New Book on China’s Economic Rise by UMass Economist Isabella Weber Launches with Online Panel Discussion May 27

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AMHERST, Mass. – When Chairman Mao died in 1976, China was one of the poorest countries in the world. Faced with the prospect of social collapse, the Communist Party leaders who succeeded Mao embarked on a series of bold economic reforms that lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, produced annual growth rates exceeding 10% and transformed China into the world’s second-largest economy—all while maintaining the Party’s monopoly on political power.

Perhaps most remarkably, China achieved its turnaround by ignoring the advice of prominent Western economists. In her new book, How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate (Routledge, May 27), University of Massachusetts Amherst economist Isabella M. Weber looks back at the fierce debate that China’s leaders had during the 1980s and how their economic reforms shaped China’s massive growth. Weber provides an unprecedented look at the economics that facilitated the country’s rise without leading to wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism.

Weber, assistant professor of economics at UMass Amherst and research leader in China studies with UMass Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), will speak about the new book during an online event hosted by UMass Amherst on the book’s publication date – Thursday, May 27 – at 2 p.m. Panelists will include James K. Galbraith, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and a former chief technical adviser to China's State Planning Commission for macroeconomic reform; Branko Milanović, former economist at the World Bank; and R. Bin Wong, director of the UCLA Asia Institute. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, this book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China. Weber says that only by avoiding the kind of “shock therapy” implemented to disastrous effect in Russia and many other post-Communist countries did China emerge as the economic juggernaut it is today. Her new account provides critical perspectives for anyone interested in China’s extraordinary rise and the lessons it holds for developing countries around the world.

“Isabella Weber's book gives an excellent historical overview of China's economic statecraft bringing the reader to the crucial period of market reforms and to the decision to avoid the full implementation of the neoliberal agenda, thus setting the stage for the fastest and longest growth in world history,” said Milanovic, who is also author of Capitalism, Alone, which was named a “Best Book of the Year” by The Economist, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs and others.

Weber’s book has already received much praise from other economists for its unique view on how China’s decisions in the 1980s helped pave the way for the country it is today.

“This superb book presents the most compelling interpretation I have read of the sources of Chinese gradualism and its success in fostering economic growth and transformation while preserving enough social cohesion to hold the Chinese society together. It is the product of an independent, inquisitive, open mind—the only type that can hope to grasp the phenomenon that is modern China. It is also the work of a first-rate economist, in the best sense of that term,” Galbraith says.

How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debatewill be available May 27, at bookstores or directly from Routledge. A 30% discount is available when purchasing from Routledge with the promo code ADC21.