China's Growing Pains: Towards the (Global) Political Economy of Domestic Social Instability

China began what is commonly referred to as the reform (gaige) and opening (kaifeng) period at the end of the 1970s on the basis of a strategy that was incremental, experimental and localized. The basic approach was captured by the aphorism, bu pa man, jiu pa zhan - don't worry about going forward slowly, as long as you are going forward. Possible policies were tried out in specific regions and provinces, adjusted on the basis of the experience, discarded if problematic and gradually applied nationally if seen as viable. The effect of this approach was that China's reform process into the 1990s had been predominantly open-ended. By avoiding a close conformity to either a command economy model or the dominant capitalist models of developmental economics of the time, China confounded expectations of its economic growth potential. According to its own statistics, China has maintained growth levels in excess of 7% and usually greater than 10% for more than 20 years. In this sense, an open-ended approach has been a strength that has allowed for a degree of pragmatism that has contributed to sustained large-scale economic growth. However, the form of that open-endedness must also be considered a source of vulnerability. International Politics (2008) 45, 413-438. doi:10.1057/ip.2008.12