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On Isabella Weber's How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate, London, New York: Routledge, 2021
Correspondence: imogen.liu@maastrichtuniversity.nl
I begin my reflections on Isabella Weber's excellent How China Escaped Shock Therapy with a personal anecdote. In the late 1970s through to the mid-1980s, my father worked in the import department of the China National Technical Import and Export Corporation. Established in 1952, it grew to become one of the largest importers of heavy equipment in the later years of Mao's life when China started opening up to the rest of the world. The country was importing large amounts of heavy machinery to meet the growing demands of industrial expansion after years of economic isolationism. In the year 1979 alone, heavy machinery and electrical imports nearly tripled in volume and contributed to the running trade deficit, and as is noted in How China Escaped Shock Therapy, to a balance of payments crisis (p. 105; National Annual Statistical Bulletin, 1978–1992).
My father worked in a role in a sector that in many ways lies at the epicentre of China's economic transition. What has resonated about this book both on a personal level and within this current historical juncture of monetary hegemony, rising inflation, and political and environmental instability, is that any form of market transition, far from being a principally macroeconomic issue, requires institutional adjustment that reflects the material and historical base of economic organization.
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