How China Escaped the Poverty Trap

<p>Acclaimed as game changing and field shifting <i>How China Escaped the Poverty Trap</i> advances a new paradigm in the political economy of development and sheds new light on China's rise. </p><p>How can poor and weak societies escape poverty traps? Political economists have traditionally offered three answers: stimulate growth first build good institutions first or some fortunate nations inherited good institutions that led to growth. </p><p>Yuen Yuen Ang rejects all three schools of thought and their underlying assumptions: linear causation a mechanistic worldview and historical determinism. Instead she launches a new paradigm grounded in complex adaptive systems which embraces the reality of interdependence and humanity's capacity to innovate. </p><p>Combining this original lens with more than 400 interviews with Chinese bureaucrats and entrepreneurs Ang systematically reenacts the complex process that turned China from a communist backwater into a global juggernaut in just 35 years. Contrary to popular misconceptions she shows that what drove China's great transformation was not centralized authoritarian control but directed improvisation--top-down directions from Beijing paired with bottom-up improvisation among local officials. </p><p>Her analysis reveals two broad lessons on development. First transformative change requires an adaptive governing system that empowers ground-level actors to create new solutions for evolving problems. Second the first step out of the poverty trap is to use what you have--harnessing existing resources to kick-start new markets even if that means defying first-world norms. </p><p>Bold and meticulously researched <i>How China Escaped the Poverty Trap</i> opens up a whole new avenue of thinking for scholars practitioners and anyone seeking to build adaptive systems.</p>