Xiaoming Huang is Professor of International Relations at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His recent publications include The Rise and Fall of the East Asian Growth System: Institutional Competitiveness and Rapid Economic Growth (also published by Routledge).

This book examines the role of institutions in China's recent large-scale economic, social and political transformation. Unlike existing literature, it offers perspectives from a variety of disciplines - including law, economics, politics, international relations and communication studies - to consider whether institutions form, evolve and change differently according to their historical or cultural environments and if their utilitarian functions can, and should be, observed, identified and measured in different ways.

1. Introduction: Institutional Analysis and China's Transformation: Issues and Concepts 2. China and International Institutions 3. Institution Formation, Imitation and Borrowing: Zhongguancun as a Case Study on Mechanisms of Institutional Change 4. Science and Technology Institutions and Performance in China: The Semi-Conductor Industry 5. Power, Rights and Interests: A Law and Economic Analysis of Urban Housing Demolition and Relocation in China 6. China's Road to a Rechtsstaat: Rule of Law, Constitutional Democracy and Institutional Change 7. China's Evolving Institutional Exclusion: The Hukou System and Its Transformation 8. China's Changing Hukou System: Institutional Objectives, Formal Arrangements and Informal Practices 9. State Capacity, Democratic Principles and Constitutional Order: Modern State-building in Post-Totalitarian Society 10. Institutional Accumulation and Gradual Substitution: The Dynamics of Developmental Democracy in China 11. Propaganda vs. Promotion: The Political Economy of CCTV 12. Village Elections and the Institutionalization of Legitimate Authority 13. Conclusion: The Institutional Dynamics of China's Transformation: What We Have Learnt?