Justin Yifu Lin is Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He obtained his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1986 and returned to China in 1987, the first PhD in social sciences to return from abroad after China started economic reform in 1979. He was the founding director of China Center for Economic Research at Peking University from 1994 to 2008 and is the author of seventeen books, including The China Miracle (1996), State-Owned Enterprise Reform in China (2001) and Economic Development and Transition (Cambridge, 2009).

• List of figures; List of tables; List of boxes; Preface; 1. Opportunities and challenges in China's economic development; 2. Why the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions bypassed China; 3. The great humiliation and the Socialist Revolution; 4. The comparative advantage-defying, catching-up strategy and the traditional economic system; 5. Enterprise viability and factor endowments; 6. The comparative advantage-following development strategy; 7. Rural reform and the three rural issues; 8. Urban reform and the remaining issues; 9. Reforming the state-owned enterprises; 10. The financial reforms; 11. Deflationary expansion and building a new socialist countryside; 12. Improving the market system and promoting fairness and efficiency for harmonious development; 13. Reflections on neoclassical theories; Appendix 1. Global imbalances, reserve currency and global economic governance; Index.

'No one knows the Chinese economy better than Justin Lin, and there's no one better placed to describe its essential workings. A unique perspective on the Chinese miracle from a unique perch.' Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of California, Berkeley