“A powerful account of China’s reform-era market creation that is of acute interest to economists and historians alike”
R. Bin Wong, UCLA
Winner of the Joan Robinson Prize 2021
Winner of the 2022 Best Book in Interdisciplinary Studies Award of the International Studies Association
Winner of the Keynes Prize
China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country's rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China's path. In the first post-Mao decade, China's reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization - but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators?
With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia's economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization.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 through a longue durée lens. Overall, the book delivers an original perspective on China's economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without.
Das Gespenst der Inflation
Wie China der Schocktherapie entkam
Nach dem Ende von Maos Herrschaft stand die politische Führung in China Ende der siebziger Jahre vor gewaltigen Problemen: Wie sollte sie das bankrotte Wirtschaftssystem neu erfinden? Wie eine galoppierende Inflation vermeiden, die als Schreckgespenst durch das Land spukte? Durch Schocktherapie oder schrittweise Reformen? Letztendlich obsiegten die Kräfte, die für einen staatlich gelenkten Wandel plädierten. Anders als Russland, das nach dem Zusammenbruch des Kommunismus in einen katastrophalen Abwärtsstrudel geriet, erlebte China einen beispiellosen Aufstieg.
Isabella M. Weber, eine der bedeutendsten Ökonominnen ihrer Generation, zeichnet in ihrem hoch gelobten Buch die damaligen Debatten um die Neugestaltung des chinesischen Wirtschaftssystems minutiös nach und ordnet diese Diskussionen in die langen Traditionen des ökonomischen Denkens im Reich der Mitte und des Westens ein. Insbesondere zeigt sie, wie es gelang, die Inflation zu begrenzen. Chinas Weg zurück in die Weltwirtschaft, so Weber, ist nicht nur die Geschichte einer einzigartigen Transformation. Angesichts der Verwerfungen auf den Energiemärkten und der dramatisch gestiegenen Lebenshaltungskosten sind die Auseinandersetzungen um Preiskontrollen und andere staatliche Eingriffe zudem lehrreich für aktuelle Debatten.
Como a China escapou da terapia de choque
o debate da reforma de mercado
Primeira obra da economista Isabella Weber, Como a China escapou da terapia de choque é uma análise original e fecunda das reformas econômicas que moldaram o caminho da China ao longo das últimas décadas. Fruto de extensa pesquisa e uma quantidade substantiva de entrevistas, o livro apresenta as ações que permitiram ao país asiático seguir o caminho da reindustrialização gradual e chegar ao século XXI como uma das principais potências mundiais.
Weber busca compreender e explicar ao leitor o sucesso das reformas de mercado na China, enfatizando seu caráter plural, situando as diversas tendências e concepções na longa história do pensamento econômico chinês e ocidental. A autora também envereda pela discussão de longa data a respeito do controle estatal de preços, tanto na milenar história chinesa quanto nas tentativas recentes em outros países, no contexto da Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Com foco na encruzilhada econômica dos anos 1980, a obra apresenta o trajeto econômico chinês a partir da não adesão à “terapia de choque” neoliberal, caminho traçado pelos países da antiga União Soviética. Weber oferece, ainda, uma perspectiva inédita sobre o modelo econômico da China e suas contínuas contestações internas e externas. Resultado disso, Como a China escapou da terapia de choque ganhou dois importantes prêmios em 2021, quando foi lançado nos Estados Unidos, e integrou a lista de melhores livros do ano do Financial Times.
Aus dem Englischen von Stephan Gebauer
tradução de: Diogo Faia Fagundes
orelha: Elias Jabbour
capa: Maikon Nery
Cover design by Nakrob Moonmanas
Photography by Adrian Bradshaw
Endorsements & Awards
“One of the most consequential economic debates in China over the direction of reform took place in the 1980s and focused on how markets should be created. The outcome of that debate set the pattern for much of China’s subsequent economic reforms. Isabella Weber, drawing on interviews of the participants and others together with many new sources of unpublished and published information, does a masterful job of explaining how this debate evolved and its ultimate impact.”
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DWIGHT H. PERKINS
Harvard University
“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.”
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JAMES K. GALBRAITH
The University of Texas at Austin
“Isabella M. 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.”
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BRANKO MILANOVIC
LSE and CUNY
“China’s debates in the 1980s about reform of the non-market economy are centrally important to understanding global political economy in the 21st century. The resolution of the debates about the ‘Big Bang’ set China on the course of pragmatic system reform (‘groping for stones to cross the river’) that has remained in place ever since. Isabella M. Weber’s study is unique. It uses information not only from a wide array of written documents but also from extensive interviews with participants in the debates. Her remarkable book provides a rich, balanced and scholarly analysis which illuminates the complex reality of this critically important period in modern world history.”
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PETER NOLAN
University of Cambridge
“Isabella M. Weber succeeds in offering a powerful account of China’s reform-era market creation that is of acute interest to economists and historians alike. Her book is a call to economists to ponder the relevance of political economy with its European roots in classical economics of the early modern era and with Chinese roots in a period almost two millennia earlier.”
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R. BIN WONG
UCLA
“China’s advance has been the transformative economic story of the past four decades. But why did China adopt its incremental strategy of “reform and opening up”? The German-born Weber, now at Amherst, provides a well-researched answer: the Chinese state “uses the market as a tool in the pursuit of its larger development goals”. Above all, by eschewing “shock therapy”, it sought to protect “the economy’s commanding heights” from destabilising change.”
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MARTIN WOLF
Financial Times
“Her efforts to interview the participants and her extensive research, in both public and private archives, make her account the standard against which future books will be measured.”
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REBECCA KARL
London Review of Books
“Weber’s book offers a fascinating account of struggles over economic policy in China in the 1980s. It is all the more fascinating to read Weber’s subtle recounting of this debate because it is with us still today in debates about inflation in Europe and the U.S. amid the COVID recovery. Weber’s subtle, lucid and evenhanded treatment is to render 40-year-old debates in reform-era China neither exotic nor outdated, but strikingly contemporary.”
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ADAM TOOZE
Chartbook and Noema
“The book is an absolute must read for anyone interested in China and the ideas behind its evolution.”
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MARIANA MAZZUCATO
UCL
“This book is a must read for anybody interested in the history of China’s economic reforms, and I warmly recommend it. It is a highly readable and extremely valuable contribution to the debate on China’s early reform efforts in the 1980s. The book’s most valuable contribution draws from Weber’s extensive interviews with the reformers.”
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BERT HOFMAN
Former World Bank Country Director for China, Mongolia and Korea
“What Weber discovered is fascinating, and really a reflection of what China has become: a complex blend of market and state forces that have helped create a unique economic model, fueled by private enterprise, state subsidies and government controls. Weber paints a compelling portrait of the debates that took place in the 1980s as well as the people involved.”
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DAVID BARBOZA
Pulitzer Prize Winner
“How China Escaped Shock Therapy constitutes an impressive work of intellectual history. Weber presents an exceedingly thorough, nuanced and even exciting account of the debate, which was fluid and constantly changing.”
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CARL RISKIN
China Quarterly
“This tension between China’s rise and its only ‘partial assimilation’ defines our present moment, she writes. The purpose of How China Escaped Shock Therapy is to explain this divergence, which Weber does very well.”
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JOEL ANDREAS
New Left Review
“Weber’s book is well researched, based on Chinese language documents and dozens of interviews with key thinkers and actors in its economic reforms, and is informative and stimulating. It’s an important book that deserves a wide readership. It offers a sober analysis of the intellectual and political struggles – that occurred on an international scale – that transformed China, and are having global repercussions. It provides key insights into ‘how China works’ and subtly demonstrates that neoliberalism is not the only game in town. It is one of the most thought-provoking and illuminating books I have read.”
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INDERJEET PARMAR City, University of London
“Isabella Weber’s meticulously researched monograph tells the story of China’s fortunate break with the international economic policy mainstream, which allowed the country to escape Russia’s dismal fate. Isabella Weber’s extraordinarily detailed analysis of the economic policy debates around price reforms offers several lessons for today. Shock therapy has changed but market-fundamentalism is still on the agenda. The combination of historical depth with theoretical insights that also speak to contemporary debates makes How China Escaped Shock Therapy a benchmark monograph in the literature on the political economy of China and shock therapy.”
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GABOR SCHEIRING
Marie Curie Fellow at Bocconi University
Reviews & Recommendations
London Review of Books | Review by Rebecca Karl | October 14, 2021
“Weber argues persuasively that their [young economists who prevented shock therapy in China] role in debates over economic reform has not been adequately recognised in China or elsewhere. She also makes a convincing case for the 1980s as a time when such debates were possible. Her efforts to interview the participants and her extensive research, in both public and private archives, make her account the standard against which future books will be measured.”
Dissent | Review by Jake Werner | October 14, 2021
“Weber offers a valuable corrective to such essentializing narratives. She provides a fine-grained account of the contentious economic reform debates that took place in China in the 1980s, and situates them in a larger historical and conceptual context. Unlike most of the former Soviet bloc and the former Third World, China did not suffer the debilitating effects of neoliberal shock therapy—the rapid transformation of a state-led economy to one dominated by market forces—and for Weber, the story of how China avoided this fate is key to what makes it different today.”
‘How China Avoided Soviet-Style Collapse’ | Noema Magazine | By Adam Tooze | September 10, 2021
“One of the great merits of Weber’s painstaking trawl through the historical record is that it redresses the balance. …she recuperates the historical significance of a generation of intellectuals whose careers were twice derailed, first by the Cultural Revolution and then by turmoil around Tiananmen.”
Adam Tooze’s ‘Chartbook’ | Review by Adam Tooze | September 16, 2021
“Weber’s book has been one of the most discussed of recent months.”
Branko Milanovic’s ‘globalinequality’ | Review by Branko Milanovic | June 1, 2021
“In an excellent book “How China Escaped Shock Therapy” at whose launch I was one of the discussants (together with Jamie Galbraith and Bin Wong) Isabella Weber discusses, among other things, how China escaped shock therapy and the Big Bang, and created, or stumbled upon, its own way to economic growth.”
Visegrad / Insight | Review by Zoltán Pogátsa | June 25, 2021
“The Chinese Economic Miracle was Based on Ignoring Advice from Central and Eastern Europe… China escaped shock therapy, as the title of Weber’s book underlines. Liberalisation took place, not in a single Big Bang, but gradually, over a period of decades, as Weber demonstrates.”
DAWN | Review by Umair Javed | August 9, 2021
“An excellent book by political economist Isabella Weber, titled How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate provides an intellectual history of how China steered through the post-Mao period by undertaking a series of reforms that eventually set the stage for rapid economic growth witnessed during the preceding two decades. At the core of Weber’s documentation is the role of ideas and how key policymakers are influenced by competing notions of pragmatism, tradition, and theory.”
Canadian Dimension | Review by Michael Roberts | December 21, 2021
“Weber’s book is insightful in showing the debates on policy among the CCP leaders about what direction to go and the factors that dominated their thoughts.
The China Journal | Review by Bert Hofman | Volume 87, 2022
“Isabella M. Weber’s book is a highly readable and valuable contribution to the debate on China’s early reform efforts. The book’s main contribution is its detailed account of the domestic debate on economic reforms between the gradualist reformers and rapid reformers in the 1980s, as well as tracing the intellectual antecedents of both groups.”
Boston Review | Review by Macabe Keliher | July 1, 2021
“Weber has written an illuminating book on China’s resistance to neoliberal economic thought.”
Dziennik Gazeta Prawna | Review by Rafał Woś | June 11, 2021
“Z wielkim zainteresowaniem zerkam w kierunku nowej książki „How China Escaped Shock Therapy?” (Jak Chiny uniknęły terapii szokowej?) Isabelli Weber, ekonomistki z Uniwersytetu Massachusetts w Amherst. No właśnie. Jak oni to zrobili? Dlaczego jest tak, że kraje takie jak Polska, Węgry czy Jugosławia (nie mówiąc już o biednej Rosji) musiały najpierw zaliczyć glebę i znieść wiele niepotrzebnych społecznych katuszy, zanim przestawiły się na gospodarkę rynkową i (jako tako) się w niej odnalazły? Chiny miały inaczej. Też skoczyły w kapitalizm. Ale na własnych prawach.”
Chinese Canadian Voice | Review by Western Ontario Press | June 7, 2021
“看一个西人谈中国经济改革，笔者原初真没有抱多大希望，究竟自己是在那个年代那个过度成长过来的。但是，好不容易收到麻省大学教授Isabella M. Weber的新书How China Escaped Shock Therapy—The Market Reform Debate，翻开几页竟然就让笔者再也放不下，觉得角度很特别，观点也很新颖和客观，让笔者刷新不少认知，在此鼎力推荐.”
LSE Review of Books | Review by George Hong Jiang | September 7, 2021
“...few have looked into it as meticulously as Isabella M. Weber. In her wide-reaching How China Escaped Shock Therapy, we find a map which sheds light on how the Chinese government decided on an ‘experimental gradualism’ (146) rather than shock therapy under the influence of Chinese traditional wisdom and contemporary intellectuals.”
The China Quarterly | Review by Carl Riskin | Volume 247, 2021
“Weber presents an exceedingly thorough, nuanced and even exciting account of the debate, which was fluid and constantly changing. The reader feels immersed in its day-to-day flow and even though the outcome is known, Weber instills a sense of suspense about what would happen in the end.”
The Nation | Review by Andrew B. Liu | February 21, 2022
“Widening the cast of characters beyond Mao and Deng to other factions within the state, Kelly and Weber show how China’s political economy was shaped by vibrant internal debates and profound intellectual shifts over multiple generations, complicating received views about the contours of Chinese communism.”
New Left Review | Review by Joel Andreas | July/Aug, 2021
“The detailed analysis of the 1980s market-reform debates offered by How China Escaped Shock Therapy is insightful and illuminating, and Weber’s evidence for the roles played by economists in providing theories and policy suggestions to key party leaders is especially helpful.”