Shareholding System Reform in China: Privatizing by Groping for Stones

This insightful book demonstrates how China has emerged as one of the world's largest privatizing countries within a decade. Since the 1980s, there has been a global wave of transfer of state assets to private hands. China is a relatively late participant of this worldwide trend, yet, in the last decade it has emerged as one of the largest privatizing countries. Shu-Yun Ma argues that China's privatization is not based on any grand blueprint; rather, it is privatization by 'groping for stones to cross the river', a well-known metaphor often attributed to Deng Xiaoping, meaning that the reform simply proceeds on a trial-and-error basis without being guided by any theory. With original case studies, including one on China's first industrial shareholding enterprise, this informative book, will be of great interest to the academic community, China observers and policymakers as well as financial analysts.