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This chapter focuses on the state policies related to China's development trajectory, which are selected on the basis of their role in the historical developmental states and are examined in a comparative analysis with similar policies in Japan and Korea. There are three sets of state policies which are examined: The policy of industrial development is concerned with the targeting of certain branches of a national economy to be developed, due to their real or potential added value in general developmental efforts; The policy of import discrimination and export support illustrates the very mechanisms utilised in the directing of the inter-border flow of goods; The financial policy of support for industrial development and export reveals the broad range of state instruments to additionally enhance the development trajectory in the market economic conditions via financial and fiscal incentives stimulating industrialisation and international trade. It is argued that they have all been of paramount importance for China's development. This analysis is preceded by the examination of general perceptions of the industrial policies and by the analysis of the agrarian policies, as the pre-conditionality for industrial development.

This chapter explains China's contemporary development trajectory. It examines the main features of the post-socialist developmental state (PSDS), as one which fuses the two intellectual streams, that of the concept of the developmental state and that of post-socialist transformation. It is argued that China has become a genus of the PSDS model and that this model provides an explanation for the institutional and policy choices of the state leadership during the time of systemic transformation. The concept of post-socialist developmental state is believed to be a normative model, with transferable lessons for underdeveloped countries in systemic transition. For the post-socialist states it is seen as the logical consequence of transformation, which was not employed due to international pressure. For other underdeveloped countries it is offered as a general developmental guidance, valid particularly now when neo-liberalism has been discredited and the criticism of global capitalism is mounting, and there is indeed some space to be less doctrinaire in an attempt to accelerate development. The chapter starts with the examination of the PSDS features. It then continues with the explanation of China's development as a genus of the PSDS model. Finally it examines the model's broader applicability.

This chapter is a thorough examination of the concept of the developmental state (DS) – believed to be a key policy and institutional arrangement behind the greatest developmental successes of the second half of the twentieth century, often referred to as the East Asian miracle. The chapter is also concerned with the DS model's contemporary applicability and the extension of the DS debate to China. Is it a contemporarily valid recipe for underdevelopment or just a historical phenomenon with no relevance for the globalised world? In view of the spectacular developmental advancements of China and its geographical and cultural proximity to the countries of the East Asian miracle, among them Japan and Korea, there perhaps should be some reference and relevance. The chapter starts with an analysis of the features of the developmental state, which involves its economic and political conditionality. It examines the model's geographical and temporal limitations, the relations among the state's main actors, institutional and systemic arrangements, state ideology and state policies. Upon establishing a set of features and conditionalities, as presented in the scholarly literature, it is argued that the model's variation can still be contemporarily applicable. It is then explained how it extends to contemporary China.