China’s Accession to the WTO and the Collapse That Never Was

Abstract

This article examines the application of neoclassical economics to the discussion of China’s transition to the market in the 1990s and its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. It shows how this theory shaped, and misled, forecasts of the impact of that accession and of China’s subsequent economic performance. It discusses the debate between mini-bang and big-bang transition policies in the 1990s and shows the two sides shared far more in common than separated them. Both sides misestimated, in fact grossly underestimated, the dynamism of China’s economy. It shows how widely anticipated predictions of crisis and collapse with China’s WTO accession were the natural result of the assumptions of the neoclassical model. It suggests that a rival model of market transition based on Bukharin and Kuznets has much to offer. JEL Classification: P22, P26, P21, B24