Adam Y. Liu, "Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China's Banking Explosion" (Cornell UP, 2026)
Authoritarian Markets explores the political foundations of China's banking boom and its far-reaching impact on the Chinese economy. In 1978 China had no commercial banks. Today it commands the world's largest banking system, with assets equal to 40 percent of global GDP. In Authoritarian Markets: The Politics of China's Banking Explosion (Cornell University Press, 2026), Dr. Adam Y. Liu argues that this rise was not the product of market reforms but of political bargains and bureaucratic mobilization. In the 1990s, Beijing issued bank licenses as bargaining chips—securing cooperation from…
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