2008年越南经济综观

2008年,越南经济经历了20多年来最剧烈的变化。上半年经济过热,并引起证券、房地产和商品市场及银行系统的剧烈震荡;下半年,世界金融危机波及越南,时值上半年采取宏观调控政策的紧缩效应开始显现,致使各主要行业又面临新的困难,最终全年经济增长未达到预期目标,并出现进一步下滑的趋势。但总体上看,2008年越南经济依然保持了较快的增长速度,特别是在出口和吸引外资方面,成绩尤为显著。各界对越南2008年经济表现褒贬不一,本文介绍了越南企业界、政府部门、学术界及国际机构的观点,并在最后提出笔者观点。     

The Japanese economy on the mend

There are two main reasons for the prolonged period of weak growth in the Japanese economy, says Mikio Wakatsuki, Chairman of the Board of Counsellors, The Japan Research Institute, Tokyo. The first is complacency; the second is that Japan has overlooked the implications of changes in the global economic paradigm. Both have led Japan to procrastination in dealing with the problems it faces. Wakatsuki identifies five problems in the Japanese economy: deflation, debt, deregulation, deficit, and demography. Despite the challenges these problems pose, he sees 1999 as a year of consolidation and rehabilitation for the economy, which will pave the way for a moderate, healthy upswing in the year 2000.     

A Crystal Ball

Upon appointment as executive of Nakasone Peace Institute in the 30^th year since its establishment, NPI President Ichiro Fujisaki discusses his view of the role of a research institute and outlines the aims for NPI going forward.     

No Way to Escape Imbalances in the Eurozone? Three Sources for Germany’s Export Dependency: Industrial Relations,Social Insurance and Fiscal Federalism

Over the last two decades, the German political economy has increasingly relied on export specialisation as a strategy for economic recovery. This export-led development strategy turned out to be a mixed blessing. While, on the one hand, specialisation in high-quality manufactured goods has preserved Germany’s competitive edge vis-à-vis many other industrialised countries, it has, on the other hand, led to an increasing dependency on exports as the engine for growth. There has been no equally strong evolution of a domestic service economy beyond manufacturing-related services. The issue of export dependency becomes increasingly important in light of the financial crisis and global imbalances, vis-à-vis Greece and the Eurozone but also globally. Weak aggregate demand depresses both domestic employment and endangers the still fragile construction of the Eurozone. The paper argues that Germany finds itself in an export-dependency trap due to imbalances between domestic services and export-driven manufacturing. It analyses three sources for the over-reliance on export-oriented manufacturing and weak employment in domestic services: firstly, the industrial relations system, secondly, the social insurance financing of the welfare state and thirdly, fiscal federalism. All three are fundamental pillars of the German political economy and locked into political coalitions that are not easily changed.     

A Preferential Option for the Spirit: The Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Latin America's New Religious Economy

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR), the Latin American church's largest and most dynamic lay movement, demands scholarly attention for its extraordinary appeal among Catholic laity and its unanimous approval by national episcopacies. If the church is finally using mass media and other Protestant techniques for evangelization, it is because of the Charismatics, whose missionary zeal rivals that of their chief competitors, the Pentecostals. This study uses the tools of religious economy to analyze the reasons for the Renewal's rapid growth and acceptance. In attempting to explicate the CCR's success, the study also examines the major ecclesial trends during the movement's three decades in Latin America.     

Berl Katznelson and the theory and practice of revolutionary constructivism

This study examines the effects of the first globalization on the late period Ottoman economy as well as the impact of the second globalization on the Turkish economy for the last three decades. Since the demand of Western industrial countries for Ottoman agricultural products was high, the production and export of such goods increased. Improved terms of trade had some positive short term impact on the exporting agricultural sector, but resulted in a massive deindustrialization all around the Empire. Again during the second globalization, Turkish foreign trade has increased, and a few manufacturing sectors have shown improvements because of the global competitive forces. However, Turkish agriculture has suffered, and trade and current account deficits have grown persistently, with foreign debt displaying certain similarities with the infamous Ottoman public debt.     

中国特色的开放之路——对外开放经验总结和新时代开放的战略思考

改革开放40多年来,我国坚持对外开放基本国策毫不动摇,坚持独立自主地扩大开放,坚持共产党人推动开放的担当和初心,坚持开放与改革的良性互动,坚持试点渐进的开放路径,坚持紧紧抓住经济全球化机遇,坚持与自身能力相匹配的国际参与,坚持辩证统一、中道和合的思想方法,成功走出了一条有中国特色的开放之路。新时代推动新一轮高水平对外开放征程中,我国应理性把握发展中国家的定位、市场经济的定位和中美关系的定位。未来30年,为建设民族复兴路上的开放强国,我们应重点推进经贸强国战略和跨国公司战略,深入把握聚焦中高端竞争的开放、创新力驱动的开放、比较优势升级的开放、汇聚全球人才的开放、中国带动世界的开放和经济人文互补共进的开放等六个全方位、高水平对外开放新特征。     

The Future of the Chinese Economy: Four Perspectives

ABSTRACT

This article studies the future prospect of the Chinese economy using four different perspectives: neo-classical, Marxian, world-system and climate stabilisation. While the neo-classical perspective suggests that China can maintain a relatively decent pace of economic growth for decades to come, the Marxian analysis finds that the Chinese economy will confront a major crisis in the coming years due to internal contradictions of capitalist accumulation. The world-system analysis suggests that there has been a “ceiling of development” that historically has limited the scope of development for the great majority of the world population and China will hit this “ceiling of development” within about a decade. Moreover, if China were to fulfil its climate stabilisation obligations, it may prove to be impossible for the current system to maintain economic and political stability.     

The “Greening” of China: Progress,Limitations, and Contradictions

China’s rapid economic growth in the last three decades has been fuelled by energy-intensive investment and manufacturing, which have become instrumental for China to become the world’s largest economy based on purchasing power parity, and for the United States and the European Union to have access to cheap consumer goods. China’s development strategy, however, has generated a serious domestic environmental crisis, which has also accelerated the global climate emergency. In addition, the 2008 economic crisis led to a collapse of China’s external demand, inducing the leadership to support domestic investment – including investment in environmental projects – as an alternative source of effective demand. By setting ambitious green targets and by adopting strategic policy initiatives, China has become the world’s largest investor in renewable energy. Yet China remains the world’s largest coal consumer and the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter. The Chinese economy nears a crossroad: will it be able to maintain its commitment to green energies or will it fall back to its historical reliance on fossil fuels to sustain growth? This article evaluates the interplay between China’s economy and environment over the course of the reform period, and investigates the set of forces that impinge upon China’s ecological future.     

Singapore Inc: A success story

The success of Singapore's government‐led and managed economy has allowed it to box above its weight in the international trade and financial arena for decades. However, globalisation and technology are forcing a policy shift.     

Democracy and market economy

In the following article, Professor Seizaburo Sato, former Research Director of the Institute for International Policy Studies, addresses the relation between democracy and market economy and the problems that might develop as economic globalization continues to deepen. Liberal democracy and market economy face a number of problems, he says, but they are at this stage the best political and economic systems to follow, and we should take steps to improve them where we can. Although recognizing the positive value of diversity, he emphasizes the importance of international cooperation and a minimum set of common rules. At the same time, he urges constant technological innovation and the fostering of capable political leaders who have a comprehensive vision for the future and a strong sense of public responsibility.     

Transnational Migrants,Globalization Processes,and Regimes of Power and Knowledge

This article situates the Bush administration's new strategy in the historical context of the international capitalist order established by the United States at the end of the 1940s and argues that this order, though extraordinarily successful for some decades, is now in crisis. The unique capitalist international community that the United States established under its primacy revived international capitalism while preventing geopolitical rivalries between the main capitalist centers. The leading sectors of U.S. business have become dependent on the preservation of the unipolar primacy order for its own economic security and expansion while the American domestic political economy has failed to revive as an industrial economy meeting the rules of international economics, exhibiting growing problems with current account deficits and rising levels of debt. To manage the resulting tensions between the orientation of American transnational sectors and problems in the domestic American political economy, the United States has developed an international monetary and financial regime that is destabilizing and dependent upon the preservation of American political primacy over the capitalist world. But the Soviet collapse has destabilized the primacy system, while the dominant sections of American capitalism are committed to rebuilding it. The Bush administration is seeking to rebuild U.S. primacy, using U.S. military dominance. But this carries very high risks.     

Is informalization equalizing? Evidence from Kinshasa (DRC)

As a consequence of a concatenation of external and internal events, the economy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has informalized to an unprecedented level over the last few decades. A comparison of budget surveys carried out in 1975 and 2004 respectively allows us to ascertain the effect of this process on income inequality and poverty in Kinshasa. We find that the extent of inequality in the capital city of the DRC has remained largely unchanged, which strongly suggests that informalization has been a viable survival strategy for those at the lower-income end of society. Unexpectedly, whereas distinctions such as gender and age lost much of their profiling power in the period considered, other cleavages such as education and geography, which may be assumed to be much more intimately related to the formal sector, continued to play an important role in structuring inequality in Kinshasa’s deeply informalized economy.     

Unproductive Activities and the Rate of Surplus Value at the Industry Level in Korea, 1995–2015

ABSTRACT

In order to explain how the Korean economy underwent structural change through the two crises of 1997– 1998 and 2008 within the context of globalisation, this article focuses on class analysis and inter-sectoral value transfer by estimating the sectoral rates of exploitation along with the sectoral monetary expressions of labour time. Our data indicate the possibility that the expansion of unproductive activities, accompanied by intensification of exploitation within the unproductive sectors, might not have overtaken capital accumulation in Korea during 1995–2015. It can also be concluded that the condition for manufacturing’s capital accumulation steadily improved since the 1997–1998 crisis but started to deteriorate after 2011. Our value-theoretic analysis provides a foundation for understanding the context of the regime change, which may plausibly characterise the Korean economy in the last couple of decades.     

China's fascination with the development of Singapore

Singapore has achieved rapid economic growth and has also managed to maintain a stable social order, characteristics that make it attractive to China as a model for future development, according to Professor John Wong, Research Director of the East Asian Institute (EAI), National University of Singapore. The Singapore government has played a vital role in fostering economic development, and while it has eschewed mandatory economic planning in favor of support for free enterprise and open competition, it has nevertheless been very active in providing macro economic guidance for the economy, and in managing a number of economic and business activities. The success of the government's participation in economic development has been made possible by a strong political leadership dedicated to the pursuit of economic growth, an efficient and incorruptible public administration, and an effective legal system. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Symposium on the Government's Role in the Market Economy, held at the China Institute for Reform and Development (CIRD), Haikou, Hainan, China, in January 1997.     

Understanding Egyptian capitalism through the Muslim Brotherhood’s eyes: the quest for an ‘Islamic economy’ in the 1940s and its ideological and social impact

The following article addresses the intricate issue of contemporary Islamist thought’s relation to the modern capitalist economy, with special reference to the Egyptian case. Islamist thinkers have been vigorously proclaiming for the past decades that the economic prosperity of some Muslim nations stems from the proper adoption of an ‘Islamic economy’, whereas the absence of such a model has been mainly responsible for the crises that other nations faced. At the same time, we witness that the Muslim nations are fully integrated into the global market system. Although their rulers boast about achieving social justice, by economically interpreting Islam, nonetheless poverty and horrific injustices are officially retained and morally accepted, thus, enabling the upper classes to keep performing their pious duties in the name of God. In this regard, it seems that capitalism and piety are intertwined: the first justifies the necessity of the second, while the second humanizes the brutal impact of the first. By referring to the historical example of the Muslim Brothers in pre-socialist Egypt, the article tends to show under which circumstances was capitalism’s relation to religious piety conceptualized in Islamist thought and literature, in addition to the main social, organizational and ideological outcomes of this conceptualization.     

From Polarisation to Integration in Vietnam

This paper analyses the growth trajectory of China and related structural change to assess China's capacity to continue its rapid growth over the next decade. The evidence demonstrates that the multi-path approach undertaken has enabled China to transform its economy from low value-added towards high value-added activities through structural change from low to high value-added industries, as well as upgrading within industries. In doing so, China did not follow the neo-liberal advocacy of freeing markets. Selective state interventions facilitated China's transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy over the last few decades. Upgrading towards higher value-added activities and the continuing strength of macroeconomic indicators, such as balance of payment and capital account surpluses, and low trade intensity of GDP and debt service along with significant deepening in human capital and R&;D activities, suggests that China will continue to grow relatively rapidly over the next decade. To do this China needs to find solutions to growing deficits in power and water supply, and potentially dangerous political upheavals if growing economic inequality problems are not solved.     

The political role of the patriarch in the contemporary Middle East

This study focuses on the effects of significant events such as the transition to a republic, the Greek invasion in 1919 and finally the Great Depression on the economic conditions, demography and economic actors in Izmir. Trade and agriculture are at the centre of this article; the commercial life in the city within the changing reach and expression of Ottoman power and structure of the world economy. There are few studies on the Izmir economy for the period 1918 to 1938. Therefore, primary sources were used, such as city year books, Izmir city statistics, Izmir city guides, government year books, trade year books, Turkish economic periodicals, Izmir trade and industrial chamber periodicals, and British Embassy reports on economic conditions in Turkey. In addition to these, the the most important local newspapers, Ahenk and Anadolu, we also utilized. Thus, this study examines the continuity and change from Ottoman Empire to Turkish republic in terms of economic policies and economic conditions through focusing on Izmir (Smyrna) province for the period 1918 and 1938.     

东南亚地区形势:2008年

在刚刚过去的2007年,东南亚各国经济保持较高速度的增长;展望2008年,虽然有一些困难和不稳定因素,但是,总的而言,仍然是一个好年头.美国经济衰退给世界经济带来许多不确定因素,也给东南亚经济蒙上一层阴影.然而,时过境迁,美国经济虽然是影响东南亚经济的一个重要因素,但已经不是唯一的因素,美国一打喷嚏,东南亚就感冒的年代已经一去不复返了.东南亚政治在2008年基本能够保持稳定,马来西亚顺利举行大选;泰国前总理他信回国,新总理沙玛一再强调是他信的代言人,新政府执行了一条没有他信的他信政策.东盟通过了<东盟宪章>,它标志着这个地区性国际组织进入一个新的时代.东盟与各个大国的关系也比较顺利,日本在东南亚又有一些新的动作,福田首相继承其父亲老福田的路线,加强了东南亚外交.     

Nakasone Yasuhiro Peace Institute—Looking Back Over Our Past and Looking Ahead to Our Future—

The Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS), an independent, non-profit research institute founded in 1998 by former prime minister of Japan Yasuhiro Nakasone, has pursued an ambitious research program that covers the fields of international politics, economics, security, energy, and the environment for 30 years. The Institute also convenes international symposia and seminars on important political and economic issues and conducts joint projects with other research institutes in Japan and internationally. Research findings and policy proposals are published in print and on the website.

On the occasion of the 30^th anniversary of the Institute’s founding, and to commemorate the 99^th birthday of Founder and Chairman Yasuhiro Nakasone, as well as recognize the background and purpose of the research work and further clarify the mission for future research endeavors, as of January 1, 2018, the Institute has been renamed Nakasone Yasuhiro Peace Institute (NPI).