The Pathway of Economic Reforms: A Comparative Study on China and India.

This paper compares the experiences of economic reforms in China and India. It argues that the developmental state model has more strengths than neoclassical economics in explaining the divergent economic performances of China and India during their economic reforms. The paper emphasizes the critical role played by the state and institutional contexts during China's and India's economic reforms. The analyses provide a serious critique on the one-dimensional logic of neoclassical development, but suggest that China's and India's pro-market policies during economic reforms were selectively formulated and implemented under some specific political and institutional preconditions. It seeks to explain China's rapid economic modernization and India's gradualism with the emphasis on their different institutional contexts, in particular, the changes of party politics, the evolving central-local relations, and bureaucratic and administrative efficiency etc. It argues that the superior economic performance of the Chinese economy is to a large extent the consequence of the strategic governmental interventions for certain systemic developmental objectives at three stages of economic reforms, and the formulation of and implementation of economic policies have been facilitated by special political bases and institutional arrangements such as its party system, the evolving central-local relations, and the bureaucratic and administrative efficiency etc. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]