ABSTRACT
China's private economy has developed during the transformation from a product economy of unitary composition into a planned commodity economy of coexisting multiple economic sectors. Urban economic reform in China has hewed out any sharp and novel borderline between the 'state' and a distinctive sphere of 'society' among its subjects in this particular realm. This chapter argues that the arrangements of the reform era have merged, if under vastly shifted conditions, the entities we call "state" and "society". For the Chinese urban "entrepreneur" of today is neither wholly a private operator nor a member of the state; to be financially successful in the cities, he/she must become involved in both of these spheres. The chapter explains some features of the ambiguity in the relationship between bureaucrat and merchant, and to show how the institutions of the "reform" period have so far served to perpetuate the stasis of that relationship.
