Book review: How China escaped shock therapy: the market reform debate by Isabella M. Weber

In How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate, Isabella M. Weber explores the contestations behind China’s path to economic reform, showing how it committed to ‘experimental gradualism’ rather than the shock therapy of immediate market liberalisation. This meticulous and wide-reaching book sheds light on the history of marketisation reforms in China and the factors that led it to escape shock therapy, writes George Hong Jiang. How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate. Isabella M. Weber. Routledge. 2021.