Chinese Village, Global Market

"In the early 1960s, starving refugees from Dongguan County in southern Guangdong were risking their lives to escape to nearby Hong Kong. In the three decades since 1980 Yantian, a Guangdong village, grew from a small agricultural brigade to a thriving modern community with 80,000 people producing goods for the world. Tony Saich and Biliang Hu explain how the economy, society, and governing structures have developed during the changes." Ezra F. Vogel, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus, Harvard University

"Chinese Village, Global Market: New Collectives and Rural Development is a fascinating study of the transformation of a rural village into one of China's major industrial and export centers. The innovation that made this transformation possible occurred through the interaction of local leadership with both the central government and the globalizing world economy. The policies of the central government that facilitated this transformation are well known. Far less well known is how so many of the initiatives actually originated with local people, initiatives that affected not only the economy, but also how society is governed at the local level and how public goods from education to health care are provided." Dwight H. Perkins, Harold Hitchings Burbank Research Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University