MPhil in PP and PhD in PP students only
Abstract:
In this talk, Adam Liu will highlight the key takeaways of his current book project, tentatively titled “Authoritarian Markets: The Boom and Busts of China’s Local State Banks.” In a nutshell, using the case of Chinese banking, he argues that “limited government” or “good governance”—the conventional wisdom of the political economy literature—were never the foundations of markets in the party-state; elite bargaining and bureaucratic mobilizations were. They help explain both the mirage of prosperity in the past several decades as well as the deluge of economic challenges the country faces now: the two foundations have both withered.
National University of Singapore
Adam Liu studies Chinese politics and political economy. He is currently working on two sets of questions: (1) the political foundations of China’s domestic markets, (2) the micro-foundations of the country’s foreign policies. The former has culminated mainly in a just-completed book manuscript, while the latter consists of journal articles that have received wide media attention. Moving forward, he has started a second book project, which examines the cultural foundations of Chinese politics and policy making, from past to present.
In this talk, Adam Liu will highlight the key takeaways of his current book project, tentatively titled “Authoritarian Markets: The Boom and Busts of China’s Local State Banks.” In a nutshell, using the case of Chinese banking, he argues that “limited government” or “good governance”—the conventional wisdom of the political economy literature—were never the foundations of markets in the party-state; elite bargaining and bureaucratic mobilizations were. They help explain both the mirage of prosperity in the past several decades as well as the deluge of economic challenges the country faces now: the two foundations have both withered.