What Explains China’s Rise?

In any discussion on economic development, China invariably shows up. How did China manage an economic transformation that it now rivals even the greatest developed economy? Isn’t it amazing that China did that without being a democracy? Or maybe precisely because it is an autocracy that it could do what India, the largest democracy in the world, cannot do?

Those are not easy questions to answer because a story as large as China cannot be easily or quickly told. Big books have been written by reputed scholars on the subject. They are useful, instructive and fascinating. My personal favorite is the book How China Became Capitalist (2012) by Ronald Coase and Ning Wang.

Anyone seriously interested in understanding the economic rise of China should read Coase’s book. (Just by the way, Coase wrote that book at the age 101.) The publisher, Palgrave, gives this as the description of the book: Continue reading “What Explains China’s Rise?”

China’s Proposed Transcontinental Rail Project

The Chinese leadership knows how to think big — which is more than what one can say about the Indian leadership, which one must remember has been mainly from the Congress party led by the Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty. One case in point is how big the Chinese leaders think about railways. Continue reading “China’s Proposed Transcontinental Rail Project”

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