Acknowledgments

We would first like to thank Stephen Littlechild and Philip Booth at the Institute of Economic Affairs, who have encouraged and supported this joint venture from the very beginning.

We started writing this book immediately after the 2008 Chicago Conference on China’s Market Transformation, which was held on July 14th–18th. After the first draft was completed, we convened the Chicago Workshop on the Industrial Structure of Production, from July 19th to 23rd, 2010. We learnt a lot from many of the conference and workshop participants, particularly when we disagreed with them. We would also like to thank Marjorie Holme, Lennon Choi, and Joey Nahom for their excellent logistical support to make the conference and workshop possible.

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Among those who read the first draft, Stephen Littlechild, Douglass North, Mary Shirley, and Chenggang Xu gave us detailed comments. We also received comments from Lee Benham, Philip Booth, and Steven Cheung on individual chapters. We’d like to thank them for their critiques and suggestions, which have resulted in many improvements. We also like to thank Hu Wei for his assistance on the maps.

The two authors were able to meet monthly over the past several years to work on this book and other related projects. We have to thank our home institutions, the University of Chicago Law School (for Ronald Coase) and the School of Global Studies and later, the School of Politics & Global Studies at Arizona State University (for Ning Wang). Former Dean Saul Levmore and current Dean Michael Schill of the University of Chicago Law School have been generous in supporting our joint work.

We also want to thank many individuals who have generously shared with us their information and views. We cannot list all their names here. But the following deserve a special mention: Alexandra and Lee Benham, Linda and Steven Cheung, Jin Lei, Liang Xiaowei, David Pickus, Richard Sandor, Guangzhen Sun, Xiao Geng, William Xiao, Xiong Jialong, Xu Liangying, Wang Tianfu, Zhang Weiying, Dingxin Zhao, Zhou Qiren, Zhou Weibing, and Zhu Xiqing.