This book is part of a series which makes available to English-speaking audiences the work of the individual Chinese economists who were the architects of China's economic reform. The series provides an inside view of China's economic reform, revealing the thinking of the reformers themselves, unlike many other books on China's economic reform which are written by outside observers.

Yu Guangyuan (1915-) is a famous Chinese philosopher and economist. A member of the Chinese Communist Party from 1937, he has made significant contributions in the fields of Marxist theory and in state planning. He was head of the Political Research Office of the State Council from 1975 and the first director of the Economic Research Institute of the State Planning Commission. He has held many other important posts, and was editor-in-chief of the "Dictionary of Economics".

The book is published in association with China Development Research Foundation, one of the leading economic and social think tanks in China, where many of the theoretical foundations and policy details of economic reform were formulated.