"China's rise as an economic power has posed some challenging questions: how did China achieve GDP growth that was even faster than the Asian Tigers? Is the "Chinese model" superior? Why hasn't the rapid economic growth lead to democracy in the country as many observers expected? And can China...

1. Introduction / Gareth Austin and Kaoru Sugihara -- 2. Labour-intensive industrialization in global history : an interpretation of East Asian experiences / Kaoru Sugihara -- 3. The industrious revolutions in East and West / Jan de Vries -- 4. Proto-industrialization and labour-intensive...