China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, 2nd edition

"This book is an effort to explain how China's economy got to where it is today, where it might be headed in the coming years, and what China's rise means for the rest of the world. It is intended to be useful to the general reader, who has an intelligent interest in China and its global impact but not necessarily a specialized background in either China or economics. Since the first edition was published in 2016 China's relevance to the world has increased dramatically, thanks to the more assertive foreign policy of president Xi Jinping and the move by the United States under the Trump Administration to treat China as a geopolitical rival. Because of its sheer size, the growing tensions with the United States, and the gulf in basic values between China and the international system it increasingly seeks to influence, understanding modern China's origins and trajectory is more important than ever. An economy is a complicated organism, which does not easily lend itself to description by narrative, as one might tell the story of a person's life. It is more like a jigsaw puzzle-to be precise, a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, in which the shapes of the pieces keep changing. Rather than a fixed structure like a molecule, a skyscraper, or a mathematical equation, an economy is a set of fairly solid institutions and fairly fluid arrangements created by people to enable them to get the goods and services that they want. The nature of these institutions and arrangements is largely determined by the political bargains made among the important groups in a society. As the composition, relative power, and interests of these groups change over time, so do the economic arrangements. In other words, considerations of political practicality usually trump those of economic efficiency. For economic policymakers, this means that they must make do with second- or third-best versions of their ideal recipes. For analysts, it means that describing an economy is more of a historical art than a natural science. To the extent it is a science, it is more physiology than physics"--