ABSTRACT
The household responsibility system (HRS), dual-track pricing, township and village enterprises (TVEs), and special economic zones (SEZs) are all household names among development specialists. The two common characteristics of all these reforms are that they took place in post-reform China, and that they were innovative “hybrid” solutions to both the economic and political problems facing Chinese policy makers. Since the late 1970s these reforms have helped China to achieve rapid economic growth and lift hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty, achievements which have generally surprised most observers, including economists, because many of China’s development strategies seem to be unorthodox and in defiance of conventional theories of growth and development.
