Commodifying Communism: Business, Trust, and Politics in a Chinese City

Commodifying Communism is an ethnographically grounded account of the institutional organization and political consequences of China's historically unprecedented market growth. Drawing upon almost two years of ethnographic fieldwork, this book challenges conventional views of post-communist emerging markets being tied to the retreat of the state. David Wank shows how entrepreneurs running private trading companies in Xiamen City, Fujian Province (one of China's five special economic zones) maximize profit and security through patron-client networks with local state agents. The book examines how processes of opportunity, exchange, expectations, and advantage are constrained by both statist and popular institutions in market clientelism. It also considers the implications of market clientelism for the dynamism of China's emerging market economy relative to Eastern European post-communist economies and its political consequences for state-society and center-local relations.

"The most important book yet to appear on China's emerging private sector, David Wank's Commodifying Communism is also a major contribution to comparative economic sociology. Drawing carefully on extensive fieldwork among China's new urban entrepreneurs, Wank shows how private entrepreneurship emerges from within the social and political relationships of an earlier period. His carefully conceptualized analysis takes on a range of popular ideas about the transition to a market economy and has clear implications for the analysis of all market economies emerging from the Soviet model." Andrew G. Walder, Stanford University

"Those of us who have been studying post-1949 markets in China welcome this book with great enthusiasm. David Wank's powerful, contextually rich, and intellectually incisive research--which pins down by authoritative first-hand investigation the operation of emerging markets after socialism--will define the subject for years to come." Dorothy J. Solinger, University of California, Irvine

"Professor Wank demystifies China's marketization by showing how new entrepreneurs are frequently former government officials who are using their old ties to reorganize production. As a result, Chinese capitalism is forging its own path: clientistic and focused on local government-firm cooperation. This is a major contribution to the field of Chinese studies and economic sociology." Neil Fligstein, University of California at Berkeley

"David Wank raises the bar for the study of China's burgeoning private sector with this theoretically bold and empirically rich book. Based primarily on one and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork among entrepreneurs and officials in the southeast coastal boom town of Xiamen, Wank's book demonstrates the institutionalization of a symbiotic form of clientilism between businessmen and cadres as the communist system transforms into a market economy that is far removed from the ideal-typical property-rights-based, legally bounded market image." Thomas B. Gold, University of California Berkeley

"In doing so, he also challenges proponents of the view that entrepreneurs are becoming more autonomous from the state. He shows the many complex ways in which new commercialized forms of clientilism and guanxi are replacing the former bureaucratic patron-client ties. Additionally, through comparative analysis, Wank argues against those who discern the lines of autonomous civil society emerging in China among the ruins of the communist order as happened in Eastern Europe." Thomas B. Gold, University of California, Berkeley

"China's transition to market-oriented socialism comes alive in this theoretically sophisticated, yet empirically focused ethnography. I wholeheartedly recommend this first-rate book to anyone who wants to know how the Chinese business really works." Gary Hamilton, University of Washington

"...this book makes a very important contribution to our understanding of China's private sector and its relationship with local government. Anyone who teaches or does research on business in China should read this book and also look forward to more studies on the subject by the author." Journal of Asian Business

"This study provides us with an accurate insight into the characteristic features of the Chinese economy since the 1978 reforms. Entrepreneurs opportunities and problems are outlined clearly...it is, strickly speaking, more of a "good read" than a historical study". The International Journal of Business History June 2001

"...this perceptive book offers a penetrating account of the dynamics of private business growth in China...excellent." American Journal of Sociology