From fiefs to clans and network capitalism: Explaining China's emerging economic order

China's rapid economic development is being accomplished through a system of industrial governance and transaction that differs from Western experience. Here, we identify the broad institutional nature of this distinctiveness within a framework of information codification and diffusion. The emergent features of China's economic order are analyzed with reference to the business system developing there, in particular, the nature of market arrangements, the form of capitalism, and the role of government within that system. The limited extent of codification of information in China and its communal property rights and organization of economic transactions suggest that decentralization from the former state-command system is giving rise to a distinctive institutional form-network capitalism.