Institutional Genes

Chenggang Xu is Senior Research Scholar at Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, Stanford University, a board member of the Ronald Coase Institute, and Research Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He was the Chung Hon-Dak Professor of Economics at the University of Hong Kong, Special-Term Professor at Tsinghua University, the World-Class University Professor at Seoul National University, and Associate Professor at the London School of Economics. He also served as President of the Asian Law and Economics Association. He obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1991. Chenggang Xu was a recipient of the 2013 Sun Yefang Prize and the 2016 Chinese Economics Prize.

'Why did China become a totalitarian nation? What is the connection between Chinese communism and that in the Soviet Union, and what accounts for their differences? How might we expect the Chinese Communist Party to evolve in the future? Chenggang Xu gives fascinating answers to all these questions and many more in this bold but carefully argued book that is deeply rooted in historical and economic analysis.' Eric S. Maskin, Adams University Professor and Professor of Economics and Mathematics, Harvard University; co-recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (2007)

• 1. Introduction; 2. Institutions and Institutional Genes: Methodology; 3. Property Rights as a Form of Institutional Gene; 4. The Emergence and Evolution of the Institutional Genes of the Chinese Imperial System; 5. The Imperial Examinations and Confucianism: The Institutional Genes for Imperial Personnel and Ideology; 6. The Institutional Genes of Totalitarian Ideology; 7. Institutional Genes of Totalitarianism: The Tsarist Empire; 8. The Birth of Bolshevik Totalitarianism; 9. The Failure of Reform and Revolution in the Late Qing Period; 10. Building China's Bolshevik Party; 11. Building a Totalitarian Regime: From the Chinese Soviet to the People's Republic; 12. Regionally Administered Totalitarianism; 13. The Post-Mao Reform and Its Cessation: The Rise and Fall of Regionally Decentralized Authoritarianism; 14. Conclusion.