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The export-led growth hypothesis is tested using monthly time series data for Shanghai (one of the major exporting provinces in China) using the Granger no-causality procedure developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) in a vector autoregresion (VAR) model. This paper builds on the existing literature in three distinct ways. This is the first study of the export-led growth hypothesis which employs a regional dataset (Shanghai). Second, the paper follows Riezman et al . (1996) in controlling for the growth of imports to avoid a spurious causality result; and finally, the use of the methodology by Toda and Yamamoto is expected to improve the standard F -statistics in the causality test process. The research finds one-way Granger causality running from GDP to exports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid economic ascent of China and the increasing integration of the world economy in the past two decades have made metropolises in China such as Shanghai and Beijing emerging global cities. Foreign investment is a central force underlying the emergence and transformation of the Chinese metropolises into global cities. This is especially true in Shanghai, which has experienced massive infusion of foreign investment. Varied forms of foreign investment or development zones have been created to promote foreign investment inflows, yet remain under-studied. This paper analyzes structure, performance, and underlying factors of development zones in Shanghai, and discusses the implications for global city-formation; it unfolds the variations among development zones, and illustrates the significant role of the state and local conditions. As the literature on global cities dwells primarily on the experiences of advanced economies, this paper further contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of emerging global cities in the developing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today rapidly growing economies depend more on the creation, acquisition, distribution, and use of knowledge. As such, strategies for enhancing research and innovation capabilities have come to occupy a more important position in many developing nations, including China. Already the leading production center, and often seen as China's economic locomotive, Shanghai is striving aggressively to retain its national preeminence and has launched concerted efforts to increase local innovative output. The primary purpose of this paper is to understand how state-led efforts have fared in promoting technology innovation. By situating the city in the national and global context, the paper shows that Shanghai has gained a substantial lead in developing an innovation environment with extensive global linkages and leading research institutions. Recent efforts in building up the research and innovation capacity of the enterprise sector have begun to show progress. Although firms are enthusiastic about its future as an innovation center, Shanghai continues to face challenges of inadequate protection of intellectual property, lack of venture capital investment, and the tightening supply of highly qualified knowledge workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

China's rapid economic growth and urbanization poses great challenges to urban transportation planners. Although most municipal governments have, since the mid-1980s, substantially increased their spending on urban transportation, the resulting infrastructure and service expansions have generally been outpaced by an explosive increase in travel demand. The problem is further complicated by the Chinese government's recent decision to adopt the automobile industry as a driving force for national economic development. This important new policy will dramatically increase the level of motorization and the demand for transportation facilities in China, especially in the urban areas of the coastal region. Unless appropriate policy actions are taken, the gap between supply arid demand in urban transportation will grow and eventually become a major obstacle to economic growth and improvement of quality of life. This paper discusses urban transportation problems and their planning implications in the case of Shanghai, China' s largest metropolis. As part of its national economic development strategy, the Chinese government is determined to develop Shanghai into a leading international center of finance and trade.

Mandatory joint venture requirements have played an important role in many developing countries’ foreign investment policies. However, such policies have been criticized in some of the economic literatures on the grounds that they deter investment and lead to the development of inefficient industries. A significant amount of foreign direct investment in Shanghai has been in the form of joint ventures. Yet, by many measures, Shanghai has benefited enormously. This article argues that there are three reasons to explain Shanghai's successful use of the joint venture for its industrial development. First, local firms and industries have had the capability and willingness to learn from joint ventures and other foreign invested firms. Second, the joint venture policy has been more likely than not to have “crowded in” local investment rather than crowd it out. Third, investment authorities in Shanghai have had sufficient bureaucratic capacity and political insulation to prevent the joint venture policy from being manipulated by rent seekers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Never before in history have China and Japan been great powers at the same time. Today they must figure out how to live together as equals. The promise of mutual prosperity ties them together; the remembrance of bad things past pushes them apart. If that wary dance were not complicated enough, a nuclear provocateur from neighboring North Korea intrudes. A legendary figure of Japan's post-war miracle, Tsuneo Watanabe, weighs in on these big questions. Hans Blix, a former UN arms inspector and the former South Korean prime minister and Nobel laureate, Kim Dae Jung, address the North Korean conundrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Shanghai strives to build itself into an international center of finance, trade, and commerce, a new retail economy has evolved accordingly. In the past two decades, its retail sector has been transformed from a simple and inefficient distribution system to a much more complex and highly competitive market-oriented economy. The new retail economy in many ways resembles the contemporary capitalist retail economy in the Western cities, but it also exhibits significant differences with Chinese characteristics. While the affluent consumer market is the necessary condition for sustained retail growth, it is the retail deregulation that has been the fundamental driving force for the structural changes in Shanghai's retail sector. Its liberal policies attracted major international retailers to either choose Shanghai as the gateway city to enter the China market, or locate their China headquarters offices in Shanghai to command their operations throughout the country. Indeed, the retail transformation in post-reform Shanghai is a clear testimony of the Economic Transition Model. The main data sources for this empirical study are the 1999 Census of Commercial Activity in Shanghai and the Shanghai Statistical Yearbook. They are supplemented by data collected from reputable Web sites and through field work in Shanghai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's views regarding the boom in developmental projects in Shanghai, China. According to the author attracting foreign investment was one goal of China's Open Door policy. Shanghai has succeeded well in fulfilling this goal. Statistics show that foreign direct investment increased from about US $17.5 billion in 1990 to over US $289 billion in 1995. Unlike the other economy in transition, Russia, China has access to a rich pool of investors -- the Overseas Chinese, not only from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, but also from countries where ethnic Chinese have became wealthy, like Thailand, Indonesia and Australia. The willingness of Overseas Chinese to invest in China has three important implications. First, the property boom in Shanghai is one consequence of the rise of Asian economies and manifests an interdependence between different local economies. Second, external sources of finance make possible a type of urban development that is independent of local constraints, that has been called delocalization of properties.