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Land finance has become one of the important major sources of fiscal revenue for Chinese local governments. The spatial allocation of land use constitutes a land‐leasing policy operation of local officials, contributing to local economic development and fluctuation. Applying data from 283 prefectural units from 2003 to 2012, this paper explores the existence of land finance cycles, focussing on the changes of the amount (as in 'area') of land‐leasing by negotiation or by auction. The empirical results suggest that land finance cycles synchronise with the PCCP (Provincial Congress of the Communist Party) cycles, in which a prefectural leader decreases the amount of land leased through negotiation and increases that of land leased through auction prior to the year of the PCCP. The findings of empirical results are consistent with the prediction of our theoretical model. Additionally, due to the existence of high uncertainty of prefectural leaders' tenure and political turnover, the effect of prefectural leaders' tenure on land finance cycles is more apparent in the early years of their tenure. The results indicate that Chinese leaders' fiscal strategies are likely to be driven by career concerns for the purpose of maximising a measured economic performance and fiscal rents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the convergence clustering in 31 Chinese provinces regarding several important economic indicators over the period 1952 to 2016 was empirically investigated. Several provincial clusters were identified in the per capita (real) gross domestic product (GDP), consumption–income ratio, retail price, and consumer price inflation rates, using a club convergence and clustering procedure. The empirical findings are as follows. First, it was found that all series of the original data contain a significant nonlinear component. Second, it was observed that there are five significant clusters for the per capita income in China. Third, it was found that there are four significant clusters for the consumption–income ratio. Fourth, it was observed that there are four significant clusters for the retail inflation rates and two significant clusters for the consumer inflation rates in China. These results will enable local and central planners to implement economic growth, savings and price adjustment policies for different groups of provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Fisher's Identity model is established to study Northern Song China's (960-1126) level of velocity of money using money supply and gross domestic product ( GDP) data. Results of the exercise help rationalize what is called the 'bronze coin' puzzle, which is the massive amount of minted coins seemingly incommensurate with price levels. It is shown that the velocity of money was increasing and comparable to pre-industrial England levels. This paper argues that the driving forces of the short supply of money are greater than usual hoarding by the state treasury and coin outflows to Song's trading partners via smuggling. Since velocity of money is an indicator of economic development in ancient societies, this paper provides a realistic validation of the premise of the Needham puzzle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability is an important topic in the development process of urban agglomerations. Sustainability assessment is an effective way to monitor the sustainable development of urban agglomerations. Based on the three‐pillars model, the paper assessed the sustainability of the three major urban agglomerations in China by selecting 18 indicators from economic, social, and environmental dimensions. A new sustainability‐differentiation‐combined weighting method was proposed, which considers the sustainability at indicator level as well as highlights the difference at urban agglomeration level. The assessment results show that the Pearl River Delta (PRD) urban agglomeration performed best, followed by the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) urban agglomeration and the Beijing‐Tianjin‐Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration. However, the sustainability level of the three urban agglomerations was not high. It primarily caused by the downward development trend of economic sustainability of the three urban agglomerations. And the YRD and PRD urban agglomerations had lower performances on social sustainability. The spatial sustainability of the urban agglomerations was also analyzed, and the results show the spatial linkage development within the urban agglomerations was poor. Based on these findings, some valuable suggestions were provided as reference for the sustainability construction of the urban agglomerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on several topics of economics including growth and structural changes in employment in transition China, the contribution of population health and demographic change to economic growth in China and India and Indonesia's economic performance in comparative perspective and a new policy framework for 2049.

This paper assesses the role of the internal real exchange rate as a competitiveness indicator in economic growth among provinces in China. Using data from 28 Chinese provinces for the period 1992-2008 together with dynamic panel data estimation, the results reveal a positive effect of real exchange rate appreciation on economic growth. In other words, a competitive internal real exchange rate has not been found to support provincial economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore how satellite images of global night lights from year 1992 to 2003 can be used to estimate economic activity at the sub-regional level in the US and China. The night lights based estimates of economic activity are then spatially analysed and compared with subregional economic indicators where available for selected years. We also briefly discuss two theoretical models that shed light on the geospatial patterns reflected by the night light data. The results are presented with a series of maps, charts and tables. Resumen. En este artículo exploramos el uso potencial de imágenes de satélite de la iluminación nocturna global desde 1992 a 2003 para estimar la actividad económica a escala subregional en los EE.UU. y en China. A continuación se analizan espacialmente las estimaciones de la actividad económica basadas en la iluminación nocturna y se comparan con los indicadores económicos subregionales disponibles para los años del estudio. Discutimos también brevemente dos modelos teoréticos que podrían ilustrar los patrones geoespaciales que reflejan los datos de iluminación nocturna. Los resultados se presentan junto con una serie de mapas, gráficos y cuadros. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 1987–2006 panel data for China, we explore the dynamics of the skill premium. The present paper focuses on the skill premium as an explanation for why income differences are so large in China. Our empirics show that: the rise in the relative supply of skilled labor results in an increase, instead of a decrease, in the skill premium; domestic investment is not complementary with skill formation; the skillpremium is higher in more developed provinces; economic openness facilitates an increase in the skill premium; whether foreign direct investment induces skill-based technology change or not, it drives up the skillpremium. An array of policy prescriptions for reducing income differences and ensuring sustained economic growth are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various reasons have been put forward to explain the massive accumulation of non-performing loans in China. This paper applies the financial-restraint model as the analytical framework and argues that failure to create sufficient economic rents is the chief reason underlying the current dismal performance of banks. While the formal financial system is less important than the informal system—especially for financing the private enterprises that are playing a crucial role in economic growth—not addressing the non-performing loan crisis in the formal financial system will likely invite an economic slow-down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the forces that shaped China's interprovincial inequality in the last five decades of Communist rule. In so far as the change in interprovincial inequality is the result of differential growth in provincial GDP per capita and provincial economic growth, it may be decomposed into contributions by total factor productivity (TFP) and other factor inputs. A new method is introduced to make this decomposition. Care is exercised in taking into account problems of Chinese official data when implementing the decomposition analysis. The findings suggest that TFP and factor inputs exerted different and sometimes opposing effects on interprovincial inequality in the Maoist and reform era. The increase in inequality from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s is due to the contribution of TFP overwhelming that of physical capital. The opposite is true for the 1980s. The increase in the 1990s is mainly driven by the skewed distribution of investments in favor of the richer coastal provinces reinforced by the increasing contribution of TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses both macro level and sectoral data to study the sources and pattern of China's impressive economic growth over the last 25 years. Extending the growth accounting framework, we show that widening inequality, rural poverty, and resource intensity are to a large extent rooted in China's growth strategy, and resolving them requires a rebalancing of policies. We find that growth of investment in the industrial sector has been the single most important factor driving gross domestic product and overall labor productivity growth since the early 1990s. The shift of labor from low-productivity agriculture has been limited. The productivity gap between agriculture and the rest of the economy has continued to widen, leading to increased rural-urban income inequality. Continuing with the current growth pattern would further increase already high investment and saving needs to unsustainable levels, lower urban employment growth, and widen the rural-urban income gap. However, reducing subsidies to industry and investment, encouraging the development of the services industry, and reducing barriers to labor mobility would result in a more balanced growth and a substantial reduction in the income gap between rural and urban residents. (Edited by Xiaoming Feng) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional diversity in the process of economic growth is the major concern in this paper. We will try to identify its sources for growth and to specify production functions in each province by estimating translog production function. This paper clarifies the following four facts: First, capital accumulation was a major source for growth in the earlier stage of the Chinese economy, especially in the eastern coastal region. Unexpectedly, capital accumulation is losing its ground over the years. Second, the employment structure of the economy in the eastern region has changed significantly and the shares of workers in the secondary and tertiary industries increased until 1992. Since 1992, these figures have not changed significantly despite China's continuous economic high growth. Third, four distinguishable regional growth patterns have contributed to China's economic growth. Finally, production technologies in each province vary both in the direction of factor intensity and in the elasticity of substitution between inputs. [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]

China has lifted a record number of people out of poverty, has had sustained levels of economic growth-at environmental and social costs-started a global economic and political rise and is developing effective responses to the global financial crisis. It is making these transformations with institutions that continue to surprise international observers. An increasing number of studies have started to articulate the lessons from China's development. This paper reviews the different interpretations of these lessons, and the process of lesson learning, and the question what China's dramatic transformations over the last 30 years imply for development studies and practice. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the reasons behind the resilience of China's economy to the global financial tsunami. China's economy is lowly leveraged in its banking, household, public and external sectors and, therefore, is less plagued by the global deleveraging than most developed economies. Chinese domestic sectors have improved significantly over the past decade, giving them larger capacity to cope with external shocks than during the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that China's economic growth is highly dependent on exports, we find that the main growth engine for China is domestic demand. Destocking, rather than falling exports, was the main cause of the sharp economic slowdown in China in late 2008 and early 2009. Therefore, the global economic slowdown should have limited impact on China's economy. We forecast a sustained economic recovery in China in 2009–2011, with real GDP growth exceeding 10 percent in 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is blamed for being one of the main factors widening regional inequality in Chinese regions since it is highly unevenly distributed spatially. If this logic were true, then controlling the scale of FDI could be a solution to reduce regional inequality. However, it is difficult to reconcile the positive effect of FDI on economic growth with its potential “negative” effect on regional inequality. Using the largest panel dataset covering all the Chinese regions over the entire period 1979–2003 and employing an augmented Cobb–Douglas production function, this paper proves that FDI has been an important factor responsible for regional growth differences in China. However, it suggests that FDI cannot be blamed for rising regional inequality. It is the uneven distribution of FDI instead of FDI itself that has caused regional growth differences. The research results have important policy implications on regional development in China relating to FDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the published literature, the differences in environmental performance across countries are typically explained using the Environmental Kuznets Curve. The Environmental Kuznets Curve states that pollution initially increases with economic growth. Once GDP per capita reaches a certain level, the relationship reverses. In the present paper, we provide an alternative hypothesis, where budget structure plays an important role in explaining the variations in pollution across the world: the lower the business-related taxes as a share of total tax revenue, the higher the property tax in total tax revenue and the higher the ratio of public health expenditure in total expenditure, then the stronger the incentive of pollution control and the lower the pollution level. Our empirical findings reveal that the budget structure does have an important impact on pollution control. The policy implication of this research is that effective control of environmental pollution requires changes in tax structure and expenditure assignment. This research has important policy implications for China's tax system reform and pollution control efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the developing world education is seen as a means of raising levels of everyday wellbeing and is being linked to improved measures of productivity and economic growth. This paper employs a household production function framework to examine the determinants of school attendance among migrant children using a unique dataset collected in China's Jiangsu province. The study finds that the main predictors of school attendance among migrant children in the sample were household income, mother's education, the length of residence of the child's mother in the city and whether both parents were working in the same city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past twenty years, social researchers have had increasingly to turn from domestic to international and global perspectives in their efforts to account for growing levels of social inequality and in their search for practical policy solutions. It is against this background that China's recent experience is to be appreciated. The combined programme of economic reform coupled with an open-door policy has achieved much, yet has been accompanied by marked increases in social inequality. Until recently, most experts seemed to believe this trend to be a mere transitional "by-product" of domestic economic reform. Further social reform, backed by sustained economic growth, would be sufficient to resolve the problem. However, the facts now suggest otherwise. Sustained economic growth and reform, especially from the later 1990s, has been accompanied by ever-widening social inequality, with no signs of an end in sight. This is a critical period. China is now on the eve of entry into the WTO, with all the anxieties as well as rewards this signals for the Chinese people. Against this background the present paper weighs up the likely impact of globalization on China's social structure and its systems of social protection. It concludes by offering suggestions for international social policy advance both "longitudinal" (between developed and developing countries) and "latitudinal" (between developing countries in competition with each other). Only by means of such "joint efforts" might China hope to escape the "social protection dilemmas" associated with entry into the WTO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the missing pieces preventing us from understanding recent Chinese economic development is the role played by openness and capital accumulation in this process. The question is whether the sharp economic growth that the Chinese economy has experienced is another case of export-led growth due to the open-door policy or whether, on the contrary, this growth has been caused by high domestic savings and investment rates (and the consequent capital accumulation). To answer this question, we employed an empirical framework of the cointegrated vector autoregressive model. The empirical results show that both investment (in physical capital and R&D) and exports, as well as the exchange rate policy, are relevant factors in explaining China's long-run economic growth over the past 4 decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the evolution of urban output per capita across Chinese cities in post-reform era. Our results suggest no evidence of output convergence across cities from 1984 to 2003. We find that cities with comparable output per capita are likely to be located in the same region; furthermore, cities tend to mirror the mobility of their counterparts located in the same province, but not the same region. The divergence in urban output per capita across the nation will continue if the current economic growth pattern persists in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's continued economic growth even in these tough times attracts headlines. But China appears to be taking a disturbingly harder line with foreign business. By examining the deep political and social dynamics-China's 'Four Basic Questions'-that propel China's rise, we can begin to understand and come to grips with what underlies this apparently new attitude. Surveys by the World Bank and other international organizations show that China's business environment fundamentals might not be as strong as we think. Still, China's economic momentum will continue despite the many problems the country faces. While foreign businesspeople today may express concern over negative trends in the business environment, they should be realistic. Behind the ups and downs of the Chinese scene, the country is struggling to resolve issues left over from history. Clear thinking about these basic issues is needed to survive-and perhaps prosper-in this environment. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall goal of this article is to identify major changes in China's agriculture/food economy and their implications for both China itself and, more importantly, to the rest of world. China has become one of the fastest-growing economies in the world since late 1970s. GDP grew at about 10% annually in the past 30 years. China's experience shows the importance of both domestic and external policies in achieving sustainable growth. The results from this study provide significant policy implications to many countries that are currently China's major trade partners or those seeking greater economic and trade relations with China. The main conclusions on the implications of China's rapid economic growth are that China's growth will provide more opportunities than challenges to the rest of the world, on average. Overall, the rest of the world will gain from China's economic expansion though this general conclusion may not hold for some countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The People's Republic of China is already the world's largest social system. It is now well on its way to becoming the world's largest national economy. This rapid economic development of the last 30 years is a result of the economic reforms carefully architected since 1978 by the former Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping. There are several remarkable characteristics of this uniquely Chinese experience. First, it was not conceived as a paradigmatic shift. The Chinese transition to market-economic models is closely controlled, incremental, selective, seemingly harmonious, and yet sustainable. Second, it was conceived as a paradox. The scope of these reforms deliberately did not extend to institutional reform. The famous characterization “One Country, Two Systems” captures this almost un-Western idea of disassociating the evolution of the two spheres and allowing the co-existence of two competing ideologies. Third, it was conceived as a pragmatic transformation, without proper ontological grounding as to how this dissonance will eventually be reconciled. At this point, the main actors caught between the two fronts (markets and institutions), the firms, will have to rise to the occasion and provide change leadership autonomously. The purpose of this conceptual article is to identify the required changes in nature of the Chinese firms navigating this dualist system, in particular with respect to their leadership component by exploring the presence of antecedents that will allow leadership to emerge. In the alternative we tentatively suggest carefully transferring some of our Western leadership wisdom, but we have to carefully evaluate to what extent existing conditions may also prevent us from doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1986 when the National People's Congress ratified the Compulsory Education Law, China's achievement of nine-year compulsory basic education for its huge school-age population has been rapid and successful. However, the rate of achievement has grown unevenly across the country, reflecting the different economic development patterns of the more prosperous Eastern coastal China and poor Western and rural areas. As quantitative targets were gained for most of the country, attention turned to the quality of basic education and the increasing gap between the more advanced and less developed areas. Shortage of resources for improving the situation in the poorest areas led the Chinese government to seek assistance from international donors, including the European Union. This article describes a joint European Union-China project undertaken to improve the quality of compulsory nine-year education with the ultimate goal of reducing poverty in one of the poorest Western provinces, Gansu. It outlines the policy context and summarises the project's organisation, strategies and outcomes. It identifies the main issues that arose during its implementation and examines the inter-cultural dimension of collaborative work on this project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and a given ageing profile of the population to forecast the growth path of China's economy during the twenty-first century, this study finds that: population ageing leads to declining economic growth as labour supply shrinks and the rate of physical capital formation declines; households’ material living standards improve, albeit at a declining rate; falling domestic investment partially offsets declining national savings; and the resulting saving-investment surplus generates a current account surplus and capital outflows. Finally, the main force that can sustain China's economic growth against the backdrop of population ageing is productivity improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study asks whether, in a rapidly changing world, the estimated proportion of the world's population with income below US$1 (adjusted according to purchasing power parity) per day is still a good measure of trends in poverty. It argues that strong economic growth in nations such as China implies that the commonly accepted international poverty line definition of one half median national equivalent income is increasingly relevant and that poverty intensity (the normalized deficit or Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) index of order one) is a better summary index. This index has a convenient graphical representation—the “poverty box”. Using the proposed poverty line and the example of ranking the level of rural poverty in Chinese provinces, the study demonstrates how poverty intensity replicates the poverty rankings of the Sen family of poverty indices and captures most of the information content of higher-order FGT indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the significance of giving up the dollar peg of China. The market pressure for a currency appreciation is determined by the increasingly large Chinese trade and account surpluses. Several studies revealed that the rapid and sustained economic growth of the country implies that the equilibrium real exchange rate is appreciating over time and that the renminbi is grossly undervalued. It is suggested that the actual nominal appreciation is required to allow the real exchange rate to move toward its equilibrium value without causing higher inflation. The various risks for its economy from the continuation of the currency regime are also provided.

The article discusses the global economy, which the article asserts is suffering from serious imbalances characterised by a deterioration of the U.S. current account deficit, rapid increases in oil and raw material prices, and excessive international liquidity. The article compares these issues with the rapidly growing Chinese economy, which is suffering from serious imbalances of another kind, characterised by rapid increases in the so-called "twin surpluses" (current account and capital account surpluses), persistence of excessive investment, acute energy shortages, deterioration of the environment, and the rapid widening of income gaps. Programs adopted by the Chinese government aimed at achieving a more balanced and sustainable growth pattern are discussed.

The author responds to comments by Angus Maddison about the article "China's Reform Period Economic Growth: How Reliable Are Angus Maddison's Estimates," published in the March 2006 issue of "Review of Income & Wealth."

China's recent economic growth has been driven by an apparent acceptance by the Chinese government of many of the key insights of Hayek's economic and social thought. Current Chinese economic policies stand in stark contrast to those being pursued by the EU and many European countries, where interventionist policies of the kind Hayek predicted would lead to relative impoverishment and declining freedom are being pursued. The long-term consequence of these two trends is likely to be the economic dominance of China over Europe in the present century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focuses on the flow of fiscal and financial resources in China's rural economy during the first two decades of reform. Specifically, we seek to quantify the nature and direction of the capital flows between agriculture and the non-agricultural sectors and between the rural and non-rural sectors. We track identify the flows of three main sources of capital: fiscal flows, financial shifts through the formal banking system, and the implicit taxes that are moving through the grain system as a result of payment of in-kind (e.g., delivery quotas by farmers). Through this analysis, we provide policy makers with a set of measures showing that although in recent years the agriculture-to-industry and rural-to-urban flows have appeared to reverse themselves, as late as 2000 it does not appear as if the government is not directing enough resources into the rural economy. Greater flows, however, are needed if rural China is to modernize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial development might lead to productivity improvement in developing countries. In the present study, based on the Data Envelopment Analysis approach, we use the Malmquist index to measure China's total factor productivity change and its two components (i.e., efficiency change and technical progress). We find that China has recorded an increase in total factor productivity from 1993 to 2001, and that productivity growth was mostly attributed to technical progress, rather than to improvement in efficiency. Moreover, using panel dataset covering 29 Chinese provinces over the period from 1993 to 2001 and applying the Generalized Method of Moment system estimation, we investigate the impact of financial development on productivity growth in China. Empirical results show that, during this period, financial development has significantly contributed to China's productivity growth, mainly through its favorable effect on efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response is presented to the article "China's Reform Period Economic Growth: How Reliable are Angus Maddison's Estimates?" by Carsten Holz, in the same issue. The author argues that reestimating China's growth numbers is a valid and important practice in economics. China's official statistics are the result of Soviet economic accounting and regional idiosyncracies, in addition to being implausible in light of current knowledge on the country's economy. The author explains the methods he used to recalibrate China's growth statistics.

This article presents a survey of research in Chinese economic history. The study of Chinese economic history is as old as China's modern history itself. The field has been led and dominated by the West. Scholarly attempts have been made since the beginning of this century to explain China's premodern success and its downfall after the Opium War. Two approaches can be identified: the "Sinological approach" which refers to China only and the "comparative method" which compares China with the West. The former tries to find out what achievements China managed to make and when and how it made them, and the latter seeks to understand why premodern China was not industrialized. With rich historical materials to work on, China embraces in its past almost all the key issues for economic history. The country's importance and utility in world economic history will remain, and research in Chinese economic history will attract even greater attention from the scholarly world in this new millennium. Among the great diversity of topics, the function of the Chinese state including the standardization of time, language, roads, currency, weights and measures, as well as construction and maintenance of the Great Walls and grand canals, may well have been the state response to the demand for public goods from the general public to lower transaction costs in the economy rather than the means to strengthen imperial rule.

A composite Quality of Life (QOL) indicator model of five major components-Social, Economic, Energy and Environmental, Health and Education, and National Vitality and Security-was developed. Based on cross-national data of 1975, 32 developed countries and China (Taiwan) were ranked according to their component and overall QOL measures. The influence of income and other variables on QOL was analyzed; it was found that the income variable is not as significantly related to the composite QOL indexes as are other variables and China (Taiwan's) QOL rankings far exceed its per capita income ranking in the international comparison. The U.S. sur- passed all the countries studied in providing its citizens with basic human needs and the highest material standard of living. The national vitality and security component indicated, however, that the U.S. may have lost, militarily and strategically, some of its influence and perceived power to the U.S.S.R. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on communist China's economic growth. The purpose of this article is to throw light on communist China's asserted economic growth by comparing it with that of the Republic of China, Hong Kong, and Japan. This is not to minimize in any way the Indian development, which has been rapid during the Nineteen Fifties and which has given very encouraging evidence to Asia of what can be accomplished with free institutions. It is merely an attempt to put Communist China's claimed economic progress back into focus. It should be emphasized that this article does not intend to analyze how effective the Chinese communists have been in improving their military potential even though this appears to be a primary aim of their economic policy. Instead this report intends to outline an approach for analyzing the relative effectiveness of the Chinese communist system in promoting economic growth; it is this latter question that appears to be most hotly debated. It appears that many analysts are convinced that just because a regime can hold down consumption, theoretically it should, therefore, be promoting a large volume of sound investment and a huge growth potential.