Market-oriented reforms initiated four decades ago have constantly fueled a high speed of development in China. The country’s industrial structure has experienced rapid evolution. In the meantime, especially in the general context of globalization, China has also opened to foreign trade and foreign direct investment, transforming itself from a virtually completely closed economy into a major trading nation and the largest developing-country destination for foreign direct investment in the world. Human capital is thought to be one of the key factors that shape the transformation of the Chinese economy. With different human capital intensities, uneven development is one major issue in the process of China’s industrial transformation under new trends of globalization. Substantial disparities across different Chinese regions, e.g. the gaps in regional industrial development and those in incomes and living standards have been one prominent feature of China, and are closely related to different speeds of human capital accumulation. This book therefore aims to explore the potential and actual mechanisms through which human capital accumulation and human capital intensity may affect industrial development and development disparities in China. The book is able to provide the readers with new facts and new findings that shed light on their understanding of important issues related to human capital and economic transformation of China.
