New Books in Economics Ning Leng, "Politicizing Business: How Firms Are Made to Serve the Party-State in China" (Cambridge, 2025)
Feb 4, 2026
Ning Leng, Assistant Professor at Georgetown specializing in Chinese political economy, discusses how officials press private firms into visible projects to signal competence and secure promotions. She explores firms’ roles in social control, comparisons across sectors like buses and waste incineration, and the fieldwork challenges of studying state–business relations in China.
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Firms Gamble For Side Deals
- Private firms sometimes accept loss-making visible projects hoping for side deals like cheap land.
- Some gambles succeed, but many firms later exit when promised reciprocation fails.
Visibility Projects Driven By Promotion Uncertainty
- Visibility projects arise because ambitious officials face opaque promotion signals from the party.
- They pursue large, verifiable projects to outshine peers and signal competence to Beijing.
Audience Determines Visibility Style
- Visibility logic differs between democracies and autocracies because the audience changes.
- In China, officials compete to impress higher-level bureaucrats, driving oversized, often inefficient projects.
