in the social development indicators remained veryclose to the average of all middle-income economies. Overall, itwould be appropriate to assert that for the main part of thereform era, China’s pattern of income distribution tended to beegalitarian by international standards – although it is also truethat egalitarianism tended to wither along with market reform.It was the worsening pattern of income distribution undermarket reform that led to the fundamental shift of China’s growthpath in the early 1990s. The leading role of consumption has beentaken over by investment in sustaining economic growth on thedemand side. And the contribution of the effect of labour transferto economic growth – that is, the improvement in allocative effi-ciency as a source of productivity growth – has tended to weaken.What has been of increasing importance is dynamic increasingreturns within industry. Conceptually, in the relevant theoretical literature, there is a well developed proposition which states thatthe sustainability on the demand side of a growth path based on“producing investment goods for producing investment goods” isdetermined by the pace of product innovations. It is throughproduct innovations that the variety of investment goods contin-uously expands, and that the law of diminishing demand ceasesto apply. The sources, and pace, of product innovations in Chi-nese economic growth, particularly since the early 1990s, areimportant issues requiring study. Nevertheless, one point seems clear: in addition to domestic generation, a very important sourceof product innovations is continuous, large-scale importing offoreign technology. It is in this particular respect that external dynamics has played a crucial role in China’s overall economictransformation.4 GradualMarketisation,neoliberalisationand theQuestforalternativesThe logical starting point in the nexus of causal relationships underpinning China’s economic transformation in the first half of the reform era, as depicted in the preceding section, is the existenceof an egalitarian pattern of income distribution. This pattern of income distribution has been, in turn, based on China’s political economy. For a major part of the reform era, especially its firsthalf, the economy has been dominated by public ownership, and within the publicly-owned sector, egalitarianism in distributionhas been the norm. In 1992, state-owned and collectively-ownedenterprises combined to account for 86% of the output of Chineseindustry as a whole. By the turn of the century, the share still remained at 64%.All these notwithstanding, it is not true that China has always shunned the policy doctrines of the Washington Consensus throughout the reform era. There was a high tide of neoliberali-sation in China in the middle of the 1990s. This mainly took theform of the 1993-95 financial liberalisation and the 1995-97enterprise downsizing drive. There were also policy measures adopted during this period for working towards the targets of liberalising external finance and balancing the state budget bythe turn of the century.The 1995-97 downsizing drive in state (and collective) enter-prises had far-reaching implications. Initiated by the state lead-ership with the objective of transforming large and mediumenterprises into modern corporations and small-scale enterprises into shareholding cooperatives, the drive was seized upon bylocal authorities at different levels to simply sell-off state assetswhile unilaterally defecting on the state’s obligation of job secu-rity for the workers (and passing the liabilities of the sold enter-prises on to state banks and ultimately to the central government).Consequently, unemployment surged, consumption expansionslowed down and investment growth stagnated. Together withthe worsening external environment caused by the 1997-98 eastAsian financial crisis, all these plunged China into a state of defla-tion at the macro level, and there was worsening financial per-formance of enterprises at the micro level, in the closing years of the century.Against this background, there emerged a fundamental policyreversal in 1998. The Chinese leadership turned to four majorcategories of anti-crisis policies between 1998 and 2002. First, itlaunched several Keynesian-type fiscal packages for expandinginvestment demand, which were financed by debt issuing of unprecedented scales. Second, it implemented a range of welfare-state policies aimed at reversing the trend of stagnant consump-tion expansion. Third, it adopted policy measures to revitalisethe state sector, with the objective of improving the financial con-ditions of state-owned enterprises and the balance sheets of state banks. Fourth, it adopted a cautious approach to reform-ing the regime of external transactions – in particular, the lead-ership has in effect shelved the target of liberalising the coun-try’s capital account. As an anti-crisis strategy, these policies embodied the idea of helping enterprises as well as the govern-ment to “grow out of indebtedness”. The robust growth of theChinese economy in the crisis-prone years of 1998-2002, as well as the substantial decrease in the indebtedness (as ratios of GDP) of state finance, state banks, and state-owned enterprises,indicates that the adoption of these market-supplanting policieswas justified.Meanwhile, albeit intended to be short-term anti-crisis meas-ures, these policies turned out to be consistent with the long-term social and economic development strategy of China’s state leadership in the new century. This strategy, known as “constructing a harmonious society”, emphasises the need toreverse the trend of increasing social polarisation under marketreforms. And one central aspect of social polarisation to bedealt with is the trend of secular decline of labour compensa-tion as a share of national output. Although the economicgrowth process has not been mainly based on cheap labour or“super-exploitation”, it is true that labour compensation has experienced very sluggish growth in the reform era. This is
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china since 1978Economic & Political WeeklyEPWdecember 27, 2008101evident in Figure 4, which shows that, up until the turn of thecentury,thegrowthoftherealurbanwagerate(theformalsector of the Chinese economy) lagged far behind that of per capita realGDP. Conversely, the reverse of the comparison in recent years reflects deliberate state efforts to improve labour compensation.These include enhancing labour rights protection, workingtowards the target of establishing collective bargaining in all enterprises, enforcing the stipulation of setting up unions in all enterprises, and enforcing a new employment contract law – allbreaking with the previous laissez-faire approach towards labour.The persistence of the capital-deepening path of economicgrowth has also helped to improve labour compensation.These labour-enhancing policies are consistent with theprevailing capital-deepening economic growth path, and thusappear to have a solid material underpinning. The sameapplies to the broader policies for income redistribution, social welfare provision, and the attempts to reconstruct a govern-ment-funded healthcare system for society as a whole, includ-ing the rural population. Nevertheless, given that China has bynow already deeply integrated itself into the world market, itwill be a challenge on an unprecedented scale to move againstthe currents of globalisation in the pursuit of “constructing aharmonious society”.5 The impact of china’s Transformation on GlobalisationCentral to the globalisation of our times has been a process of financialisation, that is, the rapidly rising predominance of spec-ulative financial activities in the world economy. As Robert Wade(2006) has observed, financialisation implies financial interests dissociating themselves from real investment and the productiveprocess in general. There is thus an intrinsic contradiction infinancialisation: the speculative pursuits of profitability tend tocrowd out productive activities, thus undermining the sources of profitability. Financialisation is intrinsically unsustainable.But financialisation has actually been sustained, at least until recently. The reason, as David Harvey (2005) has argued, ismainly the “cheapening” of productive inputs worldwide. Itis in this connection that national and international policiesassociated with neoliberalism can be seen as essential to thecurrent round of globalisation. These policies facilitate thecheapening of productive inputs, labour in particular, and theirincorporation into the system of capitalism. Institutionally, asHarvey has further argued, financialisation necessarily requires flexible production: logical to the rising mobility of capital is the inclination towards minimising fixed investment andmaximising profits via absolute surplus-value production. Acentral tenet of neoliberalism is creating flexible institutions inthe form of the casualisation of employment, which is madepossible via the creation of an “unlimited supply of labour” andthe elimination of arrangements that could undermine theflexible working of the labour market, such as unionisation andlegislative protection of labour. This appears to be what has actually occurred to date.Nevertheless, this neoliberal tenet has no prior claim to superi-ority even in the sense of underpinning the kind of flexible pro-duction that is needed for surviving competition in the world market. In line with the literature on techno-economic paradigms (Lo and Smyth 2004), it could be posited that the behavioural flexibility of the productive system could arise from two differ-ent, contrasting types of institutional arrangements. One is casu-alisation, that is, “flexible institutions, flexible behaviour”, whichis based on the principles of a detailed division of labour andde-skilling of work. The other arrangement is rigid, or long-term-oriented institutions, constructed on the basis of the social divi-sion of labour – that is, “rigid institutions, flexible behaviour”,where behavioural flexibility arises from collective learning and horizontal coordination. Theoretically, there is no reason tobelieve that one of the two types of arrangements is more com-petitive than the other. In reality, however, the triumph of neolib-eralism, in conjunction with the drive of financialisation, hasresulted in the predominance of the “flexible institutions, flexiblebehaviour” model across the world. This has been so despite theobservation that, on historical record, the alternative “rigid insti-tutions, flexible behaviour” model embodies a much higherdegree of solidarity, egalitarianism and social justice, and theargument that this model is less prone to produce systemicdemand deficiency that could undermine economic growth(Dore 2002).In this context, China’s development experience and policyefforts since the turn of the century deserve special attention. Itcould be asserted that a main aspect of globalisation is theexpansion of the world labour market associated with the incor-poration of China into the system. According to the InternationalMonetary Fund (2007), weighing countries’ labour force by theirexport-to-GDP ratio, the effective global labour supply quadrupled between 1980 and 2005, with east Asia contributing about half the increase. And, over this period, there has been an accelerat-ing trend of massive relocation of industry and jobs from the restof east Asia to China. At the end of 2005, China’s share of theworld total of workers producing for the global market reached25%. No wonder, in addition to its growth performance (and ris-ing financial strength), the conditions of labour employment,compensation and work standards in China have increasinglybecome matters of worldwide concern.Because of its significant and rising position in the world economy, China’s attempt to construct an alternative model of development is bound to make a systemic impact on the future0.00%2.00%4.00%6.00%8.00%10.00%12.00%14.00%198119841987199019931996199920021412108642019811984198719901993199619992002A = per capita real GDP; B = urban real wage rate.Sources: National Bureau of Statistics, China Statistical Yearbook 2006; China Statistical Abstract 2007.Figure4:annualGrowthRateofPercapitaRealGDPandRealUrbanWageRate (5-yearMovingAverage,%)AB
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china since 1978december 27, 2008EPWEconomic & Political Weekly102direction of globalisation. As noted, the worldwide cheapeningof labour over the past quarter century, particularly since theearly 1990s, has been, in a very significant measure, associated with the incorporation of China’s labour force into the world market. Now that there have emerged strong state and societal efforts in China to resist the cheapening drive, some funda-mental adjustments in world development are likely to occur.Whatever the precise nature of the adjustments, the triumph ofneoliberalism is likely to be less complete in the future than inthe previous quarter century. Real development worldwidehas a stake in the success or otherwise of China’s attempt toconstruct an alternative to neoliberalism.6 concluding RemarksThe Chinese experience of economic transformation over thepast three decades offers important lessons for late developmentunder globalisation. In hindsight, the country appears to haveundergone a transition from labour-intensive industrialisationand economic growth to an alternative, capital-deepening path.In both the phases, its developmental achievements cannot bereduced to the orthodox policy doctrines of globalisation – thatis, the market fundamentalism of the Washington Consensus, orneoliberalism. In particular, the capital-deepening growth pathhas emerged and persisted in connection with a range of structural-institutional factors that are market-supplanting in nature. It is the interaction between these factors and the prevailing growthpath that appears to constitute a promising, alternative model oflate development.Put another way, since the turn of the century, China’s stateand society have focused their efforts on “constructing a harmo-nious society”. These efforts represent a quest for a model ofdevelopment that deviates fundamentally from neoliberalism.In particular, state development policies and institutionalreforms in recent years have tended to target labour compensa-tion-enhancing economic growth, rather than growth based on“cheap labour”. This essay argues that the new developmentmodel does represent a more feasible and desirable pursuit thanneoliberalism. The essay concludes with a discussion on theimpact of this new Chinese development model on the futuredirection of globalisation.ReferencesDore, Ronald (2002): “Stock Market Capitalism and Its Diffusion”, New Political Economy, 7 (1), The Economist (1998), 24-30, October.Hart-Landsberg, M and P Burkett (2004): China andSocialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle, aspecial issue of Monthly Review, July-August.Harvey, D (2005): A Brief History of Neoliberalism(Oxford: Oxford University Press).IMF (2000): World Economic Outlook (WashingtonDC:International Monetary Fund), October.– (2007): World Economic Outlook (Washington DC:International Monetary Fund), April.Lo, D (2006): “Making Sense of China’s EconomicTransformation”,EconomicsDepartmentWorkingPaper No 148, School of Oriental and AfricanStudies, University of London, http://www.soas.ac.uk/economics/research/workingpapers/.Lo, D and G Li (2006): “China’s Economic Growth,1978-2005: Structural Change and Institutional Attributes”, Economics Department WorkingPaper No 150, School of Oriental and AfricanStudies, University of London, http://www.soas.ac.uk/economics/research/workingpapers/.Lo, D and R Smyth (2004): “Towards a Re-interpreta-tion of the Economics of Feasible Socialism”,Cambridge Journal of Economics, 28 (6): 791-808.OECD (2005): Economic Survey of China 2005, Paris:Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, September, http://www.oecd.org/document/21/0, 2340,en_2649_201185_35331797_1_1_1_1,00.html.Wade, R (2006): “Choking the South”, New LeftReview, No 38.Walker, R and D Buck (2007): “The Chinese Road:Cities in the Transition to Capitalism”, New LeftReview, No 46.World Bank (2002): Transition – The First Ten Years:Analysis and Lessons for Eastern Europe and theFormer Soviet Union (Washington DC: World Bank).SAMEEKSHA TRUST BOOKS1857essays from Economic and Political WeeklyA compilation of essays that were first published in the EPW in a special issue in May 2007. Held together with an introduction by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay,the essays – that range in theme and subject from historiography and military engagements, to the dalit viranganas idealised in traditional songs and the “unconventional protagonists” in mutiny novels – converge on one common goal: to enrich the existing national debates on the 1857 Uprising.The volume has 18 essays by well known historians who include Biswamoy Pati,Dipesh Chakrabarty,Peter Robb and Michael Fisher.The articles are groupedunder five sections:‘Then and Now’,‘Sepoys and Soldiers’,‘The Margins’,‘Fictional Representations’ and ‘The Arts and 1857’.Pp viii + 3642008Rs 295Available fromOrient Blackswan Pvt LtdMumbai Chennai New Delhi Kolkata Bangalore Bhubaneshwar Ernakulam Guwahati Jaipur LucknowPatna Chandigarh Hyderabad Contact: info@orientblackswan.com

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