A Political Economy Pattern of China’s History: on Revolution, Reform, and Involution under Dictatorship

This paper aims to develop an integrated analytical framework for revolution, reform, and involution under dictatorship based on China’s history. In order to grasp the essence of political and economic interactions in historic China, this paper gets some abstract variables from China’s history, on the basis of which a political economy model is built. The autocrat plays an important role in determining authority form and development pattern, which endogenously brings about different outcomes of revolution, reform, and involution. When the economic system is closed, path-dependence plays an important role, however, when the system is open, we should not attach much importance to path-dependence.