"We are living in a tumultuotts economic world, seemingly overwhelmed by a maze of problems. In this clear-headed and vigorous book, Edward S. Steinfeld reminds us that this is not China's fault. To the contrary, China is struggling to attain its financial modernity by means of procedural rules and practices that the West earlier imposed on the rest of the world. We should be glad, Steinfeld argues, that China now plays by `our' rules. And we should respond energetically and intelligently to the mutual benefits that can spring from this adaptability."---Jonathan Spence, author of the Search for Modern China"Playing Our Game provides a fresh, dynamic, and fundamentally optimistic analysis of the forces driving the evolution of the Chinese political and economic systems. Steinfeld is one of the very few who understand Chinese politics, Chinese economics, international business, and the deep Integration of the three. His book is thought provoking and will be controversial, as any really good book should be."---Kenneth Lieberthal, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, and author of Governing China"In this important book, Steinfeld weaves together the big questions of economic, political, and social change in China with detailed analyses of R&D, energy, and outsourcing. Contrary to the dominant view, Steinfeld shows how economic and political change have gone hand in hand, driven on by the forces of globalization to produce a contemporary China radically different from that of the early 1990s. The book is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand China's past development and possible future trajectory."---Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University"Edward S. Steinfeld lucidly analyzes the reform of China's economy during the last thirty years as the Chinese Communist Party's choice to integrate the nation into Western capitalist institutions and globalism. By promoting a version of modernity defined by the advanced Western industrial democracies, China is contributing to the decline of its own authoritarian system."---Stanley Lubman, Resident Lecturer, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, and author of Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China After MaoConventional Widsom Holds that China's burgeoning economic power has reduced the United States to little more than a customer and borrower of Beijing. The rise of China, many feel, necessarily means the decline of the West---the United States in particular.Not so, writes Edward S. Steinfeld. If anything, China's economic emergence is good for America. In this fascinating new book, Steinfeld asserts that China's growth is fortifying American commercial supremacy, because---as the title says---China is playing our game. By seeking to realize its dream of modernization by integrating itself into the Western economic order, China is playing by our rules, reinforcing the dominance of our economic and regulatory systems. The impact of the outside world has been largely beneficial to China's development, but also enormously disruptive. China has in many ways handed over---outsourced---the remaking of its domestic economy and institutions to foreign companies and foreign rule-making authorities. For Chinese companies now, participation in global production means obedience to foreign rules. At the same time, even as these companies assemble products for export to the West, the most valuable components for those products come from Western states. America's share of global manufacturing, by value, has actually increased since 1990. Within China, the R&D centers established by Western companies attract the country's best scientists and engineers, and harness that talent to global, rather than indigenous Chinese, innovation efforts. In many ways, both China and America are benefiting as a result. That said, the pressures on China are intense. China is modeling its economy on the United States, with vast consequences in a country with a small fraction of America's per-capita income and scarcely any social safety net. Walmartization is not something that Asian manufacturing power is doing to us; rather, it is how we are transforming China.From outsourcing to energy, Steinfeld overturns the received wisdom in this incisive and richly researched account.