Tony Saich is the Daewoo Professor of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia. He is the author of Governance and Politics of China (2011), Providing Public Goods in Transitional China (2008), and Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's China (with David E. Apter, 1994) among others. From 1994 to 1999 he was a representative for the Ford Foundation in China.Biliang Hu is a professor of Economics at Beijing Normal University and the dean of the School of Economics and Resource Management and the Emerging Markets Institute (EMI) of the university. His latest publications include Informal Institutions and Rural Development in China (2007) and A Village Economy in Central Thailand (2007). His works have won the Sun Yefang Economic Prize twice, in 1995 and 2007, and the Zhang Peigang Development Economics Award in 2009.

This book is a story of one village, Yantian, and its remarkable economic and social transformation. The village sits in the Pearl River Delta, the engine of China's emergence as the hub of global manufacturing and production. The village's success relied on the creation of new economic collectives, its ability to leverage networks, and its proximity to Hong Kong to transform forever the formerly sleepy rural area. The result of almost 20 years of field work by the authors, Chinese Village, Global Market shows how outcomes are shaped by a number of factors such as path dependence, social structures, economic resources and local entrepreneurship.