This book is an empirical study on the relationship between private enterprises entrepreneurs
and the government in P. R. China. The two authors conducted a detailed survey of enterprises
and entrepreneurs in Liuzhou Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region China. Although it was only
conducted in a medium sized city the survey provides a rare source of information on matched
entrepreneur-enterprise pairs. It provides detailed information on management performance
enterprise-government relationship as well as entrepreneurs' personal information and
measurements of various psychological parameters. With this first-hand information the authors
analyzed several interesting issues concerning enterprise-entrepreneur-government
relationships. Readers will gain an understanding of the following topics:Why and how does
China have such special enterprise-entrepreneur-government relationships?Do enterprises'
political connections in the form of entrepreneurs' political status help improve the
performances of these enterprises?Which of the surveyed entrepreneurs could become members of
the People's Congress and the People's Political Consulting Conference?How do entrepreneurs
feel when they are faced with greater government intervention?How will China move ahead in the
ongoing reform and development in the light of the enterprise-entrepreneur-government
relationship?This book examines the way in which China's enterprise-entrepreneur-government
relationship helps enterprises develop in a transitional market. In the appendix to this book
one of the authors Ming Lu provides evidence based on data from listed companies that
having political connections can help enterprises enter the markets of provinces other than
their place of registration. However this political connection also distorts the market by
giving the entrepreneurs more opportunities to develop their business. At the same time those
entrepreneurs who face interventions from the government also shoulder greater costs in the
form of loss of psychological happiness. The inference of this book is that at some point in
the foreseeable future China will gradually build its market system and integrate its domestic
markets so that private enterprises will no longer rely so heavily on their political
connections.
