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Hello and welcome to Behind the News.

My name is Doug Hinwood.

Just one guest today is Abelo Weber talking about her new book,

How China Escaped Shock Therapy.

Shock therapy is a term that was applied to both Latin American

and Soviet-style economies in the 1980s.

Although the starting positions of those two regions were quite different,

in both cases it meant dismantling state supports,

letting prices float freely,

and opening up to foreign trade and capital flows,

all in the name of achieving the perfect market economy of neoliberal dreams.

It didn't work very well.

Latin America experienced what was later called a lost decade,

one of depression and mass unemployment,

and the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe endured a profound economic collapse

that took years to recover from.

China also underwent radical economic reforms beginning in the late 1970s,

but it avoided economic collapse.

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