(Routledge forthcoming 2017)
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Abstract
This book explores how and why neoclassical economic theory replaced Marxist economic theory as the dominant economics paradigm in China. It rejects the idea that the rise of neoclassical theory was a triumph of reason over ideology, and instead, using a sociology of knowledge approach, links the rise of neoclassical economics to broad ideological currents and to the political-economic projects that key social groups inside and outside China wanted to enable. The book concludes with a discussion of the nature of economic theory and economics education in China today. It also links events in China to strikingly similar dynamics in other countries, demonstrating how the concepts, vocabulary and grammar of neoclassical economics have become the lingua franca of the technocrats engineering the construction of global capitalism.
