Bulls in the China Shop and Other Sino-American Business Encounters, and; Joint Ventures in the People's Republic of China: The Control of Foreign Direct Investment under Socialism (review)

258 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 intellectual ingredients. For both those who teach the political economy of contemporary China and those non-China specialists who are concerned with the transition from state socialist economies, this book is unquestionably a must read. Xiaobo Lu University of California, Berkeley NOTES l.See Guan Shan and Jiang Hong, eds., Kuaikuaijingjixue (Bloc economics) (Beijing: Haiyang Chubanshe, 1990), pp. 37-67. 2.See Solinger, "China's Transients and the State: A Form of Civil Society?" Politics and Society 21, no. 1 (March 1993): 91-122. 3.On different views on the "emerging" civil society in China, see Thomas Gold, "The Resurgence of Civil Society in China," Journal ofDemocracy1, no.i, (1991): 18-31; H. Chamberlain, "On the Search for Civil Society in China," Modern China, 19, no. 2, (1993): 199-215; L. Sullivan, "The Emergence of Civil Society in China," in Tony Saich, ed., The Chinese People's Movement (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1990) pp. 126-144; F. Wakeman, "The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate," Modern China, 19, no. 2 (1993): 108-138. 4.Recognizing that without a solution to this persistent problem the market cannot be well nurtured, the Chinese leadership most recently began to draft a plan to restructure the taxation system, separating the central taxes and local taxes as well as tax administration. It is designed to solve the "mutual revenue squeeze" between central and local governments, fundamentally changing the economic relations between the two. See People's Daily, 27 August 1993, overseas edition. Randall E. Stross. Bulls in the China Shop and Other Sino-American Business Encounters Pantheon, 1991; Reprint, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1993. xx> 33° PP- Paperback $14.95. Margaret M. Pearson. Joint Ventures in the People's Republic ofChina: The Control ofForeign DirectInvestment under Socialism Princeton University Press, 1991. 335 pp. $39.95. copyright1994 by University of Hawai'i Press Before reading a word oftext in either Joint Ventures in the People's Republic of China or Bulls in the China Shop, a quick glance at their respective footnote sections tells the reader what lies ahead. Pearson's notes, citing numerous Chinese books and articles as well as her own on-site interviews, portend a detailed academic investigation of Chinese political and foreign corporate attitudes toward Western investment in China in the 1980s; Stross's list ofmainly popular and business magazines and newspapers hints at a more lighthearted though no less informative analysis of many of the same topics. The content of the respective Reviews 259 books reflects the strength ofthe authors' research as they deliver descriptive details and analysis of the Chinese foreign economic scene up to the year 1990. Pearson, a political scientist at Dartmouth, divides her study to focus on four elements offoreign investment in China: the bargaining power ofthe Chinese state, Chinese domestic politics, the Chinese domestic economy, and foreign investor goals. In taking the reader down each ofthese avenues ofinvestigation, she provides valuable empirical evidence to paint a picture of slow but steady acceptance ofboth capitalist investment and Western technology. For Pearson, China's power to negotiate with potential foreign investors is based on this socialist country's ability to control approval and regulation of nearly all foreign investment. Tools include the management ofthe country's foreign exchange, a political reach down to the level of the firm, and the ability to regulate access to the domestic Chinese market. This last point, implied sales to China's "market of one billion," has proved a powerful if sometimes illusory force for capturing foreign investor interest in Chinese economic development. A brief, informative historical analysis of Chinese foreign economic policy precedes Pearson's discussion ofthe modern conservative/reformist clash over the initial Chinese opening to foreign investment in the late 1970s. Pearson observes , perhaps with some degree ofovergeneralization, that "conservatives voiced little public opposition to the foreign investment policy after the early years" (p. 67), as these elements of the Chinese political leadership confined their attacks to foreign "unhealthy tendencies" that weakened respect for authority and for traditions of thrift, self-sacrifice, and conservative sexual mores. Continued liberalization of the investment environment through 1993, even in the wake of the...