Look again: Reform of China’s financial sector has slowed. This might prove dangerous: China's financial system - from The Economist

A week ago, The Economist had this to say about the China and its economy, from within the context of a review of the book, Red Capitalism:

Anyone who is overly impressed with the apparent resilience of China today would do well to read a new book by two bankers who have worked there for many years, Carl Walter and Fraser Howie. “Red Capitalism” avoids the standard approach to Chinese analysis, which uses mounds of macroeconomic data that even Chinese regulators acknowledge are replete with flaws. Instead, the authors examine how China’s financial system has grown from pretty much nothing three decades ago into the dynamic, bewildering and possibly doomed set of institutions that fill the landscape today. The book is, in many ways, a story of remarkable progress. In 1974 a delegation to the United Nations led by the future Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, almost never left home because there wasn’t enough cash in the banking system—the entire Chinese banking system—to pay for the delegates’ plane tickets. Conditions worsened even further after that. By 1978, when Mr Deng returned from yet another political exile to assume power, China’s formal financial system had shrunk to a single institution, the People’s Bank, whose head office was made up of 80 people buried within the Ministry of Finance. [...] Skipping ahead, China now has more dollars than it can spend and its financial system is populated by a constantly expanding array of institutions. This is no accident. As “Red Capitalism” describes, it was Mr Deng’s goal, pursued with the vital support of his immediate successors, President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, who pushed through changes that were thoughtful, often brutal, and sometimes mistaken.

Read that Economist article, here. The Financial Times mentioned the book in "China starts crackdown on insider trading":

Mainland China’s markets are notoriously opaque and speculative. Everyone, from small retail investors to top fund managers, appears to trade on tips from contacts who claim to have “inside” information. “If you ask any Chinese investor whether they think a chairman or executive of a company is trading in their own stock, nine out of 10 would expect that to be the case just as they would expect a government official to be taking bribes,” says Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism and other books on China’s stock markets. Last week’s announcement marked the first time the Chinese cabinet has publicly addressed the issue of insider trading and was interpreted by investors as a signal of the government’s determination to head off a new stock bubble.

Read that full FT article here. See also: Out of the Red: Investment and Capitalism in Russia, Capitalism's Brutal Comeback in China (Red Banner Reader), Out of the Red : Building Capitalism and Democracy in Postcommunist Europe, Red Capitalism: An Analysis of the Navajo Economy