China's post-Mao market transformation marks a watershed in Chinese history and ranks among the most vital forces shaping the global economy. No one had predicted its coming; few have not been stunned by its speed and scope. China's Market Transformation: Origins, Protagonists, and Processes attempts to understand China's market transformation, with an emphasis on the origins and evolution of the institutional structure of production undergirding the rise of the Chinese economy, tracing the protagonists in this intriguing human drama and mapping out the zigzag processes of China's epochal transition to a market economy in three decades.