| The mixed economy in China is characterized by heterogeneous ownership forms of firms. The heterogeneity generates interactions among firms, employees, and their supervisory agencies and between marketized and non-marketized firms. The interactions result in dynamics of market-oriented growth, which in turn becomes the engine of further growth in China's transitional economy.; The major concern of this dissertation is to look at the dynamics by addressing the following three issues: Why has the mixed economy generated dynamic interactions? How have they resulted in the dynamics of market-oriented growth in Chinese firms and the economy as a whole? What has accounted for the changes at the micro-level, (i.e., the level of the firm), given a dominant state at the macro-level?; To address these issues, I employ an institutional approach developed in sociology and economics to examine the links among the heterogeneous aspects of the economy, interactions among the firms, employees and their supervisory agencies, and dynamic growth in Post-Maoist China.; The data used in this study were collected between September 1990 and January 1991 in my dissertation field research, including interview and survey data, contract materials, and published statistics.; The results show that the mixed economy has generated dynamics of market-oriented growth. The post-1978 institutional arrangements that link output performance to profit-sharing have provided firms, employees, and local governments strong and effective incentives for profit-seeking. Accompanying the macro-level changes, the ways in which firms organize and carry out their business activities have undergone tremendous changes. Behaving like capitalist firms, many Chinese firms are seeking profitable ways to organize their activities. There have been an increase of firm interactions in forms of competition, contract negotiations seeking arrangements that favor market-oriented growth, mimicking the behavior of one another, and cross-boundary exchanges among firms with different ownership forms. The interactions have in turn resulted in the diffusion of hybrid forms, contract forms, ideas, and management methods across firms and regions, leading to dynamics of market-oriented growth. The dynamics suggest that the market mechanism combined with a predominance of state ownership can work. |
