China's consumer revolution: The 1990s and beyond

Since 1980 China's economic revolution has enabled more households to allocate labor to market‐related activities to earn more income. In 1992 an even greater surge in market economy growth took place when urban households began abandoning state‐related occupations and took their chances in the marketplace. The increase in consumer spending that followed reflects a new pattern of household spending for the first time in China since 1949: the share of spending for food relative to spending for other categories of goods and services is fast declining. This new trend, already strongly evident among high income‐earning households, is rapidly being replicated by other households as their incomes rise. During the 1990s new consumer patterns have emerged in the cities of the coastal provinces that strongly indicate that a consumer revolution is under way. This revolution has revived traditional gift‐giving between the Chinese people, thus facilitating the strengthening of their social, economic, and political ties and encouraging people to emphasize social and political stability.     

China in Global Food Security Governance

The Chinese public's domestic expectation is that its state will ensure a safe and affordable supply of food. However, in doing so, China has acquired large amounts of farmland abroad which has raised concerns among many developing countries. It has been argued that land grabbing in the developing world is a form of neo-colonialism. This role of a colonial power is in conflict with China's historical role, which presents China as a leader of the developing world. In order to bring these role expectations into conformity with each other, China has taken a more active role in global food security governance. It has brought food security to what is becoming the core of the global governance decision-making system, the G20. China's historical role, together with its growing economic power, has helped to push the G20 to understand the importance of food security. This has shifted the G20's understanding of economic global governance away from the traditional fields of banking and trade regulation toward understanding the developmental-oriented economic structure.     

China's Latent Human Capital Investment: achieving milestones and competing for the top

In this paper we provide an overview of China's human capital strategy and educational achievements over the last two decades. While everyone acknowledges China as an economic superpower, very few are aware of or realize China's notable achievements in education as well as its internationalization of education. Since 1978, the landmark for the foundation of the Chinese modern higher education system, China has made tremendous strides in education both domestically and internationally. While China maintains 10% growth in GDP, albeit with a GDP per capita at a low level for a developing country, it is also producing serious scholars and a tremendous amount of scholarly output; more and more Chinese students are seeking higher education abroad; and international students are showing a rising interest in receiving education in China.     

One Regulatory State,Two Regulatory Regimes: understanding dual regimes in China's regulatory state building through food safety

As China proceeds with a process of urbanization unprecedented in human history, it maintains an urban-biased governance regime in many areas, including food safety regulation. Using secondary data and interviews with officials from the Changping district in Beijing, this article systematically defines the main characteristics of China's dual food safety regulation regimes, highlighting differences between urban and rural areas in four dimensions: policy structure, funding source, staff structure and resource allocation. This article also provides an explanatory framework to understand this dual regime's development and persistence from a neo-institutionalism perspective. Three main explanatory variables are advanced: historical legacy, dual incentive structures, and dual economic and industrial patterns. While China's urbanization process and governance structure, including the food safety regulatory regime, are not complete by Western standards, we emphasize this problem is best understood by examining China's unique socioeconomic and cultural context.     

China and Maritime Cooperation in East Asia: recent developments and future prospects

Future international relations in East Asia are likely to be largely shaped by the maritime strategies and policies of various actors. This paper examines China's policy and behavior in maritime cooperation in the East Asian region in recent years, a topic that has been insufficiently understood. I suggest that while it is necessary and useful to take into account China's naval power, more attention to Chinese intentions and policy on East Asian maritime issues is warranted to arrive at a more balanced, and arguably more accurate, understanding of China's role in East Asian maritime affairs. This paper takes stock of China's changing perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors in maritime cooperation in the region. I describe China's new policy moves in the South China Sea and East China Sea. I also address some of the major Chinese concerns for further maritime cooperation in East Asia. I conclude that while a grand cooperative maritime regime is still not possible from a Chinese perspective, China is likely to agree to more extensive and substantive maritime cooperation in many functional areas, most notably in the non-traditional security arena.     

Reconstituting the Rural‐Urban Divide: Peasant migration and the rise of 'orderly migration' in contemporary China

The dramatic rise in China's rural-to-urban migration in recent years represents a sharp contrast to earlier decades when population movement was limited due to strict government control. This paper first traces the historical institutional conditions that prevented large-scale rural-to-urban migration in the 1960s and 1970s. It focuses on three interlocking mechanisms of control: urban employment policy; food rationing; and household registration, and explains the rationale behind these policies and their evolution into a system inhibiting peasant migration. It then analyzes the decline of these old institutions during the reform. The breakdown of these institutions, however, does not warrant the conclusion that the Chinese state has been sidelined in the migration process. By way of examining the rise of 'orderly migration' in recent years, the author shows that the Chinese state is deeply involved in the migration process. The author argues that 'orderly migration' represents an attempt by the state to reconstitute the historic rural‐urban divide in a new setting.     

Going 'Back' and Staying 'Out': Articulating the postcolonial Hong Kong subjects in the development of China

In examining the Hong Kongers' participation in the social development of China, I suggest that China-development provides an important local site for the study of Chinese postcoloniality. Not only does it disclose the multiple and contradicting effects of colonial power, it also embodies the conflicting visions of modern China between the official Grand Narrative of modern Chinese nationhood and the local narratives of modern Chineseness. It became a site that created discursive possibilities for individual Hong Kongers to negotiate their ambivalent identification with and resistance to China. In this paper, I show how Hong Kongers were constructed as 'free subjects' under the British colonial discourse of liberalism which in turn shaped the Hong Kong discourse of China-development. Circulating in China-development was the image of China as the oppressive and corrupt 'inside' and Hong Kong as a free 'outside' space of accountability and equality of opportunities. Vacillating between East and West, Hong Kongers came to represent themselves as modern Chinese towards which they worked to develop their mainland compatriots.     

Xiao‐kang: Deng Xiaoping's socio‐economic development target for China

Ever since xiao‐kang or XK, literally meaning a ‘relatively comfortable life’, was first slated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979 to be China's main development target, the concept has become a codeword for China's socio‐economic development. It was incorporated in several major Party documents and formally adopted as the key development target by three consecutive Five‐Year Plans. What is the real meaning of XK? This paper analyses China's first XK Index which was published in 1992, based on a cluster of economic and social indicators relating to income, food consumption, housing, and human resource development. It will be seen that XK is actually a normative concept, fuzzy and grossly imprecise, especially when applied to a transitional economy like China. What constitutes XK to Deng may well be perceived differently by the new generation of Chinese. Such is the continuing social challenge of China's economic development.     

从农民的边际消费倾向看拉动农村消费问题

本文根据《中国统计年鉴》有关农村居民家庭人均纯收入与人均生活消费支出的最新统计数据,对我国农村居民的边际消费倾向和农村居民的消费行为特点作了分析。现在农村居民的消费仍主要集中为吃穿用消费,农民将收入用于文教消费的自发性和积极性较弱。目前国家为拉动农村消费需求采取的一系列举措是必要的,但这些举措需要与更有力的政策相配合才能收到理想的效果。     

China in the North Korean Nuclear Crises: ‘interest’ and ‘identity’ in foreign behavior

China reacted very differently to the first and second North Korean nuclear crisis: engaging in passive and ‘behind-the-scenes’ diplomacy in the first and choosing more proactive and ‘stage-managing’ diplomacy in the second. This article has sought to explain this striking contrast in China's foreign behavior. Though most studies tend to rely on Chinese strategic and security interests in explaining China's proactive diplomacy as demonstrated in the six-party talks, those strategic and security interests do not explain directly the contrasting foreign behavior of China. China faced basically equal strategic and security concerns and equally dangerous potential military conflict between the US and North Korea through the first and the second nuclear crises. This article, then, argues that ‘same interests, but different behaviors’ should be explained not by China's external interest calculus but by internal changes within China itself. By the turn of the new millennium, China had undergone an evolutionary change of state identity from a cautious accommodator to an active constructor, or from a state of ‘taoguang yanghui’ to a state of ‘fuzeren daguo’. The contrasting foreign behaviors in the first and second nuclear crises are profoundly reflective of this identity shift of China.     

China–Africa Trade Patterns: causes and consequences

China's trade patterns with African countries have made Beijing the focal point of new anti-Chinese resistance narratives in Africa. Unlike the Maoist era, when China's trade policies served its leaders' political goals, now they aim to access markets as part of China's larger domestic development strategy. China's state-run firms can channel China–Africa trade through extra-market decisions that influence flows, yet, ultimately, Beijing's ability to direct trade with Africa is constrained by market forces. Despite suggestions that shared illiberalism drives China–Africa trade the author concludes that five interrelated causal factors overwhelmingly determine China–Africa trade: China's comparative advantage in labor-intensive and capital-intensive production; Africa's abundant natural resource endowments; China's rapid economic growth; China's emphasis on infrastructure building at home and in Africa; and the emergence of economies of scale in China's shipping and light manufacturing sectors.     

汽车消费信贷风险及其动态博弈分析

随着中国汽车消费市场的逐步升温，汽车消费信贷市场渐成扩张之势，汽车消费贷款已成为继个人住房贷款之后重要的消费信贷品种。与此同时，汽车消费信贷的风险也与日俱增，主要包括信用风险、市场风险和操作风险。通过建立不对称信息动态博弈模型分析了我国现阶段汽车信贷市场中银行和个人消费者的博弈情况，在此基础上提出了完善信贷消费市场的建议：健全相关的法律法规，改善汽车信贷的制度环境；提高汽车信贷专业化水平，完善风险控制；加强银行内部管理，合理利用法律保障手段。     

Chinese Corporate Governance and Prospects for Reform

A critical element in China's current economic reform program is the creation of modern corporate governance structures in its corporations. Many of China's largest firms are caught between market incentives and political pressures, creating a situation ripe for managerial inefficiency. This article examines the financial and regulatory structures necessary for an efficient corporate governance system to function in China, and it assesses how these structures currently operate in the economy. The article identifies key failures in fostering modern corporate governance practices, which in turn jeopardize central elements of the government's reform program. The article includes a case study of the governance practices of PetroChina Company Ltd, the internationally listed subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation. The success or failure of the government's efforts to create proper governance mechanisms will carry important economic and political ramifications for China. Indeed, the successful implementation of corporate governance reforms may mark the final stages of China's evolution into a market economy.     

China's Agrarian Reform and the Privatization of Land: a contrarian view

Many reporters and scholars outside China advocate the privatization of land ownership in China as a necessary step for the transformation of China's agriculture system into a modern, large-scale, market-oriented and technology-intensive one. Chinese scholars advocating land privatization, for their part, typically argue that land privatization would better protect farmers’ rights and interests. We present a contrarian view to these calls for land privatization. Under China's current system of collective land ownership and individualized land use rights, agriculture has modernized rapidly in China in a way that has avoided privatization's many downsides. Land privatization, by contrast, would only exacerbate class inequality and social tension in rural China and further weaken farmers’ positions in dealing with more powerful actors. Through analyzing six dimensions of this issue—increasing investment in land and agricultural productivity, promoting scaled-up modern agriculture, protecting farmers’ land rights and preventing land grabs, enhancing rural livelihoods, and facilitating rural migrants’ integration into cities—we maintain that strengthening the current system is superior to privatizing rural land.     

China and Major Power Relations in East Asia

Tremendous changes have taken place in East Asia in the post-Cold War era, which have a great impact on Chinese foreign policy and its relations with major powers in East Asia. This new power configuration is related to as 'two ups' and 'two downs', which have become apparent since the early 1990s. The 'two ups' concern the rise of the United States and China. The United States' rise to sole superpower status has given Washington a dominant role in all four dimensions of world affairs: political, strategic, economic, and technological/cultural. Meanwhile, China has achieved a spectacular economic performance for the past two decades, sustaining high growth rates, and escaping, so far, the Asian economic crisis of 1997‐98. This expansion has greatly increased China's influence in regional and global affairs. The 'two downs' refer to the downturns of Russia and Japan. This article provides a detailed analysis of China's international environment in the context of the changing dynamics of major-power relations in East Asia. Special attention is paid to the crucial Beijing‐Tokyo‐Washington triangle. The examination focuses upon political, economic, and strategic dimensions.     

Discussion of 'US Global Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era'

This response to Jin Canrong's paper about US post-Cold War global strategy focuses on the concerns of both authors that the current 'three pillars strategy' is a source of growing tension in PRC‐US relations, leading to Chinese perceptions that ideological factors (US idealism) are playing a bigger role in US policymaking. Despite this, Jannuzi searches for common ground, focusing on issues areas, such as Cambodia, where China has found US idealism to be useful and helpful. He argues also that, as China joins more international treaties and regimes, Chinese and American interests will start to converge, although he concedes that the Kosovo intervention has caused ambivalence in China about unrestrained US 'idealism'.     

Discussion of 'Four Contradictions Constraining China's Foreign Policy Behavior'

Chinese foreign policy behavior is constrained by different sets of contradictions, but at the same time these contradictions serve to inspire and focus Chinese foreign policy, both in negative and positive ways. As China transitions to a developed country that is fully integrated into regional and global economic, political and security regimes, these contradictions may become less salient, however. With the growth of China's comprehensive national power, the Chinese will come to view their country less as a poor nation and more as a great power and thus this dual-identity syndrome should diminish in importance as a factor constraining China's foreign policy behavior over time. The contradictory impetus behind Chinese foreign policy that derives from the desire to benefit from pursuit of 'open-door' policies and the compulsion to protect state sovereignty will similarly likely become less important as China's power grows, but only if there is mutually acceptable settlement to the Taiwan problem and Beijing's confidence in its ability to secure its territorial integrity is enhanced. A stronger, more confident China will also likely become more actively involved in regional and global issues on a pragmatic, rather than principled basis. Finally, while bilateral ties will remain important to Beijing, its participation in multilateral fora will no doubt increase, including in the security sphere, as it becomes more experienced and self-assured in multilateral interaction. Ultimately, bilateral and multilateralism may take on the role of parallel tracks in Chinese diplomacy with little tension between them.     

Being Uniquely Universal: building Chinese international relations theory

In this paper I address the question of how Chinese scholars participate in scientific knowledge production by appropriating Western IR theories, primarily by examining interactions between North American theories that claim universality and China-specific IR efforts. Drawing on post-Mao era publications and books, I discuss how increasingly independent Chinese IR scholars are portraying their country's rising status in international politics and identifying China's national interests, while still emphasizing socialist concepts such as anti-hegemonism. The result is a form of Chinese IR scholarship that combines Western IR language with a worldview that emphasizes a modern China within the context of traditional socialist foreign policy norms. I will argue that Chinese scholarly discussions about IR theory building reflect efforts to present ‘their rising China’ (as individually perceived) in the study, research, and development of IR theory in response to the appearance of modern IR methods that require new definitions and new roles for old socialist forms. In this context, identity concerns are more important than the actual theories being established or appropriated.     

Discussion of 'China: A responsible great power'

Professor Xia seeks to answer the question of whether or not China will become a 'responsible great power' in the twenty-first century by examining the domestic and foreign factors which will influence that outcome in the decades ahead. Some of the most interesting and useful insights of his work come as much from what the paper does not say as from what it does say. While it does not expressly say so, this paper amply demonstrates two important points about what appears to be an idealistic Chinese worldview. First, we see how the Chinese worldview is 'conflicted' and uncertain. Second, we see how China's current and future situation are said to be determined by what others do to China. Four important policy-related ramifications result from the worldview described in Xia Liping's paper. First, the more Chinese foreign policy promotes a worldview packaged largely in ideals, the more outsiders will suspect that Chinese leaders are trying to hide their actual intentions. Second, it should be recognized that in many ways the views espoused in the paper fundamentally call into question certain principles which others view as critical to their national security (the stabilizing nature of alliances, for example). Third, the worldviews described by Xia Liping portray a largely inward-looking, self-absorbed, vulnerable and aggrieved power that may be prone to 'irresponsibility'. The paper implies that under such circumstances, it is up to the outside world to prevent China from acting on its sense of injured vulnerability. Finally, such an approach to the world may leave the impression that Chinese views are out of touch or unable to operate effectively within the current global structure. Such an impression might lead others to dismiss or discount Chinese points of view as simplistic at best or consciously obstructionist at worst. Either way limits Chinese aspirations to become a 'responsible great power'. In the end, a nuanced and realistic set of understandings about the world, which articulates not only the country's ideals, but acknowledges its contradictions, interests, contributions, and its regional and international impact, would more pragmatically support China's ascendance to responsible great power status.     

External Contradictions of the Chinese Development Model: export-led growth and the dangers of global economic contraction

China's development model faces an external constraint that could cause an economic hard landing. China has become a global manufacturing powerhouse, and its size now renders its export-led growth strategy unsustainable. China relies on the US market, but the scale of its exports is contributing to the massive US trade deficit, creating financial fragility and undermining the US manufacturing sector. These developments could stall the US economy's expansion, in turn triggering a global recession that will embrace China. This is the external constraint. These considerations suggest that China should transition from export-led growth to domestic demand-led growth. This requires growing the economy's demand side as well as its supply-side. To avoid stalling the US economic expansion, which is critical to China's growth, China should significantly revalue its currency as part of a generalized East Asian upward currency revaluation. Longer term, China should raise wages and improve income distribution. Under export-led growth, higher wages undermine employment. Under domestic demand-led growth, they support it. The challenge is to raise wages in an efficient decentralized manner. History shows that this requires independent democratic trade unions. However, such unions are currently unacceptable to the Chinese political leadership. Creating a domestic demand-led growth regime therefore requires solving this political roadblock.