ABSTRACT
This chapter describes economic developments in China in their international context. It considers the actual and potential impact of events in contemporary China on the rest of the world and examines what has happened in reform-era China with events elsewhere. The chapter looks at the process of economic integration in southern China, as the economies of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan become increasingly interconnected and as a new economic region—"Greater China"—emerges as a significant actor in the global economy. Despite extraordinary changes in the Chinese countryside, everyday life is much the same. Collectives still play economic, political, and social roles; in fact as one China scholar has observed, the grip of the Party-state may have been loosened, but the "apparatus of authority and control is still in place." China's shift toward market socialism contains an inherent contradiction between economic transformation and political immobility.
