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This article uses legal archives from Liangshan 梁山 county, Shandong, to explore the ambiguous position of rural markets in China during the Great Leap Forward campaign (1958–1962). These testimonies, though sparse, show that negotiations at a local, indeed personal, level underpinned the symbiosis between the "second economy" of illicit trade and the party-state's putatively socialist political economy. Liangshan's gray market bridged the gap between the party-state's Sputnik promises and catastrophic realities, contributing twofold to the party-state's political survival. First, illicit commerce helped famine survivors, including local cadres, obtain desperately needed sustenance; these cadres' support of trading villagers despite top-down restrictions on such transactions likely helped them retain local moral authority after the Leap. Second, the intermittent formal prosecution of "profiteers" in the ritualized space of the county courtroom projected justice, stability, and coercive power, which also contributed to the party's continuing hold on authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The basic facts of China's economic development have called into question Western transition economic theory, most famously presented in the works of János Kornai. On the other hand, the three most representative approaches to explaining China's development experience have variously emphasized the resource endowment structure, or the property rights system, or the incentive mechanism behind the behavior of local governments, as the key to China's economic development. Although they focus on different dimensions of China's economic practices, they ultimately converge on the logic of marketism as the explanation. The "social science of practice" approach proposed by Philip Huang is distinguished from these orthodox theories in that, first, it attends to the rise of the huge informal economy in China and reveals the historical roots of contemporary social inequality. This approach has three closely related characteristics: theoretical formulations based on analyses of paradoxical phenomena, a broad historical perspective on current problems, and the idea of substantive justice. The main significance of this approach lies not only in its insightful and practice-focused understanding of the key realities that have been ignored by mainstream theories, but, more importantly, in its multiple inspirations for constructing a social science theory that incorporates Chinese subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In transitional economies, the governing central authorities impose heavy regulatory burdens on firms, which results in great costs for business in terms of time, resources, and other constraints. However, quality assurance through decentralized institutions (such as private certified management standards) is rapidly becoming more prevalent. This study examines the contingent implications that such decentralized institutions have for centralized regulation by focusing on the relationship between international certifications and regulatory burdens. As two prominent features of the institutional environment in emerging economies, the threat of competition from the informal sector and corruption may influence the relationship between international certifications and regulatory burdens. These features are therefore examined in terms of their moderating roles. The study draws on institutional and signaling theories to interpret data from a survey conducted by the World Bank in China in 2012. The empirical results show that international certification is negatively associated with regulatory burdens. This relationship is strengthened by the threat of competition from the informal sector, but mitigated by a corrupt business environment. Our study contributes to the institutional literature and to research on international certifications, and it has implications for both business management and governmental policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]