How did China's Transitions Impact People's Welfare Benefits in the Reform Era?

This article examines changes in China's welfare programs in the context of economic transition from planned economy to a market-oriented economy. Using the 1988 and 1995 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP), we develop analytical models to study the critical impacts of institutional variables such as economic ownership types and economic sectors on key welfare programs in both rural and urban areas in China. Our findings show that the Chinese government drastically reduced welfare coverage for its citizens during the economic transitional period even though Chinese urban residents' welfare income was primarily determined by the type of their employment. Outperforming many other factors, work unit's ownership nature played a significant role in the provision of welfare benefits while the economic sectors largely failed to have any significant impacts. These findings indicate that China has been moving away from the active state model in welfare provision. Yet, an industrialization and resource-based welfare system has not been realized in China in the reform era.     

A New Chinese Discourse of India

Conventional wisdom has held that China is a success and India is a failure, that India's democracy leads to its poverty and religious intolerance, and China's economic reform without political opening was the only correct path to development and stability. The success of the Indian domestic software industry awed many Chinese and contributed to recent online discussion of India among Chinese scholars. This article sheds light on the changing views of India in China through surveying online articles posted on two major Chinese websites. The new discourse focuses on the historical, cultural, and institutional roots, particularly government policies that have led to the current situation in India. The new Chinese discourse also reflects evaluations of China's own economic policies in the past few decades.     

Peasant challenge in post‐communist China

Peasants constitute about 73% of China's population. To a large extent, the success of China's modernization program and transition depends on where peasants are heading. Peasants have posed new challenges for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 1990s after 17‐year economic reform. This article argues that these challenges derive from the empowerment of the peasants since the mid‐1980s. How well the CCP could deal with these challenges directly concerns China's political stability and reform. Through the examination of the evolution of the peasant‐CCP relations and of the implications of the challenges for China in the 1990s and beyond, this article raises an open question for China scholars to address.     

China's post‐1979 uneven regional policy: Shanghai and Guangdong

This article examines the effects of China's uneven regional development policy, especially in relation to Shanghai. It analyses the evolving role of Shanghai and the constraints that it has operated under during the reform period. Discussion will be particularly devoted to the areas such as the fiscal transfer, central investment in the municipality, the tax and other incentive program allowed to increase the inflows of foreign direct investment by adopting a series of comparisons with Guangdong province. The article argues that it is not economically efficient for China to ‘open its door’ by creating new cities in its southern area while neglecting to improve existing facilities in Shanghai and other advanced cities. This article also suggests that social‐economic institutional change is the same important source of Shanghai's difficulty in keeping pace with Guangdong as the preferential treatment given to Guangdong by the central government in the 1980s.     

Rural China and the WTO

China's entry into the World Trade Organization has been applauded for the benefits it will confer on China's economy and for granting recognition to China's modernizing efforts. The scrutiny of the outside world will force China to regularize many of its practices, such as legal and economic practices. But most of the discussion of the WTO has focused on a very limited segment of China's society. This article considers the realities of rural Chinese life, warning that the consequences of China's increased pressure to reform may be more negative than positive and that the prospect for rural China is far from clear.     

Uneven Opening of China's Society,Economy, and Politics: pro-growth authoritarian governance and protests in China

This article evaluates China's model of development, especially its main component, i.e. its model of governance. It suggests that China's model of development is marked by an imbalance between fast opening of the economy and the society and sluggish opening of the political system. The Chinese society has become much more open, reflected in the Chinese growing awareness of their legal rights. The Chinese economy has become highly internationalized and open, but much of Chinese politics is closed. China's governance is marked by pro-growth authoritarianism. The Chinese state is effective in opening up the economy, promoting reform, and generating economic growth, but offers weak protection of people's rights and ineffectual mitigation of social grievances. These imbalances help produce social protests. Viable solutions are discussed.     

Expansion of Chinese Social Health Insurance: who gets what,when and how?

This article asks ‘who gets what, when and how’ from China's recent social welfare expansion. Little research to date examines the overall landscape of China's social health insurance, which has changed dramatically since 2003, and the distributive consequences and implications thereof. Drawing on public survey data and fieldwork for empirical support, this article finds that China's recent social health insurance expansion does significantly expand people's access to social health insurance. However, the expansion, which entails health insurance fragmentation and increasing benefit disparities, not only reinforces existing social cleavages such as the rural–urban divide, but it also generates new divisions within urbanites and workforce. Moreover, multiple social cleavages that cross-cut class differences have been institutionalized into China's social health insurance system. This reflects authoritarian regimes' ‘divide and rule’ tactic in social welfare provision.     

The Political Economy of Compassion: China's ‘charity supermarket’ saga

With a focus on Tianjin, this article examines the recent widespread establishment of ‘charity supermarkets’ in China's cities. Inspired by the example of certain ‘thrift shops’ in the US, charity supermarkets were set up for the purpose of assisting the urban poor. Several contrasting contemporary discourses within China concerning poverty, charity, business, and the proper roles of the market, state, and community in the delivery of social welfare are explored. The differing perspectives revealed throw an interesting light on why China's charity supermarkets have not, so far, developed as anticipated. This interesting urban social experiment is analyzed as a case study in the potential to achieve effective ‘mutual empowerment’ of state and society in the contemporary Chinese context.     

The Ascendency of State-owned Enterprises in China: development,controversy and problems

The state sector still plays an important role in China's economy. One of the key development phenomena characterizing the Chinese economy is the rapid ascendency of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the resurgence of the state. The strength of China's SOEs is projected in the centrally administrated state-owned enterprises (CSOEs). They are the backbone of the national economy, spearheading national economic development and Beijing's ‘going-out’ strategy. The CSOEs have expanded their reach and increased their power, domestically and globally. In seeking to boost local GDP growth, the eastern provinces in China have joined the western provinces in a fierce contest to attract investment from SOEs. Nevertheless, the rapid ascendency of the SOEs has brought many negative consequences for China's economic, social and political development by causing conflict with the market-oriented development direction of Chinese economic reform and hindering fair competition between state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises.     

Performance Legitimacy,State Autonomy and China's Economic Miracle

Theories that explain post-Mao China's economic success tend to attribute it to one or several ‘successful’ policies or institutions of the Chinese government, or to account for the success from economic perspectives. This article argues that the success of the Chinese economy relies not just on the Chinese state's economic policy but also on its social policies. Moreover, China's economic success does not merely lie in the effectiveness of any single economic or social policy or institution, but also in the state's capacity to make a policy shift when it faces the negative unintended consequences of its earlier policies. The Chinese state is compelled to make policy shifts quickly because performance constitutes the primary base of its legitimacy, and the Chinese state is able to make policy shifts because it enjoys a high level of autonomy inherited from China's past. China's economic development follows no fixed policies and relies on no stable institutions, and there is no ‘China model’ or ‘Beijing consensus’ that can be constructed to explain its success.     

China's Shifting Policies towards Sustainability: a low-carbon economy and environmental protection

China is currently not only the most populous country on earth, but also the world's largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter. As China's population growth continues contributing to the overall global population increase, the country remains a significant player in the global problems related to climate change. The Chinese government, however, has recognized that a low-carbon economy is in the country's long-term economic and social interests and this is now a key part of its national development strategy. This paper examines the evolution of policies for sustainability in China and explores their compositions, functions and operational mechanisms. Some emerging features and trends in China's development model are examined, arguing that they represent a clear shift towards sustainability. Further problems and challenges associated with this change and how they impact on China's policies and strategies are also discussed.     

Municipal leadership and interest‐oriented mass participation: The process of housing reform plan in Shanghai 2

In the light of China's leadership transformation—from revolutionary to technocratic—in the reform era, this paper attempts to explore the new leadership through a case study of making of the Shanghai housing reform plan in 1991. After delineating housing problems and previous reforms in the mega‐city, this paper examines the process of the making of China's most comprehensive housing reform hereto, which inevitably invited conflicts of interests among social groups, especially between the ordinary urban residents who were in disadvantageous positions and the cadres who by and large benefited from old housing policies under China's planning system. The principal conclusion of the paper is that the ways of making the housing reform plan indicate that the current leadership is more responsive to ordinary people's interests and opinions than the Maoist leadership, even though both have much in common as the former inherites the latter.     

China's Future Economic Regionalization

This paper investigates China's economic growth potentials and limitation up to 2020 and recommends a trend of economic regionalization. A sustainable growing economy is a necessity for China's future stability. The growth sustainability of the Chinese economy depends essentially on its continued commitments to institutional reform and economic deregulation. China's relaxation of government intervention in economic activities has led and will be leading China to decentralize its central governmental authority over economic planning and control. This will consequently stimulate the emergence of regional economies in Mainland China. In the next two decades, there will likely be 10 regional economies with relatively independent industrial structures emerging in Greater China (or the Chinese Economic Area of Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and the Mainland) as a result of economic liberalization and decentralization.     

Nationalism and Democratization in Contemporary China

The crippled economic and political reform in China has come with two schools of thought: the new-left and nationalism. The new-left focuses on domestic issues, while nationalism tackles more international relationships. This paper explores the effects of radical nationalism on China's democratization process. It argues that if nationalism takes the dominant position in China's political process, Chinese reform will go astray.     

China's Sovereign Wealth Funds: origins,development, and future roles

China has established two of the world's newer large sovereign wealth funds (SWFs): the official China Investment Corporation (CIC), and the non-official and less transparent State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) Investment Company (SIC). Both provide alternative investment opportunities for China's exploding foreign exchange reserves, at US$2.4 trillion at the end of 2009, the largest in world history. This paper will address how China has accumulated its huge and growing foreign exchange reserves, and what roles these reserves, until 2007 managed only by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), have played in the establishment and development of China's two new SWFs. We will look specifically at why China's foreign exchange reserves have developed, and how the new SWFs are a part of broader efforts to provide investment alternatives for China's ballooning foreign exchange surpluses, particularly in light of the inflow of ‘hot’ foreign speculative funds. We will then point out some of the difficulties for China's financial officials of SWFs as they try to pursue multiple and sometimes competing goals, set by boards of directors representing different bureaucratic and economic interests, all within the context of a general lack of transparency and a rapidly growing economy. Finally, we will present our conclusions about the future roles of the two SWFs as well as of the policies being developed to decentralize foreign exchange reserve holdings while at the same time not slowing the growth of China's foreign trade surpluses, nor its foreign direct investments, nor its overall economic growth. We will also examine the effects of US-promoted Chinese currency appreciation on the future of China's foreign exchange reserves and its sovereign wealth funds.     

The Evolution of Entrepreneurs' Social Networks in China: patterns and significance

The issue of social networks is central to scholars' examinations of China's economic reform and its transitional society. This article presents an effort to examine the impact of the property rights reform on the evolution of entrepreneurs' social networks in the context of rural China. This study proposes three different patterns of social networks: in-group networks, official-centered networks, and market-oriented networks; and examines how the significance of different network patterns has evolved under the context of institutional change. By using data collected in Wuxi city, Jiangsu province, China, this article attempts to explore four significant questions. Do social networks still matter? How is the significance of different patterns of social networks changing? Why could this happen? In which fields do social networks still matter?     

China's human rights development in the 1990s

The literature on human rights in China is dominated by incriminating documentation of abuses and a lack of theoretical consensus. But China's continuing economic reform has meant the need for Western industrialized countries to adjust their human rights policies on China. Emerging is the shift from the “sanction/isolation” approach to what some would call “positive engagement,” which is aimed at improving China's human rights situation through more international contact. In China, human rights development in the early 1990s can be characterized by the increasing use of Chinese law, and within that legal limit, a more open exercise of dissent and free speech as a basic human right, together with its adverse consequences.     

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.     

The Closed Doors of Courts: China's judicial filtration of financial litigations

In China, courts may refuse to accept certain legal actions involving financial matters without any solid or explicit legal grounds. An analysis of such a phenomenon should help scholars to understand the functioning logic of China's judicial power. This article suggests that there are a number of reasons behind the filtration system, including a lack of applicable legal rules, a weak ability of the courts to understand complicated financial matters, the background of the economic system transition, the political consideration of ‘maintaining social stability’ and judiciary self-interest. Filtration has inevitably had a negative effect on China's financial markets, and reform is thus necessary.