Conclusion

Summary

The main conclusion of this book is that the development of the political market is an important contributing factor to the demise of the central planning system in China's reform era. To a great extent it is the restructuring and erosion of authority relations in the political process that have reoriented particularistic state actions in the distribution of resources, opportunities, and levies; and it is partly through or due to the brokerage of state agents in these areas that economic actors have moved away from the plan and created outside it a new economic space as the center of their profit-oriented activities. This analysis recognizes the view that the growth of exchange relations and the concurrent intensification of competition among economic actors have become a major driving force of economic change. It also echoes the argument that promarket policies of local governments have played an instrumental role in transforming the Chinese economy. Yet it seeks to further these insights from the economic competition thesis and the local developmental state thesis, outlined in the introductory chapter, with an account of what is underexplored in both of them – i.e., growing exchange and competition in the political arena. In this chapter, I recount the mechanisms of dual marketization and discuss their relevance for understanding the process and outcome of China's recent economic institutional change.