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% of global GDP. 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 local governments as it pushed through painful reforms. The result was a sprawling, competitive banking market built not in spite of authoritarian rule, but because of it. Drawing on interviews, spatial data, census records, surveys, and experiments, Liu reveals how local state banks became both engines of China's growth and incubators of its current economic risks.

Eye-opening and persuasive, Authoritarian Markets offers fresh insight into the political logic of market development in China and authoritarian states worldwide.