Thirty years of legal and economic reform in China: growth, institutions, and laws

Abstract

China's impressive economic growth over three decades has seemingly occurred in the absence of a strong legal system. This paper views China's reform process over the past three decades as one that has entailed a gradual introduction of market forces into areas of the economy, which requires both dismantling the structure of the centrally planned economy and developing market-oriented institutions. This paper argues that China's transition is premised on a set of informal, and increasingly formal, institutions that provided incentives during the process of gradual liberalization. Therefore, institutional developments were not absent. The exploration of the interplay between growth and institutions leads to the conclusion that continued economic growth in China will depend on implementing legal reforms better suited to the nature of the decentralized economy, hastened by the introduction of international economic laws and rules with greater global integration.