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Resumen A partir de datos de encuestas de hogares, los autores observan que las primas por calificación aumentaron en toda China entre 1995 y 2002, pero solo en las provincias costeras entre 2002 y 2007, año en que estas también registraron mayor desigualdad salarial y contribuyeron más a la desigualdad salarial urbana total. Según un modelo de efectos fijos estimado, la privatización explica la evolución del primer periodo, y la integración de China en la economía mundial, la del segundo. Reducir la desigualdad exige, según los autores, la reforma del Registro de Población Hukou, que obstaculiza la movilidad de los trabajadores calificados y posiblemente también el crecimiento. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews the World Trade Organization's analysis of developments in China's trade policy during 2012-14. The review overlaps with the continuing Great Recession and with China's determination to foster a sustainable rate of economic growth. Developments in the country's trade policy include the launching of the Shanghai pilot free trade zone. China faces a series of trade policy-related challenges including the complex process necessary to internationalise the renminbi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's growth has recently been spectacularly high but there have been expressions of concern about its uneven regional distribution. It has been asserted that this has been partly due to national financial institutions (mainly state-owned banks) redirecting deposits from poor to rich regions and that this will be improved by smaller regionally-focussed institutions. We test these propositions using both informal analysis and more formal econometrics employing recent panel time-series methods. We find that (i) there is no evidence that deposits are siphoned off from the poor provinces for loans in rich provinces; (ii) financial disparities are positively related to output disparities, (iii) the link is stronger for rural credit co-operatives than for state-owned banks and (iv) the relationship is causal in both the long and short runs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines China's industrialization in the light of the Lewis growth model. It begins with a perusal of Lewis's own writings and those of Fei and Ranis to clarify certain assumptions and predictions of the Lewis model. The paper then reviews previous applications of the Lewis model in studying industrialization of other countries, and notes the methodological problems that arise in this regard. In applying the Lewis model to study China's industrialization, the paper focuses on the dynamic relationship between wage and marginal product of labor in the traditional sector. For this purpose, the paper estimates a production function for China's agricultural sector using province level data and compares the estimated marginal product of labor with the corresponding wage of the sector. The results show that the marginal product has been increasing (from below) at a faster pace than the wage, as is predicted by the Lewis model. The results indicate that China as a whole is steadily moving toward the Lewis Turning Point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China accounts for 10 percent of global energy use and will continue to rely on coal for generating approximately 75 percent of its energy over coming decades. The environmental problems associated with coal burning are a concern for China as well as regionally and globally. The present paper summarizes China's energy structure and likely future energy requirements, while exploring the impact of energy use on air quality, black carbon emission, sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions, and carbon dioxide emissions. Although China has begun to take action on local environmental problems from energy, there is still much to be done. In particular, the problem of black carbon and carbon dioxide emissions needs to be addressed. The present paper proposes addressing carbon dioxide emissions through a longer-term strategy that acknowledges the need for China to continue to grow without a short-term carbon constraint but with clear pricing of the short-term and long-term cost of carbon dioxide. (Edited by Xiaoming Feng) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real estate cycle and financial stability are closely correlated. In light of global real estate bubbles, China's real estate cycle has attracted wide attention since 1998. The present paper analyzes three driving factors in the context of the current real estate cycle; namely, economic growth, macroeconomic environment and institutional establishment. Supported by econometric analysis using quarterly data from 1992–2004, the present paper indicates that real estate will develop steadily and that housing prices will consistently rise in the relative long run. Based on quantitative analysis, it is concluded that the implications of the current real estate cycle for financial stability include risks of real estate credit exposure, government guarantees and maturity mismatch. Some corresponding policy implications are discussed, such as advancing banking reform, encouraging the rational behavior of local governments and strengthening the regulation of foreign capital flows in and out of China's real estate industry. (Edited by Xinyu Fan) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper raises the question and provides empirical evidence regarding the status of the evolution of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China today. In this study, we compare the SOEs to domestic private-owned enterprises (POEs) and foreign-controlled businesses (FCBs) in the context of their organizational cultures. While a new ownership form, many of the POEs evolved from former collectives that reflect the traditional values of Chinese business. Conversely, the FCBs are much more indicative of the large global MNCs. Therefore, we look at the SOEs in the context of these two reference points. We conclude that the SOEs of today have substantially transformed to approximate a configuration desired by the Chinese government when it began the SOE transformation a couple of decades ago to make them globally competitive. The SOEs of today appear to be appropriately described as China's economic dynamic dynamo for the future. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most impressive changes in the global economy in the past half-century has been China's high and sustained growth and its integration into the global economy. This phenomenal change not only brings huge benefits to the Chinese people, but also exerts a tremendous influence on the rest of the world. How large is China's influence on the global economy? How are various countries/regions affected differently? How are various industries in a country affected differently? Answering these questions is not simple. In this paper, we review the recent literature that attempts to answer these questions. The findings of the survey conducted in this study aim to provide a complete picture of China's global influence and to identify issues that require further analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how globalisation has affected inflation in China. We estimated standard Phillips curve inflation equations and examined whether globalisation has affected the structure of inflation dynamics as captured by the Phillips curve. Empirical results suggest that the globalisation of the Chinese economy has changed the behaviour of inflation dynamics. In particular, the impact of domestic and global output gaps on domestic inflation in China has changed significantly since 1994. Before 1994, the domestic output gap was a major factor in driving domestic inflation. After 1994, however, the global output gap plays a significant and more important role in affecting domestic inflation. The finding implies that Chinese monetary authorities should specifically take into account the developments in global output in their monetary policymaking process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manuscript Type Perspective Research Question/Issue This paper argues that China shall not completely transit from a relation-based into a rule-based governance regime because the Chinese system of governance is the product of its rich heritage and entrenched value system. Research Findings/Insights Relation-based governance has two dimensions. This first is apparent from the emphasis on reciprocity and mutual obligations fostered between individuals and groups. The second is evident from inside an organization, where governance is hierarchical and paternalistic. This system of governance was influenced by Confucian doctrines that are moral centered precepts used to regulate human behavior and relationships. Given that this governance regime is interlinked to the Chinese culture, it is doubtful that China would completely abandon it in favor of a rule-based system from the West. Theoretical/Academic Implications There are two key implications drawn from this article. First, in the absence of the moral underpinnings of relation-based governance, this system is susceptible to exploitation. Individuals could take advantage of relationships and relational networks to commit mischief or achieve personal gains through tunneling or expropriation of company assets. Therefore, it is imperative to reinforce the ethical ideals of relation-based governance in China. Second, since relationalism from China's past and the laws transplanted from the West are key features of China's governance regime, it is important to explore hybrid solutions to lessen the possibility of bottlenecks and incongruities emerging. Practitioner/Policy Implications Any proposed hybrid governance solution ought to be able to deal with potential differences between the Chinese and the Western value systems as well as combine both regimes into an integrated framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has evaluated the WTO trade policy review, and added more information and recent data to examine more closely China's economy and trade. Major trade policies during 2014-16 were summarised as the Belt and Road Initiative, policies facilitating trade and new adjustments to support and promote cross-border e-commence. After evaluating data on China's trade and economic performance, it discussed three challenges the Chinese government needs to deal with in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile communications have experienced rapid growth in China and play an increasingly important role in the country's economic development. However, there is still vast regional imbalance in China's communications industry which we will be exploring here, including examining what factors influence diffusion paths and cause these differences. Through a two-step estimate method, this paper successfully describes the differences in the diffusion paths of mobile communications in different regions of China. It evaluates the impacts of industry variables, intra-regional income gaps, macroeconomic factors (such as degree of urbanisation) and geographic effects of neighbouring provinces. Our work may be helpful to inform policymaking for effective and equitable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's regional inequality has been a hot research topic lately and most of the literature focuses on economic development. Since 1990, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has devised a measure known as the human development index (HDI) by combining measures of income, education and health. A major concern about HDI is that it is a national average measurement that ignores disparities within a country. This paper aims to explore China's regional inequality under the human development framework with three objectives: ( i) to calculate provincial HDI in 1990, 2000 and 2008; ( ii) to detect the spatial distributions of HDI as well as its three component indices; and ( iii) to reveal the influence of China's transitions on regional human development. GIS and statistical methods such as coefficient of variation, Moran's I, and spatial regression are used in this study. The results illustrate that the overall disparity in HDI declined, but the spatial concentration increased; and the multiple transitions determined the changing patterns of human development. This research provides a broader context for studying China's regional development and has important policy implications. Resumen. La desigualdad regional en China ha sido un tema candente de investigación en los últimos tiempos, centrándose la mayoría de la literatura en el desarrollo económico. Desde 1990, el Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) ha venido desarrollando un indicador conocido como el Índice de Desarrollo Humano (IDH), que combina indicadores de ingresos, educación y salud. Una gran preocupación acerca del IDH es que es un indicador promedio a escala nacional, que no tienen en cuenta las diferencias dentro de un país. Este trabajo busca explorar la desigualdad regional de China dentro del marco del desarrollo humano, atendiendo a tres objetivos: (i) calcular el IDH provincial en 1990, 2000 y 2008; (ii) detectar distribuciones espaciales del IDH, así como de los tres indicadores que lo componen; y (iii) revelar la influencia de transiciones en China en cuanto al desarrollo humano regional. En este estudio se utilizan SIG y métodos estadísticos tales como el coeficiente de variación, el índice I de Moran, y la regresión espacial. Los resultados muestran que la disparidad total del IDH disminuyó, al tiempo que aumentó la concentración espacial, y que las múltiples transiciones han significado cambios en los patrones de desarrollo humano. Esta investigación ofrece un contexto más amplio para el estudio del desarrollo regional de China y conlleva importantes implicaciones políticas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consistency is essential in statistical data processing. This paper reports some notable discrepancies in China's GDP accounting, which are unexpectedly found after testing the consistency of GDP accounting and its components. Although these discrepancies are mainly attributed to the revision methodology adopted after the 2004 economic census, the intention to harmonize GDP accounting data, in terms of production and expenditure, also contributes to the discrepancies. Our finding highlights the need for careful checking of consistency and for testing before formal release of any official statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comparatively assesses the major contributors to economic growth and spread–backwash effects in Western and Eastern China over the period 2000–2007. The empirical findings indicate that economies in both regions increasingly agglomerated in large cities; the marginal products of domestic capital and labor in the western region were, respectively, two-thirds and half of those in the eastern region; FDI was more productive than domestic capital. Spatial econometric analysis reveals that the central cities in Western China had mild spread effects on each other and backwash effects on the nearby rural counties and, in contrast, the central cities in the eastern region competed with each other and had backwash effects on nearby rural counties but spread effects on neighboring county-level cities. The paper draws several policy implications in relation to the improvement of factor inputs and construction of growth centers in the western region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper performs a development accounting analysis to investigate the sources of China's interprovincial income inequality over the period 1982–2005. We estimate a Cobb–Douglas aggregate production function with various specifications. Using the estimated parameters, we conduct a development accounting analysis as well as a variance decomposition. Our results suggest that differences in physical capital intensity and in total factor productivity are both important sources of cross-province income differences, each accounting for roughly half of the variation in income levels. Differences in human capital explain only a small amount of income differences across provinces. The results are robust to whether or not the assumption of constant returns to scale is imposed. The interaction between factor accumulation and total factor productivity is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalation of agricultural prices starting from the end of 2003 raised concern about a new round of inflation in China. This paper assesses the impacts of China's 2003 agricultural output decline on agricultural prices and inflation using a general equilibrium model calibrated to actual data. The results indicate that the 5% decline in agricultural output can only explain 50% of observed changes in agricultural prices, 40% of observed changes in the consumer price index, and 20% of observed changes in the commodity price index. This suggests that China's 2003 agricultural output decline was not sufficient alone to produce the observed agricultural price increases and inflationary pressure in 2004. This position is counter to the conventional view that agricultural prices led to the 2004 inflation. L'escalade des prix agricoles qui a commencé vers la fin de 2003 a suscité des inquiétudes au sujet d'une nouvelle poussée inflationniste en Chine. Le présent article évalue l'impact de la diminution du rendement agricole de la Chine en 2003 sur les prix agricoles et l'inflation, à l'aide d'un modèle d'équilibre général calibréà partir de données réelles. D'après les résultats, la diminution de 5% du rendement agricole ne peut expliquer que 50% des changements observés dans les prix agricoles, que 40% des changements observés dans l'indice des prix à la consommation et que 20% des changements observés dans l'indice des prix des produits de base. Ces résultats autorisent à penser que la diminution du rendement agricole n'a pu à elle seule susciter la hausse observée des prix agricoles et la pression inflationniste en 2004. Cette position est contraire à l'explication classique selon laquelle les prix agricoles ont contribuéà l'inflation observée en 2004 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the case of Taizhou City in Zhejiang Province, the present paper investigates the mechanism of the interaction between the local government and private enterprise in the process of regional economic development. We identify the “Taizhou Model” as a model of institutional innovation and the development of private economy, which is private sector-induced and local government-promoted Indeed, the impact of such mechanisms has had a significant influence on the reforms and development of China s economic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much of China’s recent economic performance can be attributed to market-oriented reforms introduced in the last two decades? A long-run perspective may be important for understanding the process of economic development occurring today. This paper compares the integration of rice markets in China today and 270 years ago. In the eighteenth century, transport technology was non-mechanized, but markets were close to being free. We distinguish local harvest and weather from aggregate sources of price variation in a historical sample and in a similarly constructed contemporary sample. Findings indicate the degree of market integration in the 1720s is a very good predictor of per capita income in the 1990s. Moreover, the current pattern of interregional income in China is strongly linked to persistent geographic factors that were already apparent several centuries ago, well before the enactment of modern reform programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is an attempt to define the contours of the right macroeconomic strategy for China. In a nutshell, we believe that the package includes a decrease in saving, with a focus on private saving, an increase in the supply of services, in particular health services, and an appreciation of the RMB. This is why we refer to this strategy as a “three-handed approach”: action on the fiscal and budgetary front, accompanied by currency revaluation. We start by asking how the Chinese economy got to where it is, what the strategy has been since the beginning of the reforms, and what the main characteristics of the economy are today. We then ask what is the desirable path for the future, and which are the main policy trade-offs implied by such a path. Finally, we put the various pieces together to describe what we believe is a consistent policy package. (Edited by Xiaoming Feng) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on China's foreign aid programs citing reference to a paper by Japan International Cooperation Agency's economist Naohiro Kitano on China's role in international economic cooperation. Topics discussed include comparison of Chinese economic condition with Japan's economic state, analysis of China's foreign aid on the basis of gross domestic product and example of China's partnership with other countries such as assistance of China-U.S. for agricultural projects in Tanzania.

Using a firm-level database from 1999 to 2008, this paper sheds new light on the industrial dynamics of China's clothing industry, highlighting the multi-scalar process of spatial restructuring primarily driven by differences in the rate of job creation, especially through start-up firms. At the inter-provincial level, 2004 represents a turning point where the industry ceased to be concentrated in coastal areas and began to relocate inland, especially to central provinces. At the intra-provincial level, cities in coastal provinces remained the most attractive locations for start-up companies even after 2004. The results suggest that the regionally decentralised authoritarian regime, intertwined with market forces shaping the multi-scalar process of spatial restructuring, is pivotal to understanding the changing geography of China's apparel industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of a public insurance system, the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) on household savings in rural China. We develop a theoretical model in which we explain the impact of health insurance on savings through the impact of health insurance on out-of-pocket (OOP) health expense given the household level of wealth and seriousness of illness. We test the model empirically using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. We run endogenous and exogenous quantile regressions to evaluate the effects of NCMS participation on the distributions of household savings and OOP health expense. The impact of NCMS varies with the seriousness of illness. The NCMS induces an increase in OOP health expense for mild illness and, inversely, a decrease in health payments for more serious illnesses. The NCMS also leads to a higher incidence of catastrophic healthcare spending. The impact of the NCMS, given a certain state of illness, also varies with the household level of wealth. Poor households face health expense for both mild and serious illnesses. As the NCMS has opposite effects on the OOP expense for these two kinds of illness, we observe no effect on poor households' precautionary savings. Because the decrease in OOP health expense for mild illness is larger for less poor households, the NCMS induces a decrease in their savings. For the most affluent households, the higher decrease in OOP spending on most moderate illness is dominated by a sharp increase in catastrophic expense, causing an increase in savings. To significantly reduce household savings and enhance household consumption, the NCMS has to offer better coverage against both serious and catastrophic health risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents important changes in the Chinese macroeconomic environment over the last three decades. The volatility of Chinese aggregate economic activities has fallen dramatically by nearly 60 per cent during its reform period, a phenomenon that coincides with the ' Great Moderation' that occurred in most industrialized economies. We employ a provincial panel-data method to investigate the driving forces of the increasing macroeconomic stability in China. We examine the empirical relationship between output volatility and various economic, policy, institutional, and demographic factors. Our results suggest that the acceleration of reform toward the market economy, which began around 1994, generally leads to a widespread output volatility reduction across Chinese provinces. Both state-owned enterprise reform and human capital accumulation are important determinants of output volatility since the mid-1990s; they play an important role in explaining the provincial differences on volatility reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A popular explanation for China's rapid economic growth in recent years has been the dramatic increase in the number of private domestic- and foreign-owned firms and a decline in the state-owned sector. However, recent evidence suggests that China's state-owned enterprises ( SOEs) are in fact stronger than ever. In this paper, we examine over 78,000 manufacturing firms between 2002 and 2006 to investigate the relationship between ownership structure and the degree of firm-level exposure to export markets and firm-level productivity. Using a conditional stochastic dominance approach, we reveal that although our results largely adhere to prior expectations, the performance of SOEs differs markedly between those that export and those that supply the domestic market only. It appears that China's internationally focused SOEs have become formidable global competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the facilitating role of regional governments and the source of regional competition is the key to demystifying the success of China's fast economic development since the 1990s. This paper, as the product of the lecture the author delivered at The World Economy China Annual Lecture on 3 November 2011 at University of Nottingham, provides a framework that better illustrates the mechanism that motivates China's economic growth over the past 20 years. It shows that the current growth mechanism in China is largely the result of institutional reforms and fiscal recentralisation that occurred in 1994 under the leadership of Premier Zhu Rongji. Being allowed to have their own source of tax revenue under the new fiscal reform, Chinese regional governments are motivated to pursue the goal of economic growth through fast capital formation and industrialisation. The newly designed intergovernmental fiscal relationship, as the most important reform programme in China, has also helped create a growth incentive that is compatible between central and local governments, and resulted in a Tibout-type regional competition in the sense that inefficient use of resources, including public land, would be substantially eliminated by the strategic behaviour of regional governments being more attractive to external direct investment. Such regional competition makes the regional governments preserve and use the markets rather than replace them, and has generated consistent and powerful development momentum for the post-1994 economy of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A general method to construct parametric Lorenz models of the weighted-product form is offered in this paper. Initially, a general result to describe the conditions for the weighted-product model to be a Lorenz curve, created by using several component parametric Lorenz models, is given. We show that the key property for an ideal component model is that the ratio between its second derivative and its first derivative is increasing. Then, a set of Lorenz models, consisting of a basic group of models, along with their convex combinations, is proposed, and it is shown that any model in the set possesses this key property. We introduce the concept of balanced fit, which provides a means of assigning weights, according to the preferences of the practitioner, to two alternative objectives for developing Lorenz curves in practice. These objectives are generating an acceptable Lorenz curve and improving the accuracy of the density estimation. We apply the balanced fit approach to income survey data from China to illustrate the performance of our models. We first show that our models outperform other popular traditional Lorenz models in the literature. Second, we compare the results generated by the balanced fit approach applied to one of the Lorenz models that we develop with those generated by the kernel method to show that the approach proposed in the paper generates plausible density estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses equity market movements in East Asia and Europe during the global financial crisis. The results show that volatility and covariance patterns in East Asia and Europe were relatively stable until the second half of 2008. Correlations were higher in Europe, but relatively high in East Asia as well. Both regions exhibited an overall increase in comovements compared with the time of the Asian financial crisis. There was a sharp decline in regional correlation during the third-quarter of 2008 in both East Asia and Europe, which was then followed by a strong increase. The spread of the crisis affected Europe more, with resulting higher regional comovements. Moreover, average tail dependence stayed relatively stable in both regions throughout the precrisis and crisis periods with a notably higher regional level in Europe. Also, markets in East Asia such as China that are usually seen as insulated from the rest of the region show signs of increasing market integration with the rest of the region. Overall, the increasing level of financial market integration and the high level of comovements during times of international financial turmoil demonstrate the limited benefits of diversification in regional portfolios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By constructing a two-country, three-commodity, three-sector theoretical model, we show that trade liberalisation has double effects, i.e., 'factor price effect' and 'technology progress effect', on labour income share. China's deviation from the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem is mainly due to the negative effect of technology progress, which weakens the positive pulling effect of trade liberalisation on labour income share. Based on the panel data of 29 provinces and cities in China dated from 1987 to 2006, we build up an empirical model. We find that because of the offsetting cancellation of opposite effects, the overall effect of trade liberalisation on labour income share is insignificant. However, when eliminating the negative effect of technology progress on labour income share, the effect of trade liberalisation becomes significantly positive. Moreover, the positive effect of trade liberalisation has become smaller in recent years. This is because of the transformation of export structure, which has led to a decrease in the positive effect of export on labour income share. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friedman's plucking model of business fluctuations suggests that output cannot exceed an upper limit, but it is occasionally “plucked” downward below trends as a result of economic recessions. This paper investigates China's business fluctuations using quarterly real GDP data for the period 1978–2009. Our results show some evidence supporting Friedman's plucking model. We find that a ceiling effect of real output exists, and that negative asymmetric shocks significantly affect the transitory component, which captures the plucking downward behavior during the recession. The results also suggest that the basic asymmetric unobserved component model is not appropriate for directly modeling China's real output because the business cycle is inaccurately measured, but it works quite well when considering a structural break in the second quarter of 1992. The results reveal that although China's economy strengthened in the second quarter of 2009, it is essential for China's government to take further positive and effective measures to maintain sustainable development of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economic reforms, which began in 1978, resulted in remarkable income growth, and urban Chinese consumers have responded by dramatically increasing their consumption of meat, other livestock products and fruits and by decreasing consumption of grain-based foods. Economic prosperity, a growing openness to international markets, and domestic policy reforms have changed the food marketing environment for Chinese consumers and may have contributed to shifts in consumer food demand. The objective of this paper is to uncover evidence of structural change in food consumption among urban residents in China. Both parametric and nonparametric methods are used to test for structural change in aggregate household data from 1981 to 2004. The tests provided a reasonably clear picture of changing food consumption over the study period. En Chine, les réformes économiques amorcées en 1978 ont entraîné une croissance remarquable du revenu à laquelle les consommateurs urbains chinois ont réagi en augmentant considérablement leur consommation de viande, d'autres produits d'élevage et de fruits et en diminuant leur consommation de produits alimentaires à base de céréales. La prospéritééconomique, une ouverture croissante sur les marchés internationaux et les réformes de la politique intérieure ont modifié l'environnement commercial des produits alimentaires des consommateurs chinois et peuvent avoir contribuéà modifier la demande des consommateurs pour des produits alimentaires. Le présent article visait à recueillir des preuves de changement structurel dans la consommation alimentaire des citadins chinois. Nous avons utilisé des méthodes paramétriques et non paramétriques pour tester les changements structurels à partir de données agrégées sur les foyers de 1981 à 2004. Les tests ont brossé un tableau assez clair de l'évolution de la consommation alimentaire au cours de la période à l'étude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's sectoral trade composition, product quality mix, and the import content of processing exports have all changed substantially during the past decade. This has rendered trade elasticities estimated using aggregate data highly unstable, with more recent data pointing to significantly higher demand and price elasticities. Sectoral differences in these parameters are also very wide. All this suggests greater caution should be exercised when using historical data to simulate the response of China's economy to external shocks and exchange rate changes. Analyses based on models with estimated coefficients largely representative of China in the 1980s and 1990s are likely to turn out to be wrong, perhaps even dramatically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the RMB exchange rate from a long-run viewpoint. Whether China's rapid economic growth brought about real exchange rate appreciation between 1975 and 2002 is empirically examined, based on a supply-side model, the Balassa—Semuelson Hypothesis (BSH). The same test is conducted on Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and India. Our result indicates that the BSH only exists where the industrial structure has been upgraded and the economy has been successfully transformed from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy. Interestingly, China, among those where the BSH does not present, appears to be upgrading its industrial and trade structure. We then try to answer the question of why past rapid growth has no significant relationship with the RMB real exchange rate and what factors are underlying the trend of the RMB real exchange rate. We expect an appreciating trend of RMB real exchange rate in the foreseeable future, presuming that China's industrial upgrading process continues and the factors pertaining to the BSH's prediction, such as rise of wage rates in both tradables and nontradables, become more significant. (Edited by Xiaoming Feng) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) promises to have profound effects on the development of the nation's economy and on nationwide enterprise reorganization. This paper attempts to address the relationship between China's WTO accession and state enterprise reforms, and their impacts on the performance of China's spatial economy, including the possible rise and fall of several large national financial centres, such as Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It is argued that China's new international ties will enhance current enterprise reforms and promote changes in the existing pattern of enterprise organization, with enterprise mergers, acquisitions, takeover activity and the formation of large multinational corporations (MNCs) becoming dominant trends within China's industrial development. Alongside these changes, some economic sectors, such as information technology (IT) and advanced professional services are predicted to become concentrated in several national information ‘heartlands,’ each having its own well-developed information infrastructure and other comparative advantages over traditional industrial centers. Meanwhile traditional industrial enterprises, while continuing to rely upon their pre-assigned resource priorities, will certainly face fierce international competition in the turbulent global market. The spatial shift of production and trade undoubtedly requires that Chinese enterprises, especially those that are state-owned, reorganize their production-trade systems according to the global ‘rules of the game’. All of these changes, due to take effect imminently with China's WTO accession, will fundamentally restructure China's spatial economic landscape, including the creation of a new information heartland and hinterland that will in turn determine the life or death of the country's national financial centres. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial crisis was followed by a period of extraordinary monetary policy easing. This period of quantitative easing and zero interest rate policies had significant effects on financial markets and created a global investment environment dominated by a single global factor of central bank policy. Looking forward, “normal” markets should include: (i) higher interest rates, but lower in the steady‐state than pre‐crisis; (ii) greater cross‐country interest differentials; and (iii) lower cross‐asset return correlations. In this environment, idiosyncratic macroeconomic differences across countries matter more than a “risk on/off” global factor that dominated in the post‐crisis era so that the opportunity set for global macro investors should be better than it has been in the 10 years since the crisis. The future investment environment will not be simply that of the pre‐crisis era but will reflect the evolution of the world economy. No single country in this evolution is more important than China and the changes ahead in China will create both risks and opportunities for investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using cross-country panel data, this study identifies and discusses major factors contributing to China's strong growth in the past four decades. China's low initial per capita income relative to its own long-run potential, combined with sound policy factors including a high investment rate, strong human capital, high trade openness and improved institutions, enabled the economy to converge with advanced economies in terms of income level. The shift-share analysis with industry-level data shows that strong labour productivity growth in the manufacturing sector largely contributed to China's overall labour productivity growth. Although labour reallocation from agriculture to the services sector made a positive contribution to aggregate labour productivity growth, labour productivity growth in the services sector itself was negative over the 1980-2010 period. China's average potential GDP growth is predicted to decline significantly in the coming decade, to 5%-6% and fall further to 3%-4%-due to the convergence effect and structural problems-unless China substantially upgrades its institutions and policy factors and improves productivity, particularly in its services sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of China's foreign direct investment ( FDI) and export promotion policies has intrinsic elements not helpful with the original policy intent to generate spillovers to the wide Chinese economy. Applying panel estimation models to Chinese provincial-level data for 1993-2008, we examine the impacts of China's coastal FDI and exports on its inland regions. We find that the coastal FDI has overall positive inter-regional impacts, while the coastal exports do not. Cooperative joint ventures generate positive impacts, but little for wholly foreign-funded enterprises and even negative for equity joint ventures. The inter-regional impacts do not exhibit any significance and robustness across exporters' ownership status. We attribute these counter-intuitive findings to the protectionist behaviours of state-owned enterprises in equity joint ventures and the prevalence of processing exports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on a paper by N. Kitano which discusses China's foreign aid programs and China's international economic cooperation. Topics discussed include economic aspects of China's competitive economy, role of the Department of Aid to Foreign Countries of the Ministry of Commerce in international cooperation, and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee criteria on foreign aid.

The China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone ( SPFTZ) founded one year ago is a trial for China's new round of reform and opening up, which has promised liberalisation on the capital account and trade facilitation as its main objectives. Here, we discuss why China adopted such a pilot zone after three decades of economic development, and explore what the differences are between the SPFTZ and other free trade areas, and developments of the SPFTZ in the past year. We also make a preliminary assessment of the SPFTZ's initial impacts, especially of its impact on China's capital account opening and financial liberalisation. It is possible that the successful practice of the SPFTZ and more pilot policies replicated in China will give rise to a more balanced Chinese economy in the following decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Science Policy & Practice is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Papers in Regional Science is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite Japan's prominence in global finance and trade through the 1980s, its global role has appeared to diminish with its recent stagnation and the rise of China. This article reviews the claimed sources of Japan's stagnation, including productivity and labour slowdowns, monetary policy in the aftermath of the Plaza Accord and the surge in China's growth. Their independent effects are quantified using a multi-region global dynamic model. The productivity slowdown emerges strongest however its exogeneity is questioned. The resulting losses are shown to have been severe for the Japanese but mild in other regions, disguised by the rise of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the financial stability during the crisis. It introduces the experience of Chinese commercial banks. The Chinese commercial banks emphasise social responsibilities, which contributed to improve the stability of the Chinese financial system, while the increased financial stability brought tremendous positive effects to the development of economy, society and also the commercial banks themselves. We argue that in China, both the government and the financial authority enhance the commercial banks' social responsibility. There are sufficient incentives for the staff of commercial banks to increase the achievements of enhancing the social responsibilities under effective formal institutions. We further argue that, although the legal foundations of China and the EU are different, it is possible for the EU Member States to learn from China to increase the financial stability by enhancing the commercial banks' social responsibilities. We find that because the EU has much more developed financial markets, it is possible for the EU to create effective institutions and legal framework to achieve that goal through the market mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite high economic growth over the past 30 years, China's substantial and persistent regional disparities have been the subject of continuing concern to policy makers, as well as the target of a wide variety of policies. An important issue in the policy debate about whether and how best to attack these disparities is whether measures designed to improve regional equality come at a cost to national development, i.e., whether there is a trade-off between the level of national output and the equality of its distribution across the regions. There is little analysis of this issue in the literature. We help fill this gap by setting up a two-region model designed to capture some of the salient features of the Chinese economy. We subject this model to a number of policy shocks and assess the effects on regional disparities in per capita output, on the one hand, and on aggregate output on the other to investigate the trade-off. We also consider income and welfare as alternatives to output. We find, first, that disparities in per capita output, income, and welfare may move in different directions so that it is important to specify which disparity is being targeted. Second, since both disparities and aggregate outcomes are endogenous, how they move together depends on the nature of the shock driving the model. Thus, some policies designed to reduce disparities face a trade-off and others do not. Only a reduction in internal migration restrictions unambiguously reduces all three disparity measures and increases aggregate output, income, and welfare. All other policies considered face a trade-off in at least one dimension. Third, whether there is a trade-off depends also on the time horizon-some policies face a trade-off in the short run and not in the long run and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's international trade flows have increased by 500 per cent since 1992, far outstripping GDP growth. Likewise tertiary education enrolments have increased by 300 per cent. We simulate these changes using a multi-sector growth model of the Chinese and USA economies. A decade of trade biased growth in China is found to raise USA GDP by approximately 3-4.5 percentage points and has a large impact on the demand for tertiary education in China. Despite these positive effects of growth, the results suggest that the expansion of China's education sector per se has practically no long-run impact on the USA economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, China has experienced two forms of extreme macroeconomic imbalance: an expenditure imbalance in the sense of very high investment and very low consumption, giving rise to rapid capital accumulation; and an imbalance between expenditure and production, producing external imbalance, i.e. a huge surplus on the current account of the balance of payments. Both imbalances imply a low rate of time discount by both government and society: consumption in the present is forgone in favour of consumption in the future. The paper examines how these imbalances came about and goes on to consider whether they can be sustained and how they might be redressed. There is no evidence that the rapid capital accumulation has reduced the rate of profit on capital and thus the incentive to invest. However, persistent external imbalance poses a threat to investment if it generates excess liquidity and asset bubbles. The current account surplus rose remarkably in the years 2004-07. This was associated with exogenous increases in competiveness and in saving, both attributable to the economic reform policies. On current policies, the surplus is likely to rise again once the world economy recovers from its recession. This poses three sorts of problems, each of which is examined in turn: difficulties for macroeconomic stabilisation policies; risk of capital loss on the foreign exchange holdings; and the threat of retaliation by China's trading partners. A combination of internal and external policies will be required to redress the imbalance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of articles on industrial ecology, including "Progress Toward a Circular Economy in China: The Drivers (and Inhibitors) of Eco-Industrial Initiative," by John A. Matthews and Hao Tan, "Urban Metabolism in China: Achieving Dematerialization and Decarbonization in Suzhou," by Sai Liang and Tinzhu Zhang," and "An Ecological Economic Critique of the Use of Market Information in Life Cycle Assessment Research," by Nathan Pelletier and Peter Tyedmers.

We attempt to explain the China Puzzle, the coexistence of accelerating economic growth, and a worsening growth outlook. The root cause lies in China's unique liberalization approach, that is, the combination of a complete liberalization of product markets and continued distortions in factor markets. Repressed costs of labor, capital, land, and resources artificially raise the profits of production, increase the returns to investment, and improve the international competitiveness of Chinese products. The asymmetric liberalization approach not only promoted economic growth, but also caused structural risks. It also contributed to global imbalances as well as regional integration. Therefore, future reform policies should focus on the liberalization of the factor markets and the elimination of cost distortions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic and comprehensive account of the establishment, reform, and development of China's System of National Accounts, focusing on important changes in concepts and methods in national accounting during China's transition from the Soviet-type Material Product System to the United Nations System of National Accounts, as well as existing problems and challenges that must be faced in the further development of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article quantifies the comparative performance of China in several dimensions. Firstly, it shows that China's move from a command to a market economy was less abrupt and more successful than that of 29 other economies making a similar transition. Secondly, while official estimates show annual GDP growth of 9.6 percent in 1978–2003, this is reduced to 7.9 percent after adjustment for exaggeration of industrial performance and growth in non-material services. Thirdly, as the exchange rate understates China's achievement, a purchasing power parity (PPP) converter is necessary to measure comparative level of performance. Our PPP converter shows that China in 2005 was the world's second largest economy, with a GDP about 80 percent of the U.S. It is assumed that China will have overtaken the U.S. as the world's biggest economy before 2015. Until recently, the World Bank estimate of the PPP for China was close to that of Maddison, but the Bank's new estimate for 2005 shows Chinese GDP about half this level. The Bank's new estimates for China and other Asian countries are not plausible, and this paper advances several reasons for rejecting them. Finally, energy use per head of population is a good deal smaller than that of the U.S., and its total energy use for a much bigger population is likely to be somewhat smaller than that of the U.S. in 2030. However, heavy dependence on dirty coal means that it will have bigger carbon emissions than the U.S. This is a major problem as Beijing and other big cities already have severe pollution problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]