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<p><b>WINNER OF THE 2017 PETER KATZENSTEIN BOOK PRIZE<br> <br> "BEST OF BOOKS IN 2017" BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS<br> <br> WINNER OF THE 2018 VIVIAN ZELIZER PRIZE BEST BOOK AWARD IN ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY</b><br> <br> <br> <br> "<i><b>How China Escaped the Poverty Trap</b></i> truly offers game-changing ideas for the analysis and implementation of socio-economic development and should have a major impact across many social sciences."<br> <br> ? Zelizer Best Book in Economic Sociology Prize Committee</p> <p>Acclaimed as "game changing" and "field shifting," <b><i>How China Escaped the Poverty Trap</i></b> advances a new paradigm in the political economy of development and sheds new light on China's rise.</p> <p>How can poor and weak societies escape poverty traps? Political economists have traditionally offered three answers: "stimulate growth first," "build good institutions first," or "some fortunate nations inherited good institutions that led to growth."</p> <p>Yuen Yuen Ang rejects all three schools of thought and their underlying assumptions: linear causation, a mechanistic worldview, and historical determinism. Instead, she launches a new paradigm grounded in complex adaptive systems, which embraces the reality of interdependence and humanity's capacity to innovate.</p> <p>Combining this original lens with more than 400 interviews with Chinese bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, Ang systematically reenacts the complex process that turned China from a communist backwater into a global juggernaut in just 35 years. Contrary to popular misconceptions, she shows that what drove China's great transformation was not centralized authoritarian control, but "directed improvisation"--top-down directions from Beijing paired with bottom-up improvisation among local officials.</p> <p>Her analysis reveals two broad lessons on development. First, transformative change requires an adaptive governing system that empowers ground-level actors to create new solutions for evolving problems. Second,