Introduction

The story of China’s encounter with globalization is increasingly familiar: against the backdrop of comprehensive economic and social transformation, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is enjoying unprecedented rates of economic growth. This is due in part to a ‘reform and open door’ policy (gaike kaifang), introduced by Deng Xiaoping in 1979, that has attracted to China extraordinary amounts of foreign investment. This has led some scholars to compare the ‘economic miracle’ taking place in China with that of the European industrial revolution of the nineteenth century (Leonard, 2008; Kynge, 2006; Naughton, 2006), though the transformation of Europe did not occur at the same speed. The GDP growth rate of almost 10 per cent over a 20-year period completely changed China, releasing millions from poverty and prompting the largest rural-urban migration in history.