The Rise and Fall of China's Economic Miracle : 1950 - 2030

After several decades of unprecedented growth that turned China into the world’s second largest economy, today China is facing major economic challenges, exacerbated by rising tariffs imposed by its most important export market, the United States.How can we explain the extraordinary rise and sudden faltering of China’s economic miracle?Kent Deng takes a long-term view, charting the development of China’s economy from the nineteenth century to the present day.He shows that the policies implemented during Mao’s rule from the 1950s to the 1970s led to a growth cul-de-sac with major economic disincentives and mass poverty.This forced Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, to reform and open up China’s economy with a view to unleashing the economic power of the market.The new model developed by Deng Xiaoping combined state-led import dependency with exports in order to catch up with the West, and success in achieving exports depended on a unique combination of cheap labour, cheap land and low envi