China and the Asian Economies: mutual acceptance,economic interaction and interactive dynamics

The objective of this article is to explore the economic relationship between China and the surrounding dynamic Asian economies. It delves into China's influence over the Asian economies and whether this relationship has evolved in a market- and institution-led symbiotic manner. The three principal channels of regional integration analyzed in this article are trade, FDI and vertically integrated production networks. Another issue that this article explores is the so-called China ‘threat’ or ‘fear’ in Asia. The China threat implied that China was crowding out exports from the other Asian economies in the world market place. Also, as China became the most attractive FDI destination among developing countries, it was understood that China was receiving FDI at the expense of the Asian economies. These concerns were examined by several empirical studies and the inference was that they were exaggerated. The article concludes that China methodically expanded and deepened its economic ties with its regional neighbors. At the present juncture, China's integration with the surrounding Asian nations is deep. Both China and its dynamic Asian neighbors have benefited from this synergy.     

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.     

Did Policy Experimentation in China Always Seek Efficiency? A case study of Wenzhou financial reform in 2012

Policy experimentation has been widely considered a ‘magic bullet’ of policy improvement and key to economic prosperity in China. This article, however, argues that policy experimentation in China does not always seek policy efficiency. Rather, it can be manipulated as a political symbol without actually affecting practices. By taking a case study on Wenzhou's financial reform, this article illustrates that local policy experimentation can serve as a mechanism for the central government to legitimately delay reform practices—in the case of Wenzhou's financial reform in 2012, out of a desire to maintain socio-economic stability during the power succession at the 18th Party Congress. In this reform, socio-economic stability was deemed more important than developing a sustainable and effective long-term policy. This article provides a new perspective on understanding policy experimentation in China by proposing the idea of ‘symbolic reforms’.     

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.     

The Localism of Local Leadership Cadres in Reform Shanxi

The changing face of China's politics is to be found as much in the cadre force as in the categories of ‘new rich’ engendered by economic reform and rapid development. A series of interviews undertaken in 1996 and 1997 with local cadres—at sub-provincial, county and section levels—in Shanxi Province provides evidence as to the extent of change and continuity in their social backgrounds, careers and political attitudes. Analysis focuses in particular on five common hypotheses about the cadre force in reform China: that they are conservative upholders of the status quo; a priviligentsya; imposed ‘from without’; the source of a ‘new class'; and one which has come in the reform era to be dominated by ‘technocrats' (rather than former revolutionaries). Though local political and administrative leadership in the 1990s appears to have become more localist, and even in some senses parochial, such analysis must be kept in perspective. The local cadre force is considerably less local, parochial and ‘privileged’ than their counterpart local business elites; and the agency of the provincial organisation of the Chinese Communist Party is still very much in evidence.     

Identity,Sovereignty, and Economic Penetration: Beijing's responses to offshore Chinese democracies

Investigating how the PRC responds to democratization in Taiwan and Hong Kong, this paper argues that the Chinese Communist leadership has mainly developed three strategies in managing the complicated crises, including Beijing's own legitimacy crisis and the integration crisis of the Chinese nation, caused by the rise of offshore Chinese democracies. These strategies are: identity politics, sovereignty politics, and economic penetration. With ‘identity politics’, Beijing identifies ‘identification with the Communist leadership’ as the sole Chinese national identification, and utilizes the nationalistic passions of mainland and even overseas Chinese people against democrats in Taiwan and Hong Kong, by labeling the latter as ‘separatists’ or ‘national traitors’. Further, Beijing defines ‘sovereignty’ in a way in which the ‘central’ government monopolizes all possessions of the nation, and excludes ‘people's sovereignty’ from the politics of national reunification or the ‘one country, two systems’ model actualization. While appealing to both ‘soft power’ based in ‘patriotic nationalism’ and ‘hard power’ embedded in national sovereignty, however, the Chinese regime also mobilizes business resources and opportunities provided by China's growing economic power and China's dominance in Greater Chian economic integration for its political purposes of curbing offshore Chinese democracies.     

中国共产党坚持改革的人民主体地位分析

推进改革开放和中国特色社会主义事业,是中国共产党百年历史中的重大事件。中国共产党在领导人民书写波澜壮阔的改革开放史的进程中,辩证理解和深刻把握人民主体地位的精神要义和实践内涵,始终坚持人民是推动改革实践的主体、人民是共享改革成果的主体以及人民主体地位和党的领导的统一性这三个内在相联的部分,更加广泛凝聚改革共识和形成改革合力,创造了经济发展和社会稳定的奇迹。     

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.     

Fiscal Federalism: a refined theory and its application in the Chinese context

China's central–local relations have been marked by perpetual changes amidst economic restructuring. Fiscal decentralization on the expenditure side has been paralleled by centralization on the revenue side, accompanied by political centralization. Hence, our understanding of China's fiscal relations is not without controversy. This paper aims to make a theoretical contribution to the ongoing debate on ‘fiscal federalism’ by addressing crucial questions regarding China's central–local fiscal relations: first, to what extent do Chinese central–local fiscal relations conform to fiscal federalism in the Western literature? Second, are there any problems with existing principles of fiscal federalism and, if so, how to refine them? Third, how are refined principles relevant to the Chinese case and what policies should the Chinese government pursue in the future? Based on an in-depth and critical review of the theories on fiscal federalism, we develop a refined prototype of fiscal federalism. The model shows that quasi-traditional fiscal federalism is a much closer reality in China, while we argue that the refined fiscal federalism should be the direction of future reform in China.     

Why China has been successful in attracting foreign direct investment: A transaction cost approach

An important factor that has contributed significantly to China's economic growth over the past two decades has been the dramatic increase of foreign direct investment in China. Based on the observation that overseas Chinese have been the dominant supplier of foreign direct investment in China, this paper employs the transaction cost approach to provide an explanation as to why China has been successful in attracting foreign direct investment. It first describes and analyzes the economic ‘institution’ in China. Then it shows that overseas Chinese have a competitive advantage in investing in China because they have the experience and knowledge of operating their business in an ‘institution’ that is similar to the ‘institution’ in China. Finally, the paper argues that some policies in China, such as the flexible contractual forms (particularly joint ventures) and the establishment of special economic zones, further reduce the transaction cost of doing business in China and contributed to attracting foreign direct investment.     

西部经济增长过程中的FDI缺口及其机会损失研究

对西部FDI增长要素效应以及增长函数的研究表明,西部FDI吸收量存在较大缺口,使得西部在经济增长过程中存在较大的增长数量和增长质量的机会损失。     

Coping with the Global Financial Crises: institutional and ideational sources of Taiwan's economic resiliency

Over the last two decades, Taiwan has weathered two global financial crises: the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998 and the sub-prime loan crisis of 2008–2009. Each time the island's economy emerged from the crisis relatively unscathed. Many of the elements that constitute Taiwan's economic resilience have been fostered through entrenched institutional arrangements and established policy orientations over a long period. Taiwan managed to retain the bulk of these long-running sources of economic resilience despite the tremendous external pressures exerted by neo-liberal policy advocates to dismantle these ‘out-dated’ policy thinking and practices in the name of reform during the decade-long interval between the two crises. Taiwan was able to cope with the 2008–2009 global financial crisis thanks also to a more enabling regional environment created through stronger cooperation among Asian economies and under a new awakening among the East Asian policy makers.     

Technology and economic development: the case of Taiwan

In this paper it is argued that Taiwan succeeded in developing by deviating from the currently popular ‘Washington Consensus’ strategy in specific ways. In particular, it developed investment strategies that have now reached a crucial ‘Schumpeterian’ phase. This has important implications for high and information technology sectors. Following Schumpeter we assume that innovation in specific firms can have economy‐wide effects. Models based on this idea can be shown to have multiple equilibria. The idea of a positive feedback loop innovation system or POLIS is formalized by picking an appropriate sequence of equilibria over time. It is shown that POLIS has empirical relevance by applying the formal model to an actual economy. Recent financial crisis in many Asian countries, most notably South Korea, seems to have reversed the conventional wisdom regarding the East Asian ‘miracle’. This paper applies the concept of a POLIS to show that neither the current view that the miracle was a mirage nor the earlier contrarian view that the growth was a result of factor accumulation only is correct. Ultimately technological transformation—in particular the creation of a positive feedback loop innovation system is what makes the difference between sustained growth and gradual or sudden decline. Although various problems remain in both the real and the financial sectors, the successes of Taiwan in building the preconditions for an innovation system are worth examining. Upon careful examination of Taiwan's system of innovation within the above Schumpeterian model it is found that of all the ‘miracle’ economies Taiwan has the best chance of building a POLIS in the near future. Because of Taiwan's strength in building a POLIS, the PRC can also benefit from continuing contact with Taiwan through trade and FDI from Taiwan.     

Bashing ‘the Chinese’: contextualizing Zambia's Collum Coal Mine shooting

The 2010 shooting of 13 miners at Zambia's small, privately-owned ‘Chinese’ Collum Coal Mine (CCM) has been represented by Western and Zambian politicians and media as exemplifying the ‘neo-colonial’ and ‘amoral’ practices of ‘China’ and ‘the Chinese’ in Africa. CCM has been used to provide a sharp contrast to the supposed ways of the Western firms that own most of Zambia's mines. Embedded in racial hierarchy and notions of strategic competition between the West and China, the discourse of the CCM shootings further shapes conceptions of global China and Chinese overseas. While examining all the oppressive conditions that have given rise to protest at the mine, we contextualize the shooting and subsequent conflicts. In analyzing CCM's marginal and troubled development, we discuss aspects of the 2010 shooting incident known to miners and union leaders, but ignored by politicians and media. We look at the shooting's political fallout, focus also on the epilogue that was the 2012 CCM riot—in which one Chinese person was murdered and several others seriously injured—and trace the sometimes violent discontent manifested at other foreign-owned mines in Zambia since their privatization in the late 1990s. The empirical data for this detailed study derive from hundreds of documentary sources and interviews with union leaders, workers, officials and others in Zambia from 2011 to 2013.     

The Defense Lawyer in the Scales of Chinese Criminal Justice

Western critics are keenly interested in the defense lawyer as an advocate within the human rights movement in China and fear that under the impact of state persecution the defense lawyer is becoming an ‘endangered species’. This article argues that, while there are significant problems, there has also been progress in Chinese lawyering reform that ties together greater professionalism with a new emphasis on due process. The revised Lawyers’ Law of 2007 is an important new benchmark in lawyer reform. This law has challenged the limited dimensions of earlier reform. This law, itself, has been challenged in bureaucratic resistance that is deploying outdated criminal procedural law to negate the reforms supporting the new process and protected lawyer–client relations. The National People's Congress has supported the latter, arguing that it represents the latest in reform and is, therefore, superior to the more restrictive provisions of the 1996 Criminal Procedural Law and supporting public security regulation.     

China's New Assertiveness in the South China Sea

China's new assertiveness in the South China Sea has arisen from the growth of its military power, its ‘triumphalism’ in the wake of the Western financial crisis and its heightened nationalism. The other littoral states of the South China Sea have been troubled by the opacity of Chinese politics and of the process of military decision-making amid a proliferation of apparently separately controlled maritime forces. The more active role being played by the United States in the region, in part as a response to Chinese activism, has troubled Beijing. While most of the ASEAN states have welcomed America as a hedge against growing Chinese power, their economies have become increasingly dependent upon China and they don't want to be a party to any potential conflict between these two giants. The problem is that there is no apparent resolution to what the Chinese call, in effect, these ‘indisputable disputes’.     

改革开放以来中国共产党对性别和谐的探索

新中国成立以来,特别是改革开放以来党和国家面对社会中性别矛盾突出的问题,加快了对性别和谐政策的制定和贯彻,也取得了巨大成就:将男女平等确立为基本国策,制定了两个《中国妇女发展纲要》,将妇女发展纳入到国家行动规划,将性别意识纳入决策主流。在此过程中总结出宝贵的经验:坚持马克思主义的指导地位,不断与时俱进,通过坚持政府地位,加强和完善法律条文,建设先进性文化,发挥传媒积极作用等,逐步探索出一条适合中国国情的性别和谐之路。     

“双循环”新发展格局的历史逻辑、理论逻辑和实践逻辑

改革开放40余年,中国经济总体规模和发展质量有了大幅度提升,为应对新冠肺炎疫情和国际经济环境的急剧变化打下了坚实的基础.“双循环”新发展格局形成的历史逻辑清晰地表明中国经济发展的结构和质量均已达到了一个新的历史阶段;其理论逻辑则基于李嘉图比较优势理论,对我国要素禀赋及由此衍生的制度和文化需求提出了更高的要求;其实践逻辑...     

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.     

公务员对我国行政改革的认知状况调查——基于对浙江省公务员群体的调查

调查发现公务员群体对我国的行政改革了解有限,改革在一定程度上延续着对先前制度的依赖,与理想状态还有一定的差距。公务员群体也因性别、年龄、学历和机关工作年限等不同,在相关看法上呈现出一定的内部差异。当前各级政府依然不同程度的存在经济管理强、市场监管弱、社会管理弱、行政执法弱、公共服务弱的现状;在教育、医疗和住房等基本公共服务提供方面,可能存在供给"短缺"与政府"缺位"的问题。我国政府强调行政改革的中国特色,形成了行政改革实践的"渐进性"和"两个超越"的特征。