Chinese Entrepreneurs Between Power and Dependency by Jasmine Wang

Chinese Entrepreneurs Between Power and Dependency by Jasmine Wang

This book examines the important elite group of newly rich private entrepreneurs who have contributed to lifting China from relative backwardness to an economic giant over the last four decades. Their rise coincides with the Chinese Communist Party's "reform and opening up" policy initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, which fundamentally transformed China's economic landscape and created unprecedented opportunities for private wealth accumulation.

Drawing on extensive interviews and observations of more than forty entrepreneurs who rank among the one percent richest people in China (based on estimates from the renowned Hurun Report), the book offers rare insider perspectives on this influential yet understudied group. These voices reveal the complex realities of building private enterprise within an authoritarian political system, navigating the delicate balance between entrepreneurial ambition and state control.Placing their experiences into a bricolage of historical, social, and political contexts, the book develops a theoretical understanding centered on power and dependency. The entrepreneurs' self-perceptions and narratives illuminate how China's super-rich negotiate their position between market forces and political imperatives, offering crucial insights into the dynamics that have shaped contemporary China's remarkable economic transformation.

This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Chinese politics, business, and economics, as well as anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of wealth creation and state-market relations in contemporary China.

"A truly insightful bookWang finds that entrepreneurs are a marginal group largely dependent on those in power, exercising little influence over public affairs, and holding few hopes for themselves or their country. Her interviews go beyond these particular findings to reflect on the nature of society and the structure of power in China, through the lens of its business elites. The result is a book that paints a comprehensive picture of political relations within elite society in contemporary China.”

- John Fitzgerald AM, Emeritus Professor at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne

“Jasmine Wang's ground-breaking book demonstrates an impressive familiarity with the literature in anthropology, history, political economy, comparative politics, and sociology on private entrepreneurship, state-society relations, economic transitions, and authoritarianism. Besides her theoretical insights, Wang's empirical evidence — interviews with private entrepreneurs — has significantly enriched our knowledge of the experience, concerns, calculations, and values of Chinese private entrepreneurs."

- Minxin Pei, author of The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism

Jasmine Wang holds a PhD in anthropology from the Department of Anthropology, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.