How China Escaped Shock Therapy

The Market Reform Debate

By: Isabella M. Weber

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 16 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

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. 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interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization.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 duree lens. Overall, the book delivers an original perspective on China's economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without.

©2021 Isabella M. Weber (P)2023 Tantor

Wrong Pronunciation for "Guanzi" the entire book

The material is great! But as a native Chinese speaking, it's a bit irritating to hear the wrong pronunciation of "Guanzi" everywhere in the book. It's not just imprecise, but far way from correct. I know it may be hard for English speakers to pronounce the word "zi", but the narrator pronounced it as "shi" instead of "tze", which are very different. I felt bit disappointed because the word "Guanzi" appeared over hundreds of times in the book, yet the producer didn't look it up carefully or consult a Chinese speaker.

My guess is that they did the search on Google. I tried to Google "how to prnounce guanzi", but Google automatically corrects "Guanzi" to "Guanxi", which means "relationship", a more commonly used Chinese phrase, and "xi" is pronounced as "shi". I assume that's why the narrator made the mistake.

an immense and delicate work

Isabella Weber’s work is made with great care from an immense and delicate work of interpreting the evolution of China's economic policy, with emphasis on the decades that followed the years after the post-World War II period. The source of her narrative, inspired by the analysis of the thinking and initiatives of the main Chinese leaders who contributed to the balanced reconciliation of the principles of the political regime sustained from the country's cultural revolution with the structure of the post-World War II world economic order, adds virtues and wisdom to the country that knew how to value and associate the importance of time with the maturity of the ideals of its own political regime.