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Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong
Book
Carnegie China

Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom Is Wrong

China generates widely varying views on its economic and political prospects. This book is about why there are such differences and why the conventional wisdom is so often wrong.

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By Yukon Huang
Published on Jul 21, 2017

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The Asia Program in Washington studies disruptive security, governance, and technological risks that threaten peace, growth, and opportunity in the Asia-Pacific region, including a focus on China, Japan, and the Korean peninsula.

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Source: Oxford University Press

China’s rise is altering global power relations, reshaping economic debates, and commanding tremendous public attention. Despite extensive media and academic scrutiny, the conventional wisdom about China’s economy is often wrong. Cracking the China Conundrum provides a holistic and contrarian view of China's major economic, political, and foreign policy issues.

Yukon Huang trenchantly addresses widely accepted yet misguided views in the analysis of China’s economy. He examines arguments about the causes and effects of China’s possible debt and property market bubbles, trade and investment relations with the Western world, the links between corruption and political liberalization in a growing economy and Beijing’s more assertive foreign policies. Huang explains that such misconceptions arise in part because China’s economic system is unprecedented in many ways—namely because it’s driven by both the market and state—which complicates the task of designing accurate and adaptable analysis and research. Further, China’s size, regional diversity, and uniquely decentralized administrative system poses difficulties for making generalizations and comparisons from micro to macro levels when trying to interpret China’s economic state accurately.

This book not only interprets the ideologies that experts continue building misguided theories upon, but also examines the contributing factors to this puzzle. Cracking the China Conundrum provides an enlightening and corrective viewpoint on several major economic and political foreign policy concerns currently shaping China’s economic environment.

About the Author

Yukon Huang

Senior Fellow, Asia Program

Huang is a senior fellow in the Carnegie Asia Program where his research focuses on China’s economy and its regional and global impact.

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Yukon Huang
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Yukon Huang

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Hardback - $29.95
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Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

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