Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China's Transformation

摘要

China's grand size makes it challenging to conclusively identify broad patterns in the economy and political system. Successes and problems typically co-exist in a way that seemingly defies easy summary. By amassing immense amounts of data, the contribu-tors to Growing Pains present as clear a picture of China as one can expect. Throughout the post-Mao era some analysts have seen the system as suffering from "irresolvable logical contradictions that threaten to derail or stall the entire reform process" (p. xv). But instead of seeing China stuck in a "trapped transition," a direct reference to Minxin Pei's book of the same title (Harvard University Press, 2006), this volume suggests that the problems faced over the years are more akin to "growing pains." This reader takes the concept to refer to either problems that originally seemed formidable but were later overcome or new types of problems that emerge as a product of success and then are also addressed with a sufficient degree of success that facilitates continued economic vibrancy and political efficacy.