The Rise of China, Inc.: How the Chinese Communist Party Transformed China into a Giant Corporation Shaomin Li,. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 346 pp. $29.99 (pbk). ISBN 9781009074926

The Rise of China, Inc.: How the Chinese Communist Party Transformed China into a Giant Corporation Shaomin Li. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 346 pp. $29.99 (pbk). ISBN 9781009074926

This book addresses broad themes of the CCP's industrial policy, government–business relations, and the role of political, economic, legal and cultural factors in China's rise, and its impact on foreign countries. The basic argument is that “successive Chinese leaderships increasingly realized that they should grab more and more power for their own control and benefit. … As a result, China has turned into one giant corporation run by the CCP” (p. 130), which he dubs China, Inc.

According to Li, China, Inc. is a country-sized company town in which the CCP controls where people live, what they can do, whether they can travel abroad, etc. “After four decades of learning by trial and error, the CCP has achieved total control over every aspect of society, including all resources, firms, and the population” (pp. 153–154). It is a vision of a totalitarian regime from the perspective of business organization: “To a great extent, SOEs are business units, state-related firms are subsidiaries, Chinese-owned private firms are joint ventures, and foreign firms are franchisees of the party-state, with the party leader being the CEO of China, Inc.” (p. 154). Like...