Managed Chaos: The Fragility of the Chinese Miracle

Managed Chaos: The Fragility of the Chinese Miracle reads into the Chinese politics and economy and the disparate status and position of the two domains. On one hand, its economy has sustained a near 10 per cent growth rate for 30 years, while, on the other, trapped in an incomplete transition from a totalitarian to a democratic market economy, politically the country is still considered a fragile state. This book helps the reader resolve this incongruity through its inference. The defining features of this book are: - Armed with an original application of Michal Kalecki’s theory of intermediate regimes, it provides an explanation of China’s explosive growth. - It indicates the formation of a new stratum, through winding up of centralised planning, the stratum of ‘proto-bourgeoisie’, consisting of the local cadres of the communist party, who can counter the central cadres for capturing investible resources of the state. - It creates a single politic-economic model that explains China’s economic and political development. The causal connections in the model make it possible to predict China’s future, and the challenges it faces. This book makes a significant contribution to the literature on Chinese political economy over the past three decades. It is a must read for all discerning and informed readers. It will also be valuable for policy makers and students and researchers working in the areas of international relations, Chinese studies and political economy.

Table of Contents:
Preface Mixed Feelings Conflicting Views on China′s Development Double Digit Growth? ′Friction-free′ Growth? ′Cadre′ Capitalism Why Purely Economic Remedies Have Not Worked An Ancient Struggle in a New Guise Recession and the Birth of Class Conflict The Emergence of a Predatory State Retaining the Mandate of Heaven The Challenge Ahead Notes References Index

About the Author :
Prem Shankar Jha is an independent columnist, a prolific author and a former information adviser, Prime Minister’s Office (India). He completed his master’s in philosophy, politics and economics from the University of Oxford in 1961. After working for five years for the United Nations Development Programme in New York and Damascus, he returned to India to pursue a career in journalism. Over the past few decades, he has been Editor in The Economic Times, The Financial Express, and Hindustan Times, and the Economic Editor in The Times of India. Jha has been a visiting scholar at Nuffield College, University of Oxford; Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University; University of Virginia; University of Richmond and the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata. He began research on alternate fuels in 1980. He has written extensively on them and their significance for the environment. In 1985, he was nominated to the energy panel of the World Commission on Environment and Development. In 1988, he was awarded the Energy Journalist of the Year award by the International Association for Energy Economics. Jha has many published works to his credit. Some of them are given as follows: India: A Political Economy of Stagnation (1980), In the Eye of the Cyclone: The Crisis in Indian Democracy (1993), A Jobless Future: Political Causes of Economic Crisis (2002), The Perilous Road to the Market: The Political Economy of Reform in Russia, India and China (2002), The Origins of a Dispute: Kashmir 1947 (2003), The Twilight of the Nation State: Globalisation, Chaos and War (2006), Managed Chaos: The Fragility of the Chinese Miracle (SAGE, 2009), A Planet in Peril (2009) and Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger: Can China and India Dominate the West? (2010).

Review :
[The author] has written this book to convey the reader how the Chinese state functions. For this, he has widened the scope of enquiry to include the interaction of China’s economic system with its political system, and made a fairly good job of explaining the past pattern of its development…. Jha has blended the story quite skillfully and it will be worthwhile for one to fully read this book. The incisive analysis of the vulnerabilities of the Chinese economy presented in this book is supported by a mass of statistics and data. Jha’s research is thorough and derives from Western and Chinese studies. Managing Chaos is a serious work. The book is essential reading for those trying to understand the Chinese economic miracle. The book gives a balanced view of China′s politi­cal economy and is highly recommended for China watchers. I would definitely recommend that you pick up a copy of Jha’s book. Brilliantly researched, it delves deep into both: the country’s economic narrative that helped China sustain a near 10 percent growth rate for more than three decades and the political narrative that China is an increasingly fragile state that remains wrapped in what economists say is nothing but an incomplete transition from a totalitarian to a democratic market economy.