{"product_id":"how-china-escaped-the-poverty-trap-9781501764561","title":"How China Escaped the Poverty Trap","description":"\u003cp\u003eAcclaimed as game changing and field shifting, \u003ci\u003eHow China Escaped the Poverty Trap\u003c\/i\u003e advances a new paradigm in the political economy of development and sheds new light on China's rise. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHow can poor and weak societies escape poverty traps? Political economists have traditionally offered three answers: stimulate growth first, build good institutions first, or some fortunate nations inherited good institutions that led to growth. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYuen Yuen Ang rejects all three schools of thought and their underlying assumptions: linear causation, a mechanistic worldview, and historical determinism. Instead, she launches a new paradigm grounded in complex adaptive systems, which embraces the reality of interdependence and humanity's capacity to innovate. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCombining this original lens with more than 400 interviews with Chinese bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, Ang systematically reenacts the complex process that turned China from a communist backwater into a global juggernaut in just 35 years. Contrary to popular misconceptions, she shows that what drove China's great transformation was not centralized authoritarian control, but directed improvisation--top-down directions from Beijing paired with bottom-up improvisation among local officials. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer analysis reveals two broad lessons on development. First, transformative change requires an adaptive governing system that empowers ground-level actors to create new solutions for evolving problems. Second, the first step out of the poverty trap is to use what you have--harnessing existing resources to kick-start new markets, even if that means defying first-world norms. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBold and meticulously researched, \u003ci\u003eHow China Escaped the Poverty Trap\u003c\/i\u003e opens up a whole new avenue of thinking for scholars, practitioners, and anyone seeking to build adaptive systems.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eYuen Yuen Ang is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow and the inaugural recipient of the Theda Skocpol Prize for Emerging Scholar, awarded by the American Political Science Association.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50561714323730,"sku":"9781501764561","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_6b341b31-cb43-4db4-a96a-aecb6170efa9.jpg?v=1737238670","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/how-china-escaped-the-poverty-trap-9781501764561","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}