Yi Wen has written a fascinating paper on China’s economic
rise:
The Making of an Economic Superpower ―Unlocking China’s Secret of
Rapid Industrialization
Yi Wen
[Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis & Tsinghua University]
(March 2015)
Abstract
The rise of China is no doubt one of the most
important events in world economic and geopolitical history since the
Industrial Revolution. The institutional theory of development based on a
dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions cannot explain
China’s rise. This article argues that only a radical reinterpretation of the
history of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West (as incorrectly
portrayed by the institutional theory) can fully explain China’s growth miracle
and why the determined rise of China is unstoppable despite its current
“backward” financial system and political institutions. Conversely, China’s
spectacular and rapid transformation from an impoverished agrarian society to a
formidable industrial superpower sheds considerable light on the fundamental
flaws of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus and provides more-accurate
reevaluations of historical episodes such as Latin America’s lost decade and
plagued debt crisis, 19th century Europe’s great escape from the Malthusian
trap, and the Industrial Revolution itself.