In the Asia Times Online, Sreeram Chaulia reviews “China and Globalization: The Social, Economic and Political Transformation of Chinese Society” by Doug Guthrie:
China’s relentless march of rapid economic growth and reduced poverty qualifies as a quiet revolution in the contemporary world. American sociologist Doug Guthrie’s new book challenges neo-liberal dogmas and makes the case that this revolution was successful because it was state-led and gradual.
It is an account of how the forces of globalization played out locally in the world’s fastest-growing and sixth-largest economy.
China’s economic rise is “the result of methodical and careful government policies” (p 8), state guidance and managed social upheaval that introduced policies that constructed a market system, vindicating the theory that economic processes are fundamentally political. [Full Text]
