Reviews & Recommendations
London Review of Books | Review by Rebecca Karl | October 14, 2021
“Weber argues persuasively that their [young economists who prevented shock therapy in China] role in debates over economic reform has not been adequately recognised in China or elsewhere. She also makes a convincing case for the 1980s as a time when such debates were possible. Her efforts to interview the participants and her extensive research, in both public and private archives, make her account the standard against which future books will be measured.”
Dissent | Review by Jake Werner | October 14, 2021
“Weber offers a valuable corrective to such essentializing narratives. She provides a fine-grained account of the contentious economic reform debates that took place in China in the 1980s, and situates them in a larger historical and conceptual context. Unlike most of the former Soviet bloc and the former Third World, China did not suffer the debilitating effects of neoliberal shock therapy—the rapid transformation of a state-led economy to one dominated by market forces—and for Weber, the story of how China avoided this fate is key to what makes it different today.”
‘How China Avoided Soviet-Style Collapse’ | Noema Magazine | By Adam Tooze | September 10, 2021
“One of the great merits of Weber’s painstaking trawl through the historical record is that it redresses the balance. …she recuperates the historical significance of a generation of intellectuals whose careers were twice derailed, first by the Cultural Revolution and then by turmoil around Tiananmen.”
Adam Tooze’s ‘Chartbook’ | Review by Adam Tooze | September 16, 2021
“Weber’s book has been one of the most discussed of recent months.”
Branko Milanovic’s ‘globalinequality’ | Review by Branko Milanovic | June 1, 2021
“In an excellent book “How China Escaped Shock Therapy” at whose launch I was one of the discussants (together with Jamie Galbraith and Bin Wong) Isabella Weber discusses, among other things, how China escaped shock therapy and the Big Bang, and created, or stumbled upon, its own way to economic growth.”
Visegrad / Insight | Review by Zoltán Pogátsa | June 25, 2021
“The Chinese Economic Miracle was Based on Ignoring Advice from Central and Eastern Europe… China escaped shock therapy, as the title of Weber’s book underlines. Liberalisation took place, not in a single Big Bang, but gradually, over a period of decades, as Weber demonstrates.”
DAWN | Review by Umair Javed | August 9, 2021
“An excellent book by political economist Isabella Weber, titled How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate provides an intellectual history of how China steered through the post-Mao period by undertaking a series of reforms that eventually set the stage for rapid economic growth witnessed during the preceding two decades. At the core of Weber’s documentation is the role of ideas and how key policymakers are influenced by competing notions of pragmatism, tradition, and theory.”
Canadian Dimension | Review by Michael Roberts | December 21, 2021
“Weber’s book is insightful in showing the debates on policy among the CCP leaders about what direction to go and the factors that dominated their thoughts.
The China Journal | Review by Bert Hofman | Volume 87, 2022
“Isabella M. Weber’s book is a highly readable and valuable contribution to the debate on China’s early reform efforts. The book’s main contribution is its detailed account of the domestic debate on economic reforms between the gradualist reformers and rapid reformers in the 1980s, as well as tracing the intellectual antecedents of both groups.”
Boston Review | Review by Macabe Keliher | July 1, 2021
“Weber has written an illuminating book on China’s resistance to neoliberal economic thought.”
Dziennik Gazeta Prawna | Review by Rafał Woś | June 11, 2021
“Z wielkim zainteresowaniem zerkam w kierunku nowej książki „How China Escaped Shock Therapy?” (Jak Chiny uniknęły terapii szokowej?) Isabelli Weber, ekonomistki z Uniwersytetu Massachusetts w Amherst. No właśnie. Jak oni to zrobili? Dlaczego jest tak, że kraje takie jak Polska, Węgry czy Jugosławia (nie mówiąc już o biednej Rosji) musiały najpierw zaliczyć glebę i znieść wiele niepotrzebnych społecznych katuszy, zanim przestawiły się na gospodarkę rynkową i (jako tako) się w niej odnalazły? Chiny miały inaczej. Też skoczyły w kapitalizm. Ale na własnych prawach.”
Chinese Canadian Voice | Review by Western Ontario Press | June 7, 2021
“看一个西人谈中国经济改革，笔者原初真没有抱多大希望，究竟自己是在那个年代那个过度成长过来的。但是，好不容易收到麻省大学教授Isabella M. Weber的新书How China Escaped Shock Therapy—The Market Reform Debate，翻开几页竟然就让笔者再也放不下，觉得角度很特别，观点也很新颖和客观，让笔者刷新不少认知，在此鼎力推荐.”
LSE Review of Books | Review by George Hong Jiang | September 7, 2021
“...few have looked into it as meticulously as Isabella M. Weber. In her wide-reaching How China Escaped Shock Therapy, we find a map which sheds light on how the Chinese government decided on an ‘experimental gradualism’ (146) rather than shock therapy under the influence of Chinese traditional wisdom and contemporary intellectuals.”
The China Quarterly | Review by Carl Riskin | Volume 247, 2021
“Weber presents an exceedingly thorough, nuanced and even exciting account of the debate, which was fluid and constantly changing. The reader feels immersed in its day-to-day flow and even though the outcome is known, Weber instills a sense of suspense about what would happen in the end.”
The Nation | Review by Andrew B. Liu | February 21, 2022
“Widening the cast of characters beyond Mao and Deng to other factions within the state, Kelly and Weber show how China’s political economy was shaped by vibrant internal debates and profound intellectual shifts over multiple generations, complicating received views about the contours of Chinese communism.”
New Left Review | Review by Joel Andreas | July/Aug, 2021
“The detailed analysis of the 1980s market-reform debates offered by How China Escaped Shock Therapy is insightful and illuminating, and Weber’s evidence for the roles played by economists in providing theories and policy suggestions to key party leaders is especially helpful.”
Recommendations
Foreign Policy’s ‘Summer Reading List’ | Recommended by Adam Tooze | July 2, 2021
“Weber’s book offers a fascinating account of struggles over economic policy in China in the 1980s.” (Chartbook #37)
The Financial Times’ ‘Summer Books of 2021: Economics’ | Recommended by Martin Wolf | June 1, 2021
“China’s advance has been the transformative economic story of the past four decades. But why did China adopt its incremental strategy of “reform and opening up”? The German-born Weber, now at Amherst, provides a well-researched answer: the Chinese state “uses the market as a tool in the pursuit of its larger development goals”. Above all, by eschewing “shock therapy”, it sought to protect “the economy’s commanding heights” from destabilising change.”
Project Syndicate | Recommended by James K. Galbraith | November 17, 2020
“This is a great work of economics and history... Weber shows how close the Chinese came in the 1980s to taking the catastrophic Russian path, and documents how and why they chose gradualism with price and exchange controls instead – a decision that was essential to the country’s rise.”
The Wire China's ‘Book Recommendations for the 100th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’ | Recommended by Alec Ash | August 29, 2021
“Arguably the most crucial inflection point in the history of the CCP was not its victory in the civil war, or Mao’s socialist revolution that followed, but what happened after Mao died and the nation transitioned toward market economics under Deng Xiaoping. Most history books portray that as a sudden sea-change in approach, but Isabella Weber’s insightful study lifts the lid on the internal debate that took place over how quickly or slowly to open up the economy."
Folha de S.Paulo’s ‘Veja Livros e Séries para Entender o Mundo em 2021’ | Recommended by Tatiana Prazeres | December 22, 2021
“Isabella Weber lança novas luzes sobre o processo de reforma e abertura econômica do país e mostra como a China buscou aumentar sua integração à economia mundial, preservando características essenciais do seu modelo político.”
Promarket’s ‘The Best Political Economy Books of 2021’ | Recommended by Asher Schechter | December 22, 2021
“Weber, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, offers an original account of the philosophical differences and internal discussions regarding the relationship between state and market that took place in China during this crucial period of economic reforms and helped shape its idiosyncratic approach to free market capitalism.”
Lone Conservative’s ‘Three Books Everyone Should Read Before the End of August’ | Review by Fabio Ashtar Telarico | August 9, 2021
“An assistant professor at Amherst, Isabella Weber is a relatively new voice in the economic-policy debate on China. Nonetheless, her How China Escaped Shock Therapy is one of the best recent books on the ‘China Model.’ The book shakes at the foundations of many conservatives’ long-held assumptions on the link between markets, wealth, and a thriving democracy. Weber explains how communist China evaded the shock therapy the West imposed on Eastern Europe and, thus, developed an alternative.”
