In the past decade, China was able to carry out economic reform without political reform, while the Soviet Union attempted the opposite strategy. How did China succeed at economic market reform without changing communist rule? Susan Shirk shows that Chinese communist political institutions are more flexible and less centralized than their Soviet counterparts. The study analyzes policy-making in a non-democratic authoritarian country, explaining the history of Chinese market reforms from 1979 to the present. Drawing on extensive interviews with high-level Chinese officials, it pieces together detailed histories of economic reform policy decisions and shows how the political logic of Chinese communist institutions shaped those decisions.