Is China's Western Region Development Strategy on Track? An assessment

China's government launched the Western Region Development Strategy in 2000 with the aim of boosting economic development in 12 provinces, municipalities and autonomous administrative regions in the western part of the country. This paper presents the results of an assessment of the progress made so far and makes suggestions for better performance in the future. We conclude that although the western region has experienced impressive rates of economic growth, regional disparities in China have continued to widen in spite of the western regional strategy. We also develop a regional growth model to determine the major drivers of regional economic growth in the western region of China. Furthermore, the sources of regional disparities are examined using Morduch and Sicular's regression-based decomposition approach. These models are used for suggesting a more targeted package of regional development policies for the period beyond 2010.     

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.     

Beijing's new thinking on security strategy

Beijing is refocusing its foreign strategy in the Asian Pacific region. This article examines Beijing's new thinking on security strategy in the post‐Cold War Asian‐Pacific region. Drawing from the recent strategic debate in China, the author discusses three defining areas in the new security strategy: military strategy, defense development strategy, and foreign policy and security strategy. It is argued that thinking in security strategy has become more regional oriented, sophisticated and compatible with foreign policy. The implication of China's defense modernization for regional security is controversial. In the short run, China's military posture will not change balance of power at the regional level, but it will significantly affect outcomes of future territorial conflicts on China's periphery. In the long run, Beijing's role in Asian‐Pacific security remains uncertain.     

China's Unbalanced Economic Growth

This paper summarizes empirical findings and results from the author's most recent research publication in Chinese: China's Unbalanced Economic Growth. It studies China's economic growth with a special emphasis on its regional disparities. It provides an analysis of China's overall economic landscape as well as an empirical study of China's unbalanced regional development. Based on its quantitative findings and results, the author predicts the emergence of ten Chinese metropolitan economies in the early twenty-first century and recommends a regional development strategy as well as implementation policies for China's future development. The major empirical findings, results and conclusions of this research are outlined in three sections: the first describes China's economic future—the emergence of ten regional metropolitan economies, the second reports the empirical findings of China's national and regional economic disparities and discusses policy implications, and the third investigates China's future economic growth and discusses its growth limitations.     

China's Counterinsurgency Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang

China's counterinsurgency strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang relies heavily on hard power and imposition. Well-functioning vertical coordination in the security sector of China's political system and assimilationist nationality dynamics combine to favour the use of force against ethnic groups that do not accept the political legitimacy of China's Communist Party. Transnational links contribute to China's difficulties with implementing counterinsurgency in Tibet and help China implement its strategy in Xinjiang. Development strategies aimed at improving living standards are crowded out due to a lack of horizontal coordination between civilian and security agencies and a bias towards unitary nation-building in Chinese nationalism.     

Why Do We Need ‘Myth-Busting’ in the Study of Sino–African Relations?

The literature on Sino–African relations has debated whether or not China's growing presence is a threat to Western or African interests, and has come to the conclusion that China's behavior is not uniquely immoral. Many countries, including Western liberal democracies, similarly give aid to local autocrats to secure natural resources. Why, then, has so much effort been made to come to this perhaps unsurprising conclusion? We argue that the literature on Chinese foreign policy remains heavily influenced by Western states' policy interests, resulting in an impoverished debate that is primarily concerned with the idea of a China threat. In order to recover the diversity in our research on Chinese foreign policy, we argue for the need to go beyond the confines of Western strategic interests.     

Re-interpreting China's Non-intervention Policy towards Myanmar: leverage,interest and intervention

China's non-intervention policy has long been criticized for prolonging the rule of many authoritarian regimes. Myanmar has become one of the classic examples. As China is expected to become a responsible great power, her behavioral patterns have aroused many concerns. This paper aims to re-interpret China's non-intervention policy. While explaining various constraints on China's capability to intervene in the Myanmar government, it shows how China is making efforts to seek a new intervention policy in dealing with countries like Myanmar. It argues that China's insistence on a non-intervention policy does not mean that China does not want to influence other countries such as Myanmar. To assess Chinese leverage and its non-intervention policy toward Myanmar as well as to supplement the current limited academic discussion on Sino–Myanmar relations, in this paper we first examine Chinese leverage in Myanmar through Burmese local politics, such as the power struggle between the central government and local rebel governments. Second, we disaggregate the Chinese interests in Myanmar into different levels (regional, geo-strategic and international) and discuss how these interests affect China's non-intervention policy. Third, we argue that China has indeed tried to intervene in Myanmar politics, but in a softer manner that contrasts with the traditional Western hard interventions, such as economic sanctions and military interference.     

Sino‐US security relations: The PLA factor

Sino‐US security relations have evolved into a very complex and often precarious military relationship. The influence of the People's Liberation Army in China's national security strategy and foreign policy formulation is on the rise. The United States has begun to prepare for a strong and vociferous Chinese military by addressing this trend especially within the areas of China's nuclear programme, Asian disputes over territorial claims, and the Chinese military's modernization programme.     

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's good neighbor policy and its implications for Taiwan

Chinese leaders in recent years have been following a coherent policy toward Asia that emphasizes moderation and accommodation while preserving core PRC interests. China's prevailing ‘good neighbor’ policy approach—backed by improvement in US–China relations—provides important opportunities and challenges for Taiwan. It clearly inclines the PRC leaders to avoid more aggressive or harder‐line tactics in the mix of carrots and sticks that makes up China's recent approach toward Taiwan. To follow a more disruptive course would undermine the influence and advantage Beijing has been seeking with its ongoing moderate approach toward the United States and other Asian powers. The main challenge for Taiwan is how to deal with the current balance of carrots and sticks in China's policy. Much depends on the ability of Taiwan's leaders and populace to turn the prevailing balance in PRC policy to Taiwan's advantage. This presumably will involve reviving their economy, promoting effective governance and prudent defense, while consolidating relations with the United States and managing tensions in cross‐Strait relations to the advantage of Taiwan's future security and development. Unfortunately, there is no political consensus on Taiwan to mobilize domestic resources and opinion in a concerted effort to protect Taiwan's future as an entity independent of PRC control. Those outsiders who have followed with positive interest Taiwan's remarkable development over the past decades hope that Taiwan makes good use of the opportunities posed by China's good neighbor policy to adopt prudent and concrete measures beneficial to Taiwan's long range prospects.     

Beyond Power Politics: institution-building and Mainland China's Taiwan policy transition

Facing the ever-growing interdependence across the Taiwan Strait, Mainland China's strategy towards Taiwan is undergoing a profound change, that is, transcending the staunch realpolitik mentality and turning to an institutional arrangement in policy making. Especially since President Hu Jintao took up his position, the Mainland has endeavored to improve cross-Strait relations through the institutionalization of a series of sensitive issues, such as the proposals and signatures of some long-term accords aiming to advocate economic cooperation, promote social exchanges, weaken political opposition and foster mutual trust. By taking the Mainland's national development strategy shift, Taiwan's domestic reality and ‘institution deficit’ in cross-Strait relations into consideration, this paper analyzes the reasons, efforts and features of the Mainland's recent institutional-orientated policy transition.     

China's Adaptation Challenges—a critical assessment of China's ability to facilitate a strategic shift towards a low-carbon economy by applying the structure–agency framework

China's reform/opening process has been exceptionally successful at generating lasting economic growth and in lifting millions of people out of absolute poverty. However, this success came at a significant price. Environmental degeneration represents one critical issue. Other serious topics include an increasing income and development gap between and within provinces, and between rural and urban areas. A proposed shift towards a low-carbon economy seems to provide an answer in addressing this complex environmental–development challenge. However, decisions on a future course of action are not made in a political, economic or social vacuum, instead decisions are made in the context of a particular structural environment, which restricts the options available for actors. Applying a structure–agency approach will help to identify and highlight the existing structural challenges inherent within China's development strategy.     

China's urban housing market development: Problems and prospects

This study analyzes the predicaments and prospects of China's urban housing market development. To this end, it examines the pre‐reform housing system in China's urban sector, presents major reform efforts, and investigates most recent reform designs and price subsidy schemes. The author maintains that China's housing market can be expected to develop vigorously as both fundamental factors and policy directives favor such a development.     

State Capacity in Contemporary China: ‘closing the pits and reducing coal production’

This paper analyses the capacity of China's central state to control society and implement its policies at the local level, using as a case study the implementation from 1998 of a major policy initiative—‘closing the pits and reducing coal production’. The aims of this policy were to close down many of the TVE (township and village enterprise) mines, thereby ameliorating China's coal safety record, and to reduce output in order to balance supply and demand, thereby improving the situation of the SOE (state-owned enterprise) coal mines. The paper concludes that, despite some success, the state found it difficult to overcome resistance from a powerful coalition of local cadres, mine bosses, workers and farmers who depended directly or indirectly on the mines for their living. It therefore highlights continuing shortfalls in China's state capacity, particularly in situations where the state is trying to control or influence the distribution of economic rents as between different groups in society.     

Foreign Policy Implications of Chinese Nationalism Revisited: the strident turn

This paper revisits the debate about foreign policy implications of Chinese nationalism in the context of China's increasingly confrontational and assertive behavior in recent years. It argues that while the Chinese government made effective efforts to control popular nationalism and Chinese foreign policy was therefore not dictated by emotional nationalistic rhetoric before 2008, it has become more willing to follow the popular nationalist calls to take a confrontational position against the Western powers and to adopt tougher measures in maritime territorial disputes with its neighbors. This strident turn is partially because the government is increasingly responsive to public opinion, but more importantly because of the convergence of Chinese state nationalism and popular nationalism calling for a more muscular Chinese foreign policy. Enjoying an inflated sense of empowerment supported by its new quotient of wealth and military capacities, and terrified of an uncertain future due to increasing social, economic and political tensions at home, the communist state has become more willing to play to the popular nationalist gallery in pursuing the so-called core national interests. These developments have complicated China's diplomacy, creating a heated political environment to harden China's foreign policy.     

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.     

The Myth of the Beijing Consensus

The widely touted concept of the ‘Beijing Consensus’ (BC) suggests that China's economic success violates conventional theories of development and offers developing countries an alternative vision to the Washington Consensus (WC). Although ambitious, the original conception of the BC is not up to the task of being a worthwhile competitor to the alternative model from which its name was coined, not because of the WC's apparent worthiness, but rather because the BC is a misguided and inaccurate summary of China's actual reform experience. It not only gets the empirical facts wrong about China, it also disregards the similarities and differences China's experience shares with other countries, and it distorts China's place in international politics. In spite of these weaknesses, the BC is nevertheless a useful touchstone to consider the evolution of developmental paradigms, compare China's experience with that of others, identify the most distinctive features of China's experience, and evaluate its significance for the development prospects of other countries and for international relations.     

西部开发与私权立法研究

西部大开发战略已正式开始实施 ,但“西部开发”并非中国之“专利” ,很多国家都有“西部开发”史。所以 ,借鉴国外成功之经验 ,吸取国外失败之教训 ,将会使我国的“西部开发”顺利进行 ,少走弯路。通过比较中外“西部开发”之措施 ,作者发现 ,私权在“西部开发”中具有十分重要的作用。     

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.