1990 Books

Mr. Peniston does the naval services proud with his true to life vignettes of today's Navy from locations around the globe. Mr. Peniston accurately outlines the hardships and shortcomings encountered by today's short funded Navy. Life aboard ship or ashore is difficult but rewarding and Peniston makes us aware of how blessed we are as a nation to have such fine young men and women in dungarees. Those that have accepted the challenge of a career in the Navy are rewarded with friendships and experiences that far too many Americans will never be able to call their own. This book is a must read for anyone contemplating a career in the world's greatest Navy! Bravo Zulu Brad Peniston!

Peniston does so much more than tell you about the Navy -- he breathes life into it. His stories are what the Navy is really about -- the men and women deployed around the globe doing a difficult job better than anyone else in the world. You just don't see a flight deck, you meet the sailors that launch the aircraft and wrestle them back on the deck. You hear their voices, feel their pride and loneliness, their commitment and their boredom. Any parent who has a son or daughter in the Navy should read this book if they want to know what their kid is doing in the Navy. It's hands-down the best account of the daily lives of America's sailors.

The Autocourse annual is the most outstanding annual of the formula 1 season anyone can hope for. Containing team by team analysis of the year, a review of each race, statistics over the season, an editors top ten drivers of the F1 year, seaon review of most other motor racing formulae (F3000, F3, British touring cars, DTM, Indycar, Nascar etc...), lots and lots of high quality photos, most of them colour. A must for any serious F1 fan, and well worth the money.

This is the definitive review of the Formula One season. It offers excellent photos of your favourite Formula One drivers and teams. It gives you a behind the scenes look at each team's season. Each race is reviewed, complete with pre-race as well as race day statistics. This hardbound, colour glossy paged annual is a must have in any Formula One race fans collection.

Autocourse has for many years now provided an annual containing all the myriad of details of the Formula One season. This year's offering is as good as ever and provides a first rate coverage of Formula One.

Apart from overview articles, it provides a detailed review of each team and the drivers as well as a detailed description of each race, including all the qualifying action. For the statistically minded there is a full set of stats including lap charts for each race.

There are also brief overviews of other motor racing formulae.

Overall, if you want a permanent record of the Grand Prix year, you will have to go a long way to find a better book.

The Autocourse series is by far the best I've ever seen written of Formula One. I've devoured several years of Autocourse and will read it for a very long time.

For those outside the loop of racing, NASCAR garners a great deal of attention. Lost in all the attention paid to that series is a great style of racing collectively known as "open wheel" or "Champ Car." The series has evolved over the years but one thing has always remained. The races are fast, exciting and very competitive. How exciting? Put 800+ horsepower in a 1,600lb car that stands at knee level and enjoy the fun! If you are a fan - new or old - this series from Autocourse is a must-have. Autocourse started doing yearbooks 40+ years ago for the Formula One Grand Prix series and they have grown to include Champ Cars. They offer a tremendous amount of detail about the teams, drivers, cars, technical advances, etc. They also showcase the support series and the up-and-coming drivers in them. Each race is covered in detail with all qualifying times and finishing spots as well as highlights of the event itself. Photography is 100% incredible. That's another point. I enjoy doing my own photography and sometimes it's easy to lose track of things, especially if you don't get the film developed for a while. This book offers tremendous resource materials for someone maintaining photo albums of the events themselves. Basically, if you have a question about this style of racing, you'll find it in this book.

This book is awesome!! Great pics and insightful commentary. It details each team that competed, each race that was run, and features a spotlight of the editor's "Top 10 Drivers".

CART fans - show this book to anyone who doesn't understand why we love this series so much, and you will win a convert :-)

For those outside the loop of racing, NASCAR garners a great deal of attention. Lost in all the attention paid to that series is a great style of racing collectively known as "open wheel" or "Champ Car." The series has evolved over the years but one thing has always remained. The races are fast, exciting and very competitive. How exciting? Put 800+ horsepower in a 1,600lb car that stands at knee level and enjoy the fun! If you are a fan - new or old - this series from Autocourse is a must-have. Autocourse started doing yearbooks 40+ years ago for the Formula One Grand Prix series and they have grown to include Champ Cars. They offer a tremendous amount of detail about the teams, drivers, cars, technical advances, etc. They also showcase the support series and the up-and-coming drivers in them. Each race is covered in detail with all qualifying times and finishing spots as well as highlights of the event itself. Photography is 100% incredible. That's another point. I enjoy doing my own photography and sometimes it's easy to lose track of things, especially if you don't get the film developed for a while. This book offers tremendous resource materials for someone maintaining photo albums of the events themselves. Basically, if you have a question about this style of racing, you'll find it in this book.

I read it over and over! Can't wait until the next issue comes out!!!

For those outside the loop of racing, NASCAR garners a great deal of attention. Lost in all the attention paid to that series is a great style of racing collectively known as "open wheel" or "Champ Car." The series has evolved over the years but one thing has always remained. The races are fast, exciting and very competitive. How exciting? Put 800+ horsepower in a 1,600lb car that stands at knee level and enjoy the fun! If you are a fan - new or old - this series from Autocourse is a must-have. Autocourse started doing yearbooks 40+ years ago for the Formula One Grand Prix series and they have grown to include Champ Cars. They offer a tremendous amount of detail about the teams, drivers, cars, technical advances, etc. They also showcase the support series and the up-and-coming drivers in them. Each race is covered in detail with all qualifying times and finishing spots as well as highlights of the event itself. Photography is 100% incredible. That's another point. I enjoy doing my own photography and sometimes it's easy to lose track of things, especially if you don't get the film developed for a while. This book offers tremendous resource materials for someone maintaining photo albums of the events themselves. Basically, if you have a question about this style of racing, you'll find it in this book. On another note, this edition specifically covers arguably one of the greatest Indy 500 finishes of all time.

The Autocourse book series is the best coverage of indy car racing, without having to buy a ticket to the race. Each book has extensive team coverage, and the added technical aspects that each book includes is incredible. The 1995 book is the last issue, before the C.A.R.T./I.R.L split. This book includes what many consider the last great year of American based racing with all of its top drivers. This year was also the last before the Target race team dynasty started. Great information for any race fan

I am a sucker for NYC history and the great Leibling serves it up on a silver platter here. The offbeat and oddities that he finds so fascinating remind us of another time. The only thing better is when he recalls Parisian meals from the 20's.

Two stories in this book--Broadway Storekeeper and Tummler--are among the best pieces of reportage I have ever read. They offer everything modern journalism lacks--taste, gentle humor, appreciation instead of scorn for the unusual, and a broad, affectionate view of the world. The whole book is a pleasure, but these two stories should be in every anthology of American reporting. Liebling was one of a kind.

President Ford uttered the sentence that sums up Sir Hilary Synnott's absorbing narrative here - 'You can't just go around liberating people'. The tale of what happens if you do that with insufficient forethought, planning, resources, afterthought and sense of reality is told to us by a Foreign Office mandarin who brought to his impossible task dedication, loyalty, mental candour and honesty, and top-level experience as High Commissioner in Pakistan when that nation and India, both now with nuclear arms, faced each other in a tense standoff.

This book is hot off the press, published only this year. It complements Rory Stewart's Prince of the Marshes, but it approaches the story of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in southern Iraq from a different angle and tells it in a different manner. Sir Hilary's responsibilities were wider, and his account is not a chronicle. It deals with the issues under subject-headings, and broadly I think it's fair to say that each successive chapter takes a higher-level overview than the last, culminating in the final Summary, the kind of overall assessment that British ambassadors were once expected to provide of their tours of duty. Synnott assesses his own mission as a failure, but by no means as a comprehensive failure. There was no way of being successful under the circumstances. The British army receives considerable commendation from him, but on the civilian side such partial achievements as there were he attributes to specific individuals. As for his own part, he tells us what he did and why with Thucydidean reserve and leaves it to us to judge.

If you are in a hurry, I suppose you could go straight to the Summary, but this book deserves to be read all the way through in the author's sequence, because to a lay reader like me Synnott seems to convey the feel and sense of the posting vividly. His style of writing changes as the material gathers weight, but it is without pretentiousness, indeed I found the volume a page-turner in its clarity and focus. In the early chapters he is not even a particular stickler for the final refinements of syntax or even now and then grammar, and he has some engaging locutions of his own -- 'stood no hope' 'revealing an American accent' 'the light became darker'. What he has in spades is readability throughout, and considering the authority he commands that is a blessing. His final conclusions could not be expected by now to be unique, but they are best read in the light of some of his perceptions along the way, which are illuminating in the extreme. Some of his encounters must have been shattering to him at the time and they are still startling now, but in the bigger picture they are almost anecdotal. He had a standup barney with an Australian whose mantra was 'no subsidies' and who met the point that, after certain farmers had used up what should have been the seed-corn there was liable to be unrest threatening security if they were not given a fresh supply, with the insight that security was not his concern. He cites as his lowest point in the assignment a meeting of the regional heads at which they had been invited by Bremer to submit their reactions to a certain plan. Having so submitted they were then told unceremoniously by Bremer that the plan had been presented in Washington, so that was that. This kind of thing sounds like more than passing detail, except that the Australian turned out to have interests that were financial more than ideological, and that Bremer's plan had been not just presented but rubbished in Washington, so that discussion of it was to that extent academic albeit that Bremer was not coming clean why.

At the next level up are the strategic issues. Blair talked about a 'war' (indeed we all did), but he made no provisions customary for anything known by that term, so what was his concept of the matter really? Gen Sanchez motivated his troops with the devastating insight that the American effort must not fail or the fighting was going to be in High Street USA, and Sir Hilary's palpable contempt for anyone treating his listeners like idiots in this way came over to me all the more loudly for the way he spotlights the statement and leaves it without further comment. Crucial, of course, were the disastrous MBA-style misjudgments of Bremer that produced de-Baathification and disbandment of the army, not to mention the introduction of a market economy to get them standing on their own two feet and all the rest of it. Synnott is fairly laconic about the mentality that could fail to see the likely effect of creating a whole new class of dispossessed, unemployed and armed citizenry who had all the experience there was going of law-enforcement and civic administration. Indeed I should say at some stage that one of the most attractive aspects of his narration is his patrician reluctance to overemphasise the obvious.

Synnott pinpoints lack of resources as his ultimate reason for the failure, and at the time of his assignment I can see his reasons and also understand his statement that armed violence was not the issue in Basra that it was in Baghdad. He does not update these perceptions, and I don't know why not. The well-intentioned strategy of arming the populace against the crooks, gangsters, smugglers and forgers seems in retrospect to have backfired, although it also seems to be what Gen Petraeus is now doing further north, and getting plaudits for in positive-thinking quarters. It could all have doubtless been done better, but what about the overall objective of spreadin' democracy an' freedom in the middle east? Don Quixote rides again, it seems to me, out of Crawford TX. I wanted to hear more about that.

Having opposed this 'war' from day one I actually support Synnott's view that 'liberal interventionism', as in Bosnia, Kosovo and even Afghanistan is here to stay and has to be. However we need to be able to distinguish one case from another and to recognise our own limitations. A complete reassessment of policy is glaringly needed. Jerry, you should be with us at this hour, and I don't mean Jerry Bremer.

This book can usefully be read in conjunction with Rory Stewart's "Prince of the Marshes" for a view of after-invasion events in Southern Iraq, where the British were responsible. Hilary Synnott, the author of this book, was sent to Basra in 2004 to try to create some sort of structure out of the chaos of the civilian reconstruction efforts. His comments are instructive and, unless one lives in a cave, further supports the observation that the United States was clueless in its studied refusal to strongly think about the country's after-war strategy.

Synnott judges the CPA, run by Paul Bremer, as a flawed vehicle for directing reconstruction of Iraq. Late in this book, he observes (Page 246): "With the benefit of hindsight, it may be judged that much of the Coalition's, and hence the CPA's, considerable effort to introduce a lasting and durable political system in Iraq was wasted." Indeed. The Coalition (a term that I think disingenuous, but that's an issue for another day) was a dismal failure. The situation in Iraq only began to improve after an increase in American military force (the Surge) and an increased activism if the Iraqi government. It reminds me of T. E. Lawrence's statement in 1917: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them." American leaders might better have attended to Lawrence of Arabia's views than allowing Bremer to become a viceroy.

As Synnott notes, the entire CPA process broke down. Cashiering technocrats who knew how to keep the Iraqi machinery of government and service delivery going and dismissing the army--creating a pool of dissatisfied Iraqis--can only be described as foolhardy. There were too few resources in the Basra region (comprising four provinces) to really address key issues. Bremer dictated a Baghdad-centric approach to reconstruction, leaving the rest of the country to its own devices.

Synnott actually believes that good was done, certainly in the Basra area. He also realizes that whatever was done was done without adequate support. His concluding few lines are poignant indeed (Page 262): "But the most lasting recollections are positive ones and reflect the stimulus and satisfaction of working closely with highly motivated people, from Iraq and many other countries, including my own, who sincerely wanted to do the best they could in a task which, whatever its appalling and misguided genesis, they felt to be worthwhile."

In the course of the book, Synnott discusses such central issues as the facts on the ground, how he fought to upgrade unbelievably poor facilities, the military-civilian tensions (which were worked out over time), the continuing political dance with local Iraqi leaders, the wretched planning process developed by the CPA, and so on. There are a series of very helpful appendices to provide context, such as a description of the role and purpose of the CPA effort in the South, the CPA vision statement, the CPA organizational chart.

This is a book providing context "on the ground" in the southern part of Iraq in the period of time immediately following the invasion and during the CPA's effort at hegemony. As such, it provides a sense of the inadequate planning, the almost naive assumptions of the invasion, and the heroic work of those in the Coalition trying to retrieve success from the problems caused by the ill thought out after action from the invasion.

All in all, a useful volume to get a sense of the times described by Synnott.

Amos Bandertscher's new book, Baltimore Portraits, is a visual documentary of a city's forgotten faces. The photographer uses images as a visual diary of his impressions of the streets, bars, and back alleys of 'Charm City', where the beautiful, the marginalized, outsiders, freaks and clowns converge into a colorful and yet often melancholy documentation of lives lived on the edge and lives lost. The book is an impressive body of work which ranks among the likes of Nan Goldin and Diane Arbus.

Just a quick note....This wonderful visual tool captures many of Baltimore's notorious charachters (including commentary) in a way NO other Baltimore home grown artist could ever come close to. He see's beauty in the obscure and respects those models who respect him. Many photographers take advantage of those who choose to follow the beat of their own drum but not Amos. In my opinion no one in this book is classified as "forgotten." Some models are dead and gone but other models, such as performance artist JeffRey Clagett, persevere and are very grateful to this excellant photographer for including them in his TRIBUTE to the differences that make the locals here "heros" ,in a twisted way, instead of clowns and freaks. To try to lable any of his diverse models is simply missing the whole point. This book is a masterpiece! Buy the book and judge for yourself. You won't be disappointed. For me it is a trip down memory lane and I have yet to see another local photographer pull off such a TRIBUTE!

Review written by Professor Wang, Department of Economics, University of Hawaii

......"highly recommend this book. It contains detailed information on the development of China's financial markets, especially on how the functions of the central bank have changed during the different stages of economic development. Most scholars agree that a country's financial system is crucial to economic growth, and the central bank should play a key role in the process of creating such a healthy financial system. China's experience certainly deserves greater attention. Again, this is a topic on which one cannot find many good studies, and this book offers a good starting point."

The successful economic reforms implemented in China since 1978 has gained tremendous international attention. The latest statistics and estimates show that by the end of 2002 China's nominal GDP per capita has reached one thousand dollars-and this number may actually have surpassed four thousand if calculated by the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) method. However, neither did this economic achievement happen overnight nor has the benefit been distributed equally across the country. Inequality and unbalance are pervasive across regions, occupations, industries, and economic sectors.

Before 1978, China was one of a few centrally planned economies. Agricultural production was organized collectively as communes. Industrial production was mainly carried out by state-owned enterprises, which formed the backbone of the national economy. Urban collectives played only supplemental roles, while private, individual, and foreign enterprises were almost nonexistent. State-owned enterprises followed central government production plans instead of market demand. Their capital investments, wage allowances, and even personnel placements were allocated directly from the central planner. They simply carried out the designated production plan and turned over all of the output and profits. All expenses were covered by central plans as well, including possible economic losses. Raised in this kind of environment, state-owned enterprises were not used to market competition. Workers in such enterprises were said to have "iron rice bowls," which meant that they had the security of lifetime jobs and benefits.

Besides the industrial sector, several service sectors were also dominated by state-owned enterprises-for example, the banking and telecommunications sectors. The 1978 reforms started with the agricultural sector by dismantling the commune system and instituting a return to family farming (i.e. the household responsibility system). Most scholars agree that urban industrial reform picked up in the mid-1980s, when a large number of non-state enterprises became dominant market forces. Some scholars believe that currently the non-state component accounts for more than 50 percent of China's national economy.

However, the financial sector is one of the last fortresses of the state-run economy. The four largest state-owned banks still control more than 75 percent of total deposits and loans. Despite a tremendous effort from the central government to make them "commercial" banks, they are far from operating like regular commercial banks. Banking reform has become a bottleneck that impedes further economic growth. Moreover, in compliance with the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement, China's financial market will soon be opened to both domestic and foreign competition. Time is running out for the state-owned banks to adapt and brace for the coming challenges.

This volume is one of only a few studies that are devoted solely to this particular topic. There are any number of books on China's economic development, but most of them do not provide such a thorough, complete, and up-to-date view of this issue. The topic is a narrow but important one, and the author has done a good job covering it-and has provided a useful text for introductory courses on China's financial system as well.

A general-to-specific-approach has been adopted in the arrangement of the contents. After a brief introduction, the next four chapters discuss the evolution of the system by period, in chronological order: (1) the period before 1978, when socialist central banking predominated; (2) 1978-1992, the period of structural change in the banking system, that is, when commercial banking was separated from central banking; (3)1993-1997, the years when the central bank began to function actively, for example in stimulating growth and controlling inflation; and (4) 1998-2001, the period of the Asian Financial crisis and new challenges. Chapter 5 focuses on the impact of accession to the WTO, chapter 6 provides some empirical analysis, and chapter 7 concludes the volume. It is fairly easy for general readers to find those parts that might interest them and skip others that might be too technical. In general, this book is still suitable for readers with minimal background in economics.

Chapter 1 briefly summarizes the key features of the central banking system before reform. Simply put, the People's Bank of China (PBC) functioned as both central bank and commercial bank. PBC, the people's Construction Bank of China (PCBC), and the Bank of China (BOC) together formed the so-called "monobank"system. In particular, the PCBC was in charge of allocating capital investment grants to state-owned enterprises, while the BOC specialized in foreign transactions. State planning was carried out through a credit plan (for business enterprises) and a cash plan (for household consumption).

Chapter 2 details the stage-one reforms of the banking system. Two major reforms conducted in this period were the separation of central banking from commercial banking and the creation of state-owned commercial banks. In 1984, PBC was made the central bank of China. Its commercial ventures were transferred to the newly established Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Earlier, in 1978, the Agriculture Bank of China (ABC) had been established to promote rural development. As a result, China's banking system shows a hierarchical structure, with PBC as the central bank, and ICBC, PCBC, ABC, and BOC as the four major state-owned commercial banks. Meanwhile, China also saw the beginning of non-state financial institutions such as shareholding banks, financial corporations, and even foreign banks. Unlike in the pre-reform era, both state and non-state commercial banks gradually began to form a new, decentralized financial market.

While the new commercial banking system is getting into shape, there have been drastic changes in the function of PBC as the central bank of China. Chapter 3 focuses on how PBC had used both monetary aggregates and interest rate controls to promote economic development and combat inflation. There were several episodes of credit expansion and contraction between 1993 and 1997, and these were the direct result of PBC's activist monetary policies. Even though these measures still resembled the policies of a centrally planned economy, they were necessary at a time when a well-functioning financial market did not exist. On the other hand, these policies turned out to be very effective in maintaining a healthy economic environment, which is important to the long-run benefit of the economy. Another important achievement during this period was the convergence of the dual exchange-rate system; by 1994, the official exchange rate finally merged with the market exchange rate, a move that greatly facilitated international transactions.

China's domestic economy was relatively unharmed by the Asian financial crisis of 1997. A strong Chinese currency also contributed to regional economic stability. One major reason why China was not too adversely affected by the crisis was that it maintained tight control of foreign exchange. Chapter 4 explains in detail how and why PRC government policies, in particular the monetary policies of the PBC, insulated the domestic economy from the turmoil outside China. An understanding of this type of experience should be of value to central banks in both developing and developed countries.

On December 11, 2001, China became a member of the World Trade Organization. This pushed the marketization and liberalization of the domestic economy to new heights. Almost every sector had to make considerable adjustments before they could meet international standards and face new competition, and the financial sector was no exception. Chapter 5 explains the impact of WTO entry on the financial sector. First of all, domestic banks face competition from foreign banks. Second, because the domestic money/capital market is now merging with the international market, the effectiveness of the PBC's monetary policies has come into question. This has made the design of monetary policy a much more complicated task, requiring possible cooperation between central banks. Third, with foreign financial institutions becoming established inside China, PBC is faced with the setting up of uniform rules for both domestic and foreign institutions. This also poses a daunting task for the central bank in the supervising of both types of institutions. In particular, the biggest hurdle PBC now faces is the problem of so-called Non-performing-Loans (NPL). This is a most intricate problem because it involves not only the central bank and state-owned commercial banks but also thousands of state-owned enterprises. Neither banking reform nor industrial reform can be accomplished unless the NPLs problem is solved.

Journal of Asian Studies Vol62 No4: 1218-9
by Professor MarkTFung, Johns Hopkins University

Based on his economics graduate work at the University of Chicago and his dissertation at New York University, Guo s book is a rare brevity and bounty that provides the vital linkage between the sequencing of monetary policy to various stages of banking reform in China. Overall, Guo s work is a breed apart in the sea of literature on monetary policy and banking reform in China.

Of the most pivotal decisions for China s top leaders, how to deal effectively with domestic banking reform while facing an onslaught of foreign banking interests in China by 2006(the year in which key features of the WTO accession protocol are effectuated) remains at the top of the policy agenda. At the first session of the tenth National People s Congress in March 2003, the establishment of a new regulatory body, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, separated the supervision and oversight powers of the People s Bank of China(PBOC), China s central bank, from its primary responsibility of utilizing monetary tools to achieve economic policy targets. This new watchdog agency will be charged with overseeing 110 commercial banks, which was once the domain of the PBOC. And with this responsibility comes an even greater pressure to alleviate the hundreds of billions of dollars in nonperforming loans at the four largest state banks. This bifurcation of bureaucratic interests should place the important task of banking reform in China on firmer ground.

In his book, Yong Guo is a Champion of and optimist about China s banking reforms. His work covers the period from 1949 to 2000 and captures economic data from 1978 to 2000. Guo s main argument is that, since Deng Xiaoping s reforms, China s implementation of monetary policy had been, in the main, on the correct course, given China s developmental track. He relies on Ronald I. McKinnon s 1993 celebrated theory of ?optimum order?-which was expounded upon in The Order of Economics Liberalization: Financial Control in the Transition to a Market Economy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press)- to make his case. McKinnon s theory is consistent in regard to China s economic development in that the optimum order of economic liberalization is one in which the lifting of capital controls should be the very last order of things , only after a country?s financial house is completely squared away. This may help explain why China s economy was virtually unscathed from the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
It was only a decade ago that inflation ravaged China at a rate of 13.19 percent in 1993, followed by 21.69 percent in 1994. It was the necessary tripwire for the PBOC finally to get serious about the formulation and implementation of monetary policy and then undertake its stated role as the central banker. And unbeknownst to Deng at the time, Guo argues, by his Southern Tour in 1992 actually perpetuated the country s inflation, Guo argues, by encouraging individuals and municipalities to invest and develop at a frenetic pace. As a consequence, the demand for money skyrocketed, and this led to spiraling inflation. The inherent problem was an utter lack of banking supervision, which allowed inter-bank lending practices to unravel in an unregulated fashion. As Guo notes, it was not until 1995 that China even promulgated a coherent set of national guidelines for inter-bank lending. With a penchant for profits and a blind eye toward the true defalt risk in loans, financial institutions in China simply hiked interest rates on loans and deposits in order to remain attractive and competitive with other banks.
A similar situation existed in the U.S. in the 1920s, Guo notes, which prompted the creation of Regulation Q, which provided an interest-rate ceiling under the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act (annual efforts to repeal Regulation Q have passed in the House but have stalled in the U.S. Senate). In the end, the PBOC s effective use of microeconomic tools, such as interest-rate targets, allowed for the soft landing in the China s economy, according to Guo. China s central bank had come a long way since the pre-reform days of 1949-78, when it functioned essentially as a glamorized cashier for the state, receiving deposits and assets from the state while at the same time paying out state-authorized liabilities.
We also learn about how the U.S. Federal Reserve system made its imprint on banking reform in China and the urgency surrounding the creation of a truly independent central banking system. But, the nature of Chinese politics still dictated a need for banks to serve purely policy interests outside of any financial calculus. China ?s banking reforms allowed the PBOC to become ostensibly independent of political interference.
The PBOC was finally emancipated from the burdens of making nonmonetary policy. China s central bank returned to its core competency of crafting monetary policy. The success of interest-rate targeting from 1993 to 1997 by the PBOC was more sheer accident than brilliance because , as Guo argues, the monetary tools at China s disposal were extremely limited, given its nascent government bond market. Hence, it seemed as though the default policy tool for China was to utilize interest rate targets.