Abstract
As China opened up its economy over the past four decades, conventional wisdom held that the country’s growing embrace of free markets would lead to a more liberal society. Instead, at least until COVID, China’s economic growth positioned state capitalism as a durable foil to the orthodoxy of free markets, to the confusion of many in the West. Further, in recent years, significant tensions between China and the West, and China’s economic stumbles have also posed challenges to many businesses with interests in the region. How can more distant and recent history help understand these trends and provide insight into the future of the Chinese economy and relations with the West? Mao and Markets (Yale University Press, 2022/3), a Financial Times Best Book of 2022, examines these questions and charts how the lasting legacy of Mao Zedong’s ideological principles, mass campaigns, and socialist institutions enduringly influence Chinese economic and political actors and so are essential for understanding the country’s future trajectory.
About the Speaker
Christopher Marquis is the Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. He is the author the award winning books Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism and Mao and Markets: The Communist Roots of Chinese Enterprise. Mao and Markets was a FT Best Book of 2022. In May 2024 he will publish The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Cost. Prior to joining Cambridge he worked at Cornell for over 6 years, and Harvard for over 11 years, where he developed an award-winning course on social entrepreneurship. He is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed academic articles and more than 50 Harvard business cases on topics related to sustainable business, and has earned awards for scholarly achievement from the Academy of Management and the American Sociological Association. Marquis earned a PhD in sociology and business administration from the University of Michigan and BA in History from Notre Dame. Before his academic career, he worked for six years in the financial services industry, most recently as vice president and technology manager for a business unit of J.P. Morgan Chase.
