Introduction

In the contemporary world, all developed economies are based on the system of private ownership. Over the course of decades and, in some cases, hundreds of years of development, these economies had undergone a gradual transformation from traditional to modern societies. In the case of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, the introduction of a private system of ownership came very rapidly as their leaders reacted with immense frustration over the impoverished and underdeveloped state of their centrally planned economies. In China, however, the situation that has unfolded since the advent of the reforms in the late 1970s is completely different. Instead of trying to privatize the public system of state-owned enterprises, the focus has been on creating the necessary conditions for the development of a wholly separate private economy that would turn China into a rapidly developing though still transitional economy. The role that this rise of the private economy has played in the rapid growth in China is, therefore, an important topic for study. In her highly systematic and analytical study, Yang Xueye provides unique insight into these developments. Since the implementation of the reforms in 1978, the non-state sector has, she notes, grown much faster than the state-run economy and within the non-state sector the private economy has grown the fastest of all. By any account this is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the private economy in China.