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BSTRACT Discussions on the politics of Chinese engagement with African development have been marked by increasing concern over Chinese use of aid in exchange for preferential energy deals. Normative liberal discourse criticizes the Chinese for disbursing 'rogue aid' and undermining good governance in the African continent. These criticisms not only ignore the longer-term motivations and modalities of Chinese aid and the historical diversity of Chinese relations with Africa, but also uncritically assume 'Western' aid to be morally 'superior' and 'more effective' in terms of development outcomes. This paper consists of three parts. First, it will discuss the debates surrounding Chinese engagement in Africa, especially around aid and development issues. Second, the paper maps the historical development of China-Africa engagement and investigates the impacts of the changing modalities of Chinese aid with reference to case studies of two countries: Angola and Ghana. It then offers a comparative analysis of the similarities and differences between these two cases. The principal argument is that Chinese and Western donors employ different ideologies and practices of governance to conceal their own interests and political discourses in the African continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Since the onset of the economic reforms more than three decades ago, the Chinese growth miracle has been based on exports and investment. While strong output growth was maintained even during the financial crisis, imbalances within the country increased. To return to a more sustainable development path, recent government policies have aimed to improve the role of private consumption. This article argues that China's institutional framework is an impediment to this strategy, as it weakens the incentives of households to consume. As well as a low level of social security and highly regulated financial markets, the authors stress the relevance of the hukou system as the main driver for modest consumption, especially in recent years. After controlling for different income levels, the average propensity to consume is found to be significantly lower for migrants, as their access to public services is limited. If not accompanied by relevant reforms, the urbanization strategy of the government is likely to raise the number of migrants with limited hukou rights, further increasing the downward pressure on consumption. Therefore, in the absence of reforms in the household registration system, the shift towards consumption-driven growth is at risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years Europe has become a primary focus for Chinese investment. In the context of the rolling out of Chinese government plans such as its Belt and Road Initiative and 'Made in China 2025' industrial strategy, and the fact that many Chinese companies are either controlled or influenced by the Communist Party, major consequences for Europe's economic development — and its social, political and geopolitical corollaries — are now in train. The analyses presented in this special issue significantly advance our understanding of the dynamics and consequences of China's deepening economic engagements in Europe. They do so particularly in relation to the contentious issues surrounding corporate acquisitions by Chinese companies, the security problems associated with some investments and the impact of China's investment finance. This introductory article offers an institutional framework for comprehending the other articles that constitute the special issue and provides summaries of their contents. Additionally, it provides an assessment of how the special issue's contribution advances our understanding of China's externalization and its implications for European economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's internationalization has been heralded by some as a new era of South–South cooperation. Yet such framings of development are pitched at an abstract space of the 'global South' which conceals more than it reveals. With some theory moving towards ontologies of 'global development', we need to capture both the connectedness and the local specificity of increasingly diffuse processes. This article sets out a more fine‐grained understanding of how political territories and processes are imagined and produced by and through China's internationalization, focusing on infrastructure as a 'technology' of territorialization. Much of the focus on China's internationalization has been on state‐to‐state relations, but this obscures the 'omni‐channel politics' that China practises. Using a critical literature review and illustrative case study, this article develops the idea of omni‐channel politics to posit a view of 'twisted' territories in which political processes and development outcomes are more complex and contingent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Diversification is routinely promoted to improve poor rural peoples' livelihoods. However, policy recommendations for livelihood diversification based on evidence from crop-cultivating sedentary rural societies may not work for mobile pastoral communities, where socio-ecological conditions predetermine livestock herding as the preferred livelihood strategy. Using survey and semi-structured interview data collected from 159 households in the Altay and Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, China, this study applies cluster analysis to identify six distinct groups based on livelihood strategies: pastoralists, agropastoralists, crop farmers, wage labourers, hired herders and mixed smallholders. Although pastoralism is the least diverse of these in terms of sources of income, it is significantly more diverse in ecological dimensions such as spatial movement, land use pattern and livestock portfolio. Patterns of livelihood diversification and their relationship with household incomes indicate that pastoralism, although preferred, is unattainable for 55 per cent of households given their meagre asset endowments and the pressure of government policies toward sedentarization. The results strongly suggest that livelihood diversification does not improve welfare for pastoral households. Future development interventions should promote policies that enable households to regain flexible access to pastures and should aim to correct the imbalance of opportunities that exists in northern Xinjiang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates China's local policy experimentation in the broader context of policy experiments in decentralized political systems, through a case study which represents a local state response to China's transition to a market economy. With growing regional and urban-rural inequalities evident after the initial reform period (1978-1994), local party leaders of inland provinces devised strategies for addressing these inequalities and encouraging public-private sector mobility among party officials. County and township-level leaders pursued local policy experiments in which they selected and sent officials to find private-sector work in China's booming coastal cities. Initiated in the 1990s and peaking in the 2000s, these policy experiments and inter-provincial transfers demonstrate the discretion that local officials possess to conduct programmatic/policy experiments in a unitary political system and show how officials resort to extra-institutional strategies in order to bridge perceived knowledge gaps. The ultimate demise of these programmes illuminates the challenges to extra-institutional policy innovations in transitioning states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rapid economic growth, the numbers living in absolute poverty in Africa have grown. China's rapidly expanding presence in Africa is widely considered to be a prime source of this unequalization. However, at the same time, its presence also supports countervailing and unrecognized processes of equalization, although this varies by country, class, gender and age grouping. China has the capacity to help Africa move to a more sustainable and less unequal growth path by providing low-cost consumer and capital goods, new market opportunities which can be accessed by small-scale producers and new, more appropriate capital goods. Taking advantage of the China-induced commodities price boom to promote more equal patterns of growth will depend on the capacity of African actors to promote linkages effectively. The extent to which Africa is able to take advantage of opportunities opened up by China to move to a new, more inclusive growth path will largely be determined by political developments in Africa. But these political dynamics are not independent of China's increasing economic and political footprint, both globally and in its direct relations with Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, China has emerged as a major source of investment and development assistance across the 'developing world', triggering the rise of global networks that in some ways stand apart from the existing order of globalization. This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews in Cambodia from 2009 to 2011, begins to explore the significance of Chinese investors and managers, a new globe-trotting elite involved in projects around the world. Understanding how this new Chinese mobile class sees its mission is crucial for making sense of how China's 'rise' may be re-scripting globalization and, specifically, how it may be offering new visions of modernity. The author's research suggests that Chinese investors and managers engage in a developmental discourse which is reminiscent partly of colonial days and partly of the heyday of post-war developmentalism. This discourse articulates the possibility and necessity of progress imposed by outside actors, and is accompanied by measures that inculcate a strict Fordist labour discipline. At the same time, the author argues, it may also contain the seeds of a new developmental cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary order in 1971, the US dollar has successfully maintained its global hegemony despite the US's declining share in the global economy, thanks largely to the US's political-military supremacy. The recent rise of China poses a serious dilemma to the US. On the one hand, China's export-oriented development has provided the US with low-cost manufactured imports and cheap credit. On the other hand, the US's expanding current account deficit, largely attributable to China, has precipitated a crisis of confidence over the dollar's long-term viability. This dilemma explains the US's vacillation in its currency conflict with China over the last decade. China has also been caught in a dilemma. While keeping its currency cheap could help sustain its export competitiveness, it would deepen China's dependence on the US market and Treasury bonds as an outlet for its expanding current account surplus. On the other hand, while a RMB revaluation would facilitate China's long overdue economic rebalancing and reduce its dependence on the US, the resulting unravelling of the long-entrenched export-oriented growth could generate large-scale economic dislocation. No matter how this currency conflict is settled, its final resolution will determine the future of the dollar's global hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses what the author refers to as 'China anxiety', manifest in the current Anglo-American discourse on the rise of China. It is argued that beneath the hype and hyperbole, anxieties can be detected that are no longer only about the prospect, but increasingly about the purpose, of China's rise to power. The author suggests that there is a particular and deeper 'cauldron of anxiety' which causes, and is caused by, a certain intellectual disorientation among those participating in the discourse. The rise of China remains a puzzle, as it presents a number of paradoxes, contradictions and ironies. The article examines two specific propositions and debates, on the return of authoritarian powers and on the future of the liberal global order. The author argues that a rising China raises a number of important questions about the way in which the transformation of China has been represented in the dominant Anglo-American discourse and the knowledge of China that such representations construct. The article concludes with the insight that China's pathway to power poses fundamental challenges to some intellectual premises and political wisdoms widely accepted in the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Recent developments in the biopharmaceutical industry in Taiwan, South Korea and China bear witness to the transformation of these states in nurturing an innovation-based industry. This article argues that the segmentation of the value chain of the biopharmaceutical industry has provided industrializing countries with a window of opportunity. These East Asian states have modified their former catching-up approaches by establishing a more effective institutional platform that can attract knowledge-creation players to the industry. Through case studies, the authors show that the Taiwan state's promotion of the biopharmaceutical industry has been based on an incremental approach; existing state policies have been modified to cope with the demands of the industry, which has resulted in the continuation of its SME-based industrial structure. The methods of the Korean state have been more radical, in that the policies that previously favoured the chaebols have gradually been reoriented toward the promotion of smaller, science-based firms that now co-exist alongside the chaebols. Finally, the Chinese state and local governments have sought to promote this innovation-based industry by building biotech parks. This approach has resulted in a boom in new science firms, which have become increasingly isolated from the flourishing domestic SOE-led market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economic reforms over the past three decades have dramatically changed the mechanisms for allocating goods and labour in both market and non-market spheres. This article examines the social and economic trends that intensify the pressure on the care economy, and on women in particular in playing their dual roles as care givers and income earners in post-reform China. The analysis sheds light on three critical but neglected issues. How does the reform process reshape the institutional arrangements of care for children and elders? How does the changing care economy affect women's choices between paid work and unpaid care responsibilities? And what are the implications of women's work-family conflicts for the well-being of women and their families? The authors call for a gendered approach to both social and labour market policies, with investments in support of social reproduction services so as to ease the pressures on women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent shifts in China's auto industry policy from development only, through development with emission control, to development with cleaner vehicle technology demonstrates that China is attempting to balance the challenges of economic development, environmental protection and energy security. National policies and programmes have played a major role in implementing this shift, but the greening of the auto sector is challenged by major obstacles, such as the high cost of manufacturing cleaner vehicles and building new infrastructure, and the low immediate economic benefits to consumers and producers. It is unrealistic to expect China to limit vehicle production or to transition to hydrogen vehicles quickly. However, China can move to cleaner vehicle technology by implementing both short- and long-term policies that reduce individual conventional vehicle emissions by strengthening vehicle emission standards, advancing fuel quality, promoting hybrid vehicles together with other alternative fuel vehicles, and preparing for an eventual transition to hydrogen vehicles. The government should also establish incentive policies for cleaner vehicle production and purchases, promote investment in infrastructure, strengthen partnerships between government and industry, disseminate information to raise public awareness, and encourage multinationals to use China as a testing ground for innovative hybrid and hydrogen vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cleaner Production (CP) has been advocated worldwide as a strategy for companies to obtain environmental and economic benefits simultaneously. This analysis of how city-level CP programmes were implemented in Changzhou and Nantong (Jiangsu Province, China) finds that both cities failed to meet the Province's targets to implement CP at all large- and medium-sized companies by the end of 2000. Ineffective vertical control, weak inter-agency co-ordination, and lack of alignment between CP requirements and the core missions and operating procedures of implementing agencies have impeded CP implementation in the two cities. The relatively few successful CP outcomes at companies are based on the professionalism and skills of individual implementing agents. However, successes that rely exclusively on individual agents may not last, and thus institutional changes will be needed if the government's CP programmes are to lead to broader CP adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the limiting factors to environmental protection and policy implementation in China. The country's environmental performance, governance and economic status among industrialized nations was examined. It found out that the government attempts in protecting the environment were hindered by various constraints such as socio-economic, institutional and legal factors. The country also faced the problem of maintaining its economic growth with ecological sustainability.