ABSTRACT
Since the turn of the 21st century, a distinctive Chinese variety of industrial capitalism has taken shape. In this chapter, we trace the contours of China’s emergent industrial economy, giving special attention to the role of the information technology (IT) industry. Throughout China’s reform era, the IT industry has often been a forerunner of broader trends in the industrial economy, and this continues to be true today. For most of the socialist period, development was equated with large, heavy industrial plants. Even under market transition, the Chinese government at first maintained its faith in guided development and invested resources in large, state-owned firms in the hope of creating “national champions.”
