ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides through most periods of PRC history, the types of actors: farmers, rural cadres, nonstate managers, country traders, planners, tax collectors, budgeteers, urban executives, bankers, technicians, long-distance traders, service providers, and migrants. It presents data on rural factories' production, prove that growth accelerated during the early 1970s, long before 1978, in the places where most Chinese then lived. The book deals with the roots of reform, the main approach is thematic. Most people think of China's reforms as generally economic and centrally led–but in practice, they began in new local politics. Increased wealth generated change, and the causes of China's rise are political in "grassroots" rather than Beijing politics. Local leaders then had fewer incentives to try policy experiments.
