The Oxford Companion to the Economics of China

摘要

This is an extremely ambitious work and presents 99 diverse articles on China's economic development through time. The editors of the companion are all distinguished academics in their own right and have brought together work from over 100 subject specialists on China. As the editors point out at the start of the companion, the enormous variety of perspectives offered by contributors make it extremely difficult to concisely summarise the broad-ranging articles contained within. Instead of attempting to synthesise the articles within the companion, the editors provide a helpful introduction that outlines the main economic challenges and successes of the Chinese, as they embarked upon a major economic reform programme during the 1970s. Over the past 40 years, China's economic rise has been meteoric and over this period the Chinese have seen massive drops in illiteracy rates, a reduction in infant mortality and increases to life expectancy amongst the population. The editors highlight that Chinese international trade growth has been even more astounding than its GDP growth, stating that since 1980, China's trade volume has roughly doubled once every four year. China is also shown to be fast becoming a major player in foreign aid and the article from Deborah Brautigam of Johns Hopkins University provides an interesting view of the history and development of the Chinese Economic Aid Strategy.