How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate

until the Fourth Crusade—when in actuality, Byzantine influence in the eastern Black Sea had been reduced to a handful of imperial agents by the 1080s. Similarly, Pubblici describes the inhabitants of the North Caucasus as all being “nomadic, pagan, steppe peoples” (p. 193). In fact, even in the thirteenth century, large settlements such as Magas and Nizhnii Dzhulat still existed in the North Caucasus plain and piedmont, and the region had been widely Christianized since the ninth century. It is therefore regrettable that the potential of this work’s central idea is not fulfilled. To be fair, I do not think that any single author would be capable of successfully composing a 250-page work with such a broad scope. The flowering of the laudable ambition of this project must, in my opinion, await the advent of a larger collaborative team of specialists.