how china escaped the poverty trap

Described as "game changing" and "field shifting," this is the first book to apply a complexity and systems paradigm to explaining China's rise and the sources of its adaptive governance. It simultaneously advances a new, adaptive paradigm in the political economy of development. 

Winner of 2017 Peter Katzenstein Book Prize for outstanding book in international relations, comparative politics, or political economy

Winner of 2018 Viviana Zelizer Best Book in Economic Sociology, Awarded by the American Sociological Association

Foreign Affairs Best of Books 2017

Recommended by The Economist, “Five Books on Ending Poverty"

 REVIEWS

Peter Katzenstein Book Prize

Viviana Zelizer Best Book in Economic Sociology

Book review by CIKD (Center for International Knowledge on Development), State Council

Book review by Duncan Green, LSE Review of Books

Generating cross-disciplinary acclaim, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap has been reviewed across academic fields (political science, history, economics, China studies) and by policy experts at China’s State Council, Harvard Kennedy School, Oxfam, and the World Bank.


"Ang crafts this original and compelling argument using a rich base of fieldwork, including more than 300 interviews that introduce readers to real voices on the ground." 

"An outstanding contribution not only to the study of Chinese development but also to the long-running debate on the role of institutions in development." 

"Fresh synthetic explanation... a must-read for all scholars interested in the Global South." 

"I found @yuenyuenang book on How China Escaped the Poverty Trap very convincing. Detailed historic evidence and a clear theory for China's growth: high powered incentives for bureaucrats on a few key outcomes combined with the flexibility & autonomy to achieve them."

“A big, powerful, challenging work. Its argument is intended to travel, and it will.”

“An original and insightful take on what is perhaps the biggest development puzzle of my lifetime.”

“[This has] the potential to influence future studies of institutional and economic change beyond China.”

 “This book is a triumph, opening a window onto the political economy of China’s astonishing rise that takes as its starting point systems thinking and complexity. Its lessons apply far beyond China’s borders.”

“Her key conceptual innovation is to bring complexity theory into the study of economic growth… offers both critique and creative use of some important arguments in economic history.”

“She has set an admirably high bar and capably filled a conspicuous scholarly vacuum. It is encouraging that the development policy community is also taking note.”

“While adaptive approaches to development have become new buzzwords, Yuen Yuen’s work brings rigor to this conversation.”

“Using her impressive evidence collected via hundreds of interviews throughout China, Ang’s How China Escaped the Poverty Trap brings insights to bear on theoretical debates in China studies, development studies and even social science methodology.”

"Ang’s book will prove to be an influential book in the years to come, for both its findings and research methodology." 

“A very compelling account of how the Chinese bureaucracy has evolved in ways that promote growth during the past thirty five years.”

"Ang writes brilliantly about the delicate and interdependent relationship between private markets and public bureaucracy as it relates to creating prosperity. At the core of Ang's book is one word: Hope."  

Taking into account China’s entire development holistically, author Yuen Yuen Ang frames his analysis with a combination of history, economics, politics. 

IF YOU WISH TO READ A SUMMARY

Book review by Duncan Green, LSE Review of Books [link in English] [link in Chinese] 

Using China as an elephant-sized case study, Ang takes a systems sledgehammer to this kind of linear thinking, and argues that development is a ‘coevolutionary process’. Institutions and markets interact with and change each other in context-specific ways that change over time. The institutions that help to achieve take off are not the same as the ones that preserve and consolidate markets later on. Perhaps her most explosive finding is that for countries just at the start of their development trajectory, so-called ‘weak’ institutions are often better than ‘strong’ ones. The weak/strong description is imposed by experts from already developed countries who conclude that their institutions are obviously the ‘strongest’, since their countries are the richest.  

Book review by Yongmei Zhou, World Bank Development Blog [link]

The first takeaway of the book, that a poor country can harness the institutions they have and get development going is a liberating message. Nations don’t have to be stuck in the “poor economies and weak institutions” trap.  This provocative message challenges our prevailing practice of assessing a country’s institutions by their distance from the global best practice and ranking them on international league tables. Yuen Yuen’s work, in contrast, highlights the possibility of using existing institutions to generate inclusive growth and further impetus for institutional evolution. 

The second part of the book is equally thought provoking. While adaptive approaches to development have become new buzzwords, Yuen Yuen’s work brings rigor to this conversation. For a society to adapt to ever evolving challenges, she argues that its meta-institutions need to empower local agents to experiment with strategies, have a process of selection for the superior strategies to win, and create niche and complementarity to leverage heterogeneity. 

Book review by Quinn Barrie-Watts, Journal of East Asian Studies [pdf] 

Ang’s book, with its demonstration of how the state and the market interact with each other, is an exemplary model of political economy research. Her final product is ambitious in claiming that political and economic phenomena are not complicated, but rather complex, in that a single explanatory variable cannot comprehensively address China’s development narrative. In some ways, her approach challenges conventional thinking, in that social scientists strive to demonstrate that one variable can explain a certain outcome, and the argument is presented in a way that construes their argument as superior to others. Instead, Ang argues that it is not the single variable development scholars need to look at, but rather the interaction between variables.