MANDARIN CAPITALISM looks at how the very structure of the Chinese state and the Chinese market inside it dictates its strengths and its limitations, and how these compare to America's, to the West's. Wei Xiong identifies the four paradoxes of China's economic might today and how they defy and befuddle Western economic analysis.

Wei Xiong has spent all his adult life, in his native China and his adopted America, picking apart the machinery of the Chinese industrial and technological boom, in order to better understand the present and better predict the future. At a geopolitical moment bristling with Great Power rivalry, belligerence and jeopardy, where it increasingly feels like we reside as much in the late nineteenth century as the early twenty-first, understanding the inner workings and unspoken assumptions of actually existing capitalism with Chinese characteristics is a crucial preface to any successful engagement with China as a superpower. Wei does so here without prejudice and without delusion, and with total clarity and admirable economy.

‘Wei Xiong is perhaps the world’s leading scholar on the Chinese economy, who has published widely on core topics in finance in general, and on the Chinese economy in particular. This highly-accessible manuscript is aimed not only at helping students and scholars better understand the Chinese economy, but has enormous potential for reaching a much broader business and policy audience. Compared to Keyu Jin’s highly influential New China Playbook (2023), which eloquently explains China’s perspective on many international issues, Wei Xiong’s book is considerably more ambitious in trying to provide an overarching framework, yet it appears to be equally accessible.’

– Professor Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University, author of Our Dollar, Your Problem

‘Professor Wei Xiong has a fresh take on why the combination of party hierarchy and market forces in China has delivered spectacular growth but also has created deep vulnerabilities. I think this book will find a large audience, especially as the West tries to decipher the Chinese enigma.’

– Professor Raghu Rajan, University of Chicago, author of Breaking the Mold

‘Mandarin Capitalism is a remarkable achievement—an authoritative and incisive account written by Wei Xiong, one of the leading, if not the leading, Chinese economists of his generation, who uncovers and resolves the paradoxes at the heart of China’s growth miracle: how the country can sustain rapid growth while flirting with deflation, upgrade advanced industries without profitability, endure a historic housing boom and bust without a financial meltdown, and carry a mountain of debt that never quite collapses. By revealing how this “market‑in‑state” architecture drives China’s strengths and vulnerabilities, Xiong provides a conceptually clarifying and richly detailed framework that moves far beyond the stale “state versus market” debate and offers essential insight into China’s past achievements, present contradictions, and future trajectory.’

– Professor Markus Brunneimeier, Princeton University, author of The Resilient Society

‘Winston Churchill once described Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma". Many of us feel that way about China today. But not Wei Xiong, who describes in this highly original book a new way to understand China—at least economically. Xiong’s thesis is clear, original, and backed by sound analysis. He writes well, and the book is short. Where’s the downside?’

– Professor Alan Blinder, Princeton University, author of After the Music Stopped

‘Wei Xiong is the rare economist who deeply understands both finance – the control system for a modern economy – and the political economy of China. His book proposes a new way to think about the contemporary Chinese economy, with a balanced view of its successes and the challenges it now faces. His argument is clearly expressed and will attract both attention and a wide readership.’

– Professor John Y. Campbell, Harvard University, author of Fixed