China's rapid economic growth during the past two decades has occurred without the systematic privatization programs once urged upon the former Communist regimes of Europe and the USSR. Some observers have argued that this shows that changes in property rights are not important in reforming a command economy; others insist that in China a façade of public ownership hides a variety of ownership forms that are essentially private in nature. This volume seeks to adjudicate these opposing views by clarifying conceptually and factually the pattern of property rights changes in the contemporary Chinese economy.

The contributors to this volume, from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology, have all conducted fieldwork in China on specific economic sectors or enterprise types. Working with a common definitional framework derived from the work of the institutional economist Harold Demsetz, they seek to establish which actors exercise what kinds of rights in practice over what kinds of economic assets, documenting changes through time. Most of the essays examine the rural industrial economy - the fastest-growing sector - or the "spin-off" economic enterprises and activities of public enterprises and institutions.

The research presented in this volume supports several specific conclusions. First, industrializing rural regions have emerged with diametrically opposed property rights regimes: in one kind of region public ownership only marginally different in form from that of the Mao years has predominated; in other regions wholly new forms of private household and foreign-funded enterprise have arisen. Second, the regimes of all the examined regions and sectors have evolved continually since the outset of reform, and in recent years change has accelerated because of the increased pressures of competitive markets. Third, in the evolution of property rights the distinction between public and private is not crucial in differentiating the key arrangements; instead, a more finely differentiated set of gradations from "public" to "private" prove central to the story of the Chinese economy.

In the area of economics, Jean OI's focus on loval self government links the political dilemmas of the previous section with the concrete economic problems of the locality in contemporary China. WIth her customary insight and skilful use of field reserach, Oi paints a complex picture of local development.

In this volume of concise and informative essays, leading specialists examine the nature, impact and prospects of China's post-1978 party±market symbiosis. Criticizing the collapse thesis derived from Eastern European conditions, it argues that economic liberalization has created new forms of interdependency between the state and market in China. The corollary is that party cadres have developed a new and useful role as facilitators of market transactions.

Since China did not take the big bang route to economic liberalization, cadres retain great discretion over the fate of fledgling private enterprise. So, despite their objective economic importance, China's entrepreneurs remain politically passive (Young's chapter). Oi argues that it is naive to assume that the state merely encumbers and preys upon private enterprise. She shows how village businesses are helped by a primitive form of `administrative guidance' commonly associated with Japanese industrial policy (pp. 69±72). From the perspective of property rights and their reassignment, Walder's essay demonstrates the spatial redistribution of power favouring provincial cadres (vis-aÁ -vis Beijing) and local and enterprise level cadres. Owing to her gradual reformism, China has not suffered the scale of social dislocation witnessed in Russia's transition. Nevertheless, within the overall improvement of living standards, reform has produced social discontent from those who have lost status and income, notably public sector employees (see the essays by Ma, Unger and Kent). In playing a facilitating role for market transactions, cadres have derived considerable personal profit. This `visible hand' of the cadres has attracted much popular resentment and undermined the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) now trapped between its egalitarian roots and the international democratization wave.

While overt opposition has been effectively contained since 1989, economic liberalization has nevertheless created the potential for further social protest. Much will depend on the CCP's readiness to accommodate nascent social forces (with workers, as discussed by Chan, for example) into some meaningful channels of consultation and grievance redress, which in turn raises questions about the future shape of the regime and the role of the party within it