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This article is aimed at exploring China's development process and Sino-Japanese economic relations in terms of the Akamatsu flying geese pattern (FGP) theory. On the basis of dynamic comparative a...

Studies of comparative economic systems in the post-war period reflected the cold war from an ideological viewpoint; however, as the socialist block collapsed at the end of the 1980s, such studies changed from studies of comparative economic systems to those of comparative economic institutions. This paper examines the issue of the privatization of state-owned enterprises as one of the foci on such comparative institutions, reviews the main results of empirical analyses of privatization, and then discusses several questions which remain to be studied with regard to privatization and its effects.

China has been in its high-speed economic growth for the past 30-plus years since 1978, when its reform and opening-up policy started. Its annual growth is recorded as high as about 10 percent, and it surpassed Japan in total GDP volume in 2010, much earlier than previously predicted by China watchers.

Since the opening of China’s economy in the early 1980s, anything conducive to economic development has been allowed and foreign input has been encouraged. Japan has provided China with a tremendous amount of official development assistance (ODA), massive private loans, and numerous grassroots technical aids, but what has stimulated China’s economic development most seems to be trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). This chapter focuses on the relationship between Japanese investment in China and China’s economic development, as well as prospects for future SinoJapanese FDI relations. The chapter is organized as follows: in the next section I briefly describe the recent trends of Japan’s direct investment in China. The relationship between FDI and economic growth in China is then analysed, making own estimates of its FDI functions. The focus is then turned on Japan’s direct investment in China, its nature, and its effects on growth of the Chinese economy. The final section forecasts possible Sino-Japanese FDI relations in the years to come.

State owned enterprise (SOE) reform is one of the biggest issues for every transition economy. Even the Chinese economy, which is widely known as a successful case for "gradualist" economic transition, has been faced with poor management and low efficiency of many SOEs. As in the case for well-known arguments on transition strategies, i.e. gradualism vs. shock therapy, there has been a heated debate centering on the effectiveness of privatization of state enterprises. Conventional wisdom is that if an economy is to be marketized, its property rights should be privately owned. In light of China's economic success in transition, however, recent developments generally tend to support the gradualist approach to SOE property reform. It is often said that ownership of property rights does not matter. In this paper we examine several issues surrounding privatization, particularly of state enterprises, which have long dominated socialist economies. Our conclusions are as follows. First, ownership still matters for improving SOE efficiency as well as achieving its good corporate governance. Other things being equal, there is no theoretical reason that holds that state property rights outperform private ownership in managerial efficiency. Second, privatization is neither a panacea nor quick remedy. But it is generally useful for small and medium-size firm's restructuring in transition economies. Third, in China in contrast to European former socialist countries, de facto privatization as well as macro privatization, i.e. rising share of private sectors in the macroeconomy, is proceeding, though formal and micro privatization, i.e. change in ownership at the firm level, are relatively underdeveloped. Finally, further development of private property rights will facilitate development of markets. We insist that there exist a close relationship among market development, privatization and institutionalization.

Nakagane Katsuji, Michelon Laurent. Les mecanismes du chomage en Chine. In: Perspectives chinoises, n°54, 1999. pp. 14-21.