China's Capitalism

The paper combines a broad theoretical framework of comparable capitalism with the insights from new economic sociology and new institutional economics to understand and assess mechanisms of China's evolution. During the last three decades China's economic system has undergone a great transformation from communism to some form of state-led capitalism. The evolutionary approach that balanced the interests of economic and political actors led to the gradual introduction of a capitalist institutional framework, but also preserved the immense role of the Communist Party. In the course of the reforms, former direct control over the economy has been replaced by more discretionary measures like corporate governance (which conserved the extensive patronage system), and Party affiliation (which allowed for political penetration of the private sector). Supplying examples of mounting economic waste, I argue that China's present variety of capitalism is hardly an optimal solution, and the further development will strictly depend on state and Party withdrawal from economic contorl