ABSTRACT
As China's government leads the transition away from socialist planning, how does it build the regulatory institutions that it needs to manage the new market economy? There are few more important questions – without the right institutions in place China's remarkable two decades of economic development will falter. This book attempts to explain institutional development in one small part of China's new economy: the stock market. It details developments from the first issue of corporate equity in 1984 to the end of 2002, by which time the market had grown to be worth some 17 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). While the book's central focus is the institutional development of the market – in particular, the development of regulation and the organs mandated to regulate – it also looks in detail at the policy-making process that governed the market's development. It explains how government officials in different parts of the state competed to orient the regulation to support their own particular interests, and examines the problems that resulted. The first section of the book introduces the theoretical framework employed and the main actors.
