2018 marks 40 years of reform and development in China. This commemorative book assembles some of the world’s most prominent scholars on the Chinese economy to reflect on what has been achieved as a result of the economic reform programs, and to draw out the key lessons that have been learned by the model of growth and development in China over the preceding four decades.

Considering the auspicious symbolism surrounding the fenghuang, it is fitting that on 18 October 2017, President Xi Jinping took to the stage of the 19th Party Congress to proclaim the beginning of a ‘new era’ for Chinese socialism. This work traces the stark new ‘gilded age’ inaugurated by the Chinese Communist Party. It does so through more than 40 original essays on labour, civil society and human rights in China and beyond, penned by leading scholars and practitioners from around the world.

Prosperity surveys important events, pronouncements, and personalitites that defined 2017. It presents a range of perspectives, the global to the individual, the official to the unofficial, mainland China to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Together, the stories present a rich portrait of a nation that forty years has lifted itself from universal poverty to (unequally distributed) wealth, changing itself and the world in the process.

This book presents papers developed from the Dialogue’s fifth workshop hosted by the National Taiwan University in Taipei. The theme, ‘Value for Money’, focused on budget and financial management reforms, including how different nations account for the relative performance of their public sectors.