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. Lou Jiwei (1950-) has been a leading researcher on economic restructuring and macroeconomic policy in a range of Chinese policy-making organisations. He has made important contributions to policy in the fields of tax, accounting, finance and banking. In the 1990s a vice minister of finance, and from 2007 deputy secretary-general of the State Council, he is also at present head of China’s sovereign wealth fund. 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.