One economist’s four-decade archive of how China grew out of the plan.
Barry Naughton is the economist who supplied the canonical account of how China’s economy moved from plan to market — and, three decades later, the most detailed English-language study of the industrial policy that was supposed not to exist. He is the So Kwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and a Senior Fellow at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, where he co-leads research on Chinese science, technology, innovation, and industrial policy and contributes quarterly analyses to the China Leadership Monitor.
From the Third Front to the dual track
Naughton’s scholarship begins with the command economy itself: early work on the Third Front campaign (1988/1991) and a Yale economics PhD in 1986 following dissertation research inside China in 1982. The book that defined the field was Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993 (1995), which won the Ohira Memorial Prize in 1996. Its argument — that reform worked through dual-track transition mechanics, with the market sector growing up around the shrinking plan rather than replacing it through a single shock — became the standard explanation of why China’s transition produced growth instead of collapse, and the generalizable lesson economists cite for transition economics.
The textbook and the translation
For students of the field, Naughton wrote the standard textbook: The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth (2006), revised as The Chinese Economy: Adaptation and Growth (2018), translated into Chinese. He also translated, edited, and annotated the collected writings of the Chinese reform economist Wu Jinglian (Wu Jinglian: Voice of Reform in China, MIT Press). He testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2004, 2007, and 2011, and edited State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation, and the Chinese Miracle (2015, with Kellee S. Tsai).
The 2021 book and its contested thesis
The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy, 1978 to 2020 (UNAM/Lynne Rienner, 2021) is Naughton’s second canonical contribution — a four-decade account built from policy-document research and long industrial and trade data series. Its thesis, as stated in the book and characterized in the Pacific Affairs 2023 review: the rapid growth of 1978–2005 ran through seven waves of reform in the absence of industrial policy — defined by Naughton as “selective, targeted government intervention that attempts to alter the sectoral structure of production.” Industrial policy, on that definition, emerged only after 2005. The review quotes his central conclusion: China’s “world-shaking economic success cannot be attributed to industrial policy.” The post-2006 revival of industrial policy coincided with the growth slowdown, and what he calls “Industrial Policy 3.0” — government guidance funds and a techno-nationalist drive — is, in his account, an unprecedented and risky gamble to move directly to the technological frontier.
The full text of the 2021 book was not available to the editors; the thesis above follows the book’s own statement and the Pacific Affairs review, not a reading of the text.
This periodization is disputed. Developmental-state scholars argue that sectoral targeting (autos, semiconductors, the “pillar industries” programs) did exist in the 1980s and 1990s; the disagreement is partly about what counts as “industrial policy.” It is recorded here as a definitional dispute, not adjudicated. Naughton is presented as an analyst of industrial policy, not an advocate for or against it; his positions are analytical theses, attributed throughout.
At a glance
- Discipline: economics — Chinese economic transition (1978–present)
- Method: policy-document research; four-decade industrial and trade data series
- Major works: Growing Out of the Plan (1995, Ohira Prize 1996); The Chinese Economy (2006/2018); The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy, 1978 to 2020 (2021); Wu Jinglian: Voice of Reform in China (MIT Press, translated/edited/annotated); co-editor, State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation, and the Chinese Miracle (2015); quarterly China Leadership Monitor analyses
- Current affiliation: So Kwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy; Senior Fellow, UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC)
- Note: contribution-date affiliations differ — the 1995 book predates UCSD; the 2006 textbook and 2021 book were written at UCSD GPS
Sources
- U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission witness biography (2020)
- UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation — people page
- Pacific Affairs 2023 review of The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy, 1978 to 2020