This article examines the role of state-owned firms in economic growth. While some scholars denigrate state firms, most analysts of East Asian development have noted their importance. To date, however, little work has been done on how state firms operate and how they have actually contributed to industrial development and economic growth. Looking closely at postwar Taiwan as a newly industrializing country and the case of Taiwan Machinery Manufacturing Corporation (TMMC), this article argues that state enterprises resolved coordination failures and provided manufacturing capacity to infant industries. Drawing on company archives and state records, I argue that TMMC helped drive growth through the provision of manufacturing machinery, equipment, parts, repairs, and upgrading. By supplying firms with the necessary technology and materials to modernize production and be competitive on the global market, I show how TMMC helped facilitate Taiwan’s economic miracle.

Since its inception three years ago, Xi Jinping's anticorruption campaign has targeted some of China's biggest political and military figures and implicated tens of thousands of cadres. This article argues that the current campaign can be distinguished from the many others over the past thirty years not on account of its extensiveness, but rather in its systematic coupling with two other key moves: administrative reform and disciplinary regulation. Together, these three initiatives aim not only to clean up the malfeasance, graft, and bribery pervasive in Chinese political life today, but also to change the political culture. We demonstrate that the current leadership is forcing a shift in political norms and behaviors, and changing the shared assumptions and practices that inform the political dealings of the society, from the approval of permits to the promotion of judges.