THE SPECTRE OF INFLATION

Robert Misik in conversation with Isabella Weber

THE SPECTRE OF INFLATION
How China escaped shock therapy

After the end of Mao's rule, the political leadership in China faced enormous problems at the end of the 1970s: How was it to reinvent the bankrupt economic system? How to avoid galloping inflation, which was haunting the country as a spectre? Through shock therapy or gradual reforms? Ultimately, the forces in favour of state-led change prevailed. Unlike Russia, which fell into a catastrophic downward spiral after the collapse of communism, China experienced an unprecedented rise.

In her highly acclaimed book, Isabella M. Weber, one of the most important economists of her generation, meticulously traces the debates at the time on the reorganisation of the Chinese economic system and places these discussions in the long traditions of economic thought in China and the West. In particular, she shows how it was possible to limit inflation. According to Weber, China's path back into the global economy is not just the story of a unique transformation. In view of the upheavals on the energy markets and the dramatic rise in the cost of living, the disputes over price controls and other state interventions are also instructive for current debates.

Isabella Weber, Economist
Robert Misik, Author and journalist

Isabella M. Weber, born in Nuremberg in 1987, is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She became known to the general public through her proposal (together with economist Sebastian Dullien) for a gas price cap.

Isabella M. Weber:
The spectre of inflation. How China escaped shock therapy
Suhrkamp, April 2023, 32,- €, ISBN978-3-518-43127-6
Translated from the English by Stephan Gebauer