Socialism with Chinese Characteristics? CHUN LIAO: The Governance Structures of Chinese Firms. Innovation, Competitiveness, and Growth in a Dual Economy Dordrecht 2009 Springer, 202 p. T he book under review portrays China as an instance of state-driven late modern­ization. For decades, China shared the characteristics of communist devel­opment dictatorships: one-party rule, state ownership, and an emphasis on the development of heavy industry in order to become independent in technological and military terms. Surprisingly for outside observers, it opened up to the global economy during the 1980s. Nevertheless, as the author states, this must be un­derstood as a continuation of the same state strategy but by different means after it had become clear that the old system would not deliver the technological and economic resources needed to catch up with the us and the eu . Technological modernization has been, and remains, the»cornerstone of the state’s economic development strategy«(p. 54). Flexible adaptation to changed global conditions sets China apart from post-communist reformers in Eastern Europe, which re­garded a»jump to the market«(Sachs) as the key to societal transformation. Even 30 years after Deng Xiaoping’s»Second Revolution« started, how this amazing policy shift and its implications are to be understood remains con­troversial. It has always been unsatisfactory to subsume China under the general concept of»countries in transition«(as in the early standard classifications of the international financial institutions). There have been many attempts to capture the specifics of Chinese transformation: authors such as Wlodzimierz Brus refer to a»Soviet–Chinese divergence« in terms of political control to explain China’s success story in contrast to the transformational crises in Eastern Europe; Jeffrey Sachs points to China’s specific development potential(especially a large, un­productive rural sector and the absence of welfare state institutions); while Joseph Stiglitz stresses the gradual character of the Chinese reforms in contrast to imf ­style»shock-therapy.« General theories of transition to»something else« than a planned economy or classifications based on the growth potential of»reform economies« tell us little about the type of capitalism which has emerged in China. Therefore, Mrs Liao’s relatively new perspective on the Varieties of Capitalism approach, which operates on a more concrete middle-range level of theory-building, is promising. The Varieties of Capitalism perspective seems flexible enough to integrate the inter­action and complementarities of a broad spectrum of institutions which together characterize specific types of political economy. Generally, this approach allows for complex combinations of variables, such as ownership and control, industrial 170 Rezensionen/Book Reviews ipg 1/2011