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1. Engaging China on Strategic Stability and Mutual Vulnerability

Author:
George Perkovich
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The United States and Chinese governments, for the foreseeable future, will have the resources to keep each other’s societies vulnerable to nuclear mass destruction. If these governments are not self-destructive, they will want to keep their competition from escalating into armed conflict that could lead to nuclear war. The constructs of strategic stability and mutual vulnerability can help significantly if both governments embrace them and interpret them similarly or even if the leaders of the two countries accurately understand how they differ in their perspectives on them. Unfortunately, to date, on these issues the United States and China are like a quarrelling married couple who tried therapy for one or two appointments, found it dissatisfying, and then alternated in making excuses for not trying again, perhaps with a different therapist or format. Each says they have tried and the other doesn’t listen or understand. Both suspect that the other isn’t saying what they really feel or want; what they really feel is hostility and distrust and what they really want is to get richer and more powerful without being hassled or attacked. It would be easier if they could just go their separate ways, but the property and wealth they depend on will be lost (or at least severely diminished) if they split up or do each other harm. This paper suggests that U.S. and allied interests require persistence in inviting China to dialogue on strategic stability; to demonstrate goodwill, the United States should acknowledge mutual vulnerability as a fact and necessary policy. The need for both moves is reflected in the fact that neither government has defined what it might mean by stability or mutual vulnerability. To help test intentions and prompt harder thinking, the paper plays the role of therapist and offers definitions of both concepts—strategic stability and mutual vulnerability—so that the two sides can critique them more freely and without recrimination. These definitions are broader and deeper than usual, reflecting the growing problem of managing escalation of conventional conflict to nuclear war, the scenario that drives U.S. and Chinese concerns and military posturing. Further, broader definitions are necessary to comprehend the dangers stemming from the entanglement of conventional, cyber, and nuclear weapons and command and control systems. The paper then sketches four benefits of declaring mutual vulnerability, contrary to opponents of the idea, before discussing steps that the United States and China could subsequently take to reflect and build each other’s confidence in such a policy. Finally, if perceived U.S. requirements in the future will be greater than the arsenal needed to deter or defeat Russia or China alone, how will Russia and China be persuaded not to try to build up to balance the additional U.S. force? In other words, if the United States is in two separate but interacting arms races (and deterrence relationships), how could each opponent (China and Russia) be persuaded to negotiate limits on their arsenal lower than the total the United States would insist on possessing to deter two nuclear opponents? Answers to these questions will affect strategic stability and mutual vulnerability of all parties but will take a long time to develop. To begin the process, the paper suggests asking Chinese leaders whether their silence on Putin’s nuclear first-use threats means that China has changed its own policy on nuclear use or that it never took a no-first-use policy seriously in the first place. Is China concerned that the capabilities that the United States and its allies may develop to strengthen defenses against Russia could be used against China too, and if so, might arms control be a wiser approach? Ultimately, the paper suggests that if China and the United States can sustain a process of serious dialogue, they will keep their relationship from worsening even if they cannot formally restrain their competition. And if dialogue leads one to ask the other for deeds to demonstrate goodwill, the paper has suggested some such deeds that could be undertaken with no security hazard and only slight political risk. No one should have the illusion that happiness is in this couple’s future. All this work would be to allow a nonviolent cohabitation that is better than the alternative of destitute divorce or murder-suicide.
Topic:
Government, Nuclear Weapons, Strategic Stability, and Vulnerability
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

2. How China lends: A rare look into 100 debt contracts with foreign governments

Author:
Anna Gelpern, Sebastian Horn, Scott Morris, Brad Parks, and Christoph Trebesch
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
China is the world’s largest official creditor, but basic facts are lacking about the terms and conditions of its lending. Very few contracts between Chinese lenders and their government borrowers have ever been published or studied. This paper is the first systematic analysis of the legal terms of China’s foreign lending. The authors collect and analyze 100 contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Oceania, and compare them with those of other bilateral, multilateral, and commercial creditors. Three main insights emerge. First, the Chinese contracts contain unusual confidentiality clauses that bar borrowers from revealing the terms or even the existence of the debt. Second, Chinese lenders seek advantage over other creditors, using collateral arrangements such as lender-controlled revenue accounts and promises to keep the debt out of collective restructuring (“no Paris Club” clauses). Third, cancellation, acceleration, and stabilization clauses in Chinese contracts potentially allow the lenders to influence debtors’ domestic and foreign policies. Even if these terms were unenforceable in court, the mix of confidentiality, seniority, and policy influence could limit the sovereign debtor’s crisis management options and complicate debt renegotiation. Overall, the contracts use creative design to manage credit risks and overcome enforcement hurdles, presenting China as a muscular and commercially savvy lender to the developing world.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Debt, Government, and Banking
Political Geography:
China and Asia

3. Questioning Industrial Policy: Why Government Manufacturing Plans Are Ineffective and Unnecessary

Author:
Scott Lincicome and Huan Zhu
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising U.S.-China tensions, American policymakers have again embraced “industrial policy.” Both President Biden and his predecessor, as well as legislators from both parties, have advocated a range of federal support for American manufacturers to fix perceived weaknesses in the U.S. economy and to counter China’s growing economic clout. These and other industrial policy advocates, however, routinely leave unanswered important questions about U.S. industrial policy’s efficacy and necessity: What is “Industrial Policy”? Advocates of “industrial policy” often fail to define the term, thus permitting them to ignore past failures and embrace false successes while preventing a legitimate assessment of industrial policies’ costs and benefits. Yet U.S. industrial policy’s history of debate and implementation establishes several requisite elements – elements that reveal most “industrial policy successes” not to be “industrial policy” at all. What are the common obstacles to effective U.S. industrial policy? Several obstacles have prevented U.S. industrial policies from generating better outcomes than the market. This includes legislators’ and bureaucrats’ inability to “pick winners” and efficiently allocate public resources (Hayek’s “Knowledge Problem”); factors inherent in the U.S. political system (Public Choice Theory); lack of discipline regarding scope, duration, and budgetary costs; interaction with other government policies that distort the market at issue; and substantial unseen costs. What “problem” will industrial policy solve? The most common problems purportedly solved by industrial policy proposals are less serious than advocates claim or unfixable via industrial policy. This includes allegations of widespread U.S. “deindustrialization” and a broader decline in American innovation; the disappearance of “good jobs”; the erosion of middle‐​class living standards; and the destruction of American communities. Do other countries’ industrial policies demand U.S. industrial policy? The experiences of other countries generally cannot justify U.S. industrial policy because countries have different economic and political systems. Regardless, industrial policy successes abroad – for example, in Japan, Korea and Taiwan – are exaggerated. Also, China’s economic growth and industrial policies do not justify similar U.S. policies, considering the market‐​based reasons for China’s rise, the Chinese policies’ immense costs, and the systemic challenges that could derail China’s future growth and geopolitical influence. These answers argue strongly against a new U.S. embrace of industrial policy. The United States undoubtedly faces economic and geopolitical challenges, including ones related to China, but the solution lies not in copying China’s top‐​down economic planning. Reality, in fact, argues much the opposite.
Topic:
Government, Industrial Policy, Manufacturing, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

4. Chinese Mining and Indigenous Resistance in Ecuador

Author:
Cintia Quiliconi and Pablo Rodriguez Vasco
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Chinese mining companies were drawn to Ecuador by a strong interest in diversifying their sources of copper in Latin America. But Chinese mining operations in Ecuador, which could have contributed to Ecuadorian development, soon gained a negative reputation after these activities prompted a great deal of local pushback, especially from affected Indigenous communities. As a result, the major Chinese mining consortium that now controls Ecuador’s two main copper mines has taken adaptive steps to stabilize its mining investment and increase the security of its supply networks, steps that often have not produced the intended results. Working through two subsidiaries, the Chinese mining consortium has responded to this localized criticism with a blend of tactics that includes co-opting select local figures, colluding with national officials to sidestep environmental and sociocultural safeguards, and coercing inhabitants into relocating under the threat of force from accommodating Ecuadorian authorities. By turning Ecuadorian national elites against locals and using divide-and-conquer tactics among Indigenous communities, the Chinese-led mining projects have entrenched existing political cleavages, have undermined community cohesion, and ultimately have harmed Ecuador’s democratic fabric, especially the standing of civil society and Indigenous rights organizations. While Ecuador has welcomed Chinese capital and other sources of international investment, this infusion of financing has increased the risk of political abuses at the national and local levels. This paper explains the adaptive strategies employed by the Chinese consortium and its subsidiaries in charge of the Mirador and San Carlos Panantza mining sites, contrasting the differing results these tactics have produced in each case. Both projects are located in Ecuador’s so-called Copper Belt provinces of Morona Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe, which are part of a mountain range known as the Cordillera del Cóndor. They are embedded in an ecologically and culturally sensitive zone that includes territory of the Indigenous Shuar community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In the case of Mirador, the Chinese mining consortium’s adaptive response helped its subsidiary overcome local resistance but only by crushing it. In the case of San Carlos Panantza, local resistance so far has not been overcome, so the Chinese consortium has remained unable to proceed with its project. Neither case, even the Mirador site where mining has moved forward, is a sign of success for future relationships between Chinese mining conglomerates and Ecuadorian communities. To understand why the Chinese consortium’s adaptive tactics were somewhat more successful in Mirador, it is important to focus on the differing composition of the inhabitants of the land where the two mines are located. Mirador sits on territory shared by Shuar and non-Shuar settler communities who have different bonds with the land. The non-Shuar settlers emphasize the productive and commercial value of the land over the spiritual and symbolic value that is key for many in the Shuar community. The Canadian-held and later Chinese-controlled companies active in Ecuador’s mining industry understood this difference between Mirador’s inhabitants and adapted accordingly: they managed to displace resistant residents despite widespread opposition through questionable and sometimes arguably illegal purchases of land. In San Carlos Panantza, a second subsidiary of the Chinese consortium chose to respond to local criticism with the same alleged practices of violence, occupation, and displacement used in Mirador. However, although the two projects are geographically near each other, the situation played out differently at the second would-be mine: ongoing opposition has prevented mining operations from beginning at all yet. Again, paying attention to the inhabitants of the land is instructive. San Carlos Panantza is in the heart of Shuar territory in Arutam, a region with few non-Indigenous settlers. The mining incursion by the Chinese-run subsidiary and the Ecuadorian security forces tasked with supporting it were seen as a threat to the area’s Shuar people, who have been strongly protesting and opposing the mining venture since late 2016. This state of affairs is likely to have far-reaching effects for Ecuador too. The apparent collusion between Ecuador’s national government and the Chinese consortium (and its subsidiaries) has crushed those who oppose mining, has upended the country’s policies on resource extraction, and has yielded documented violations of local communities’ human rights. These events have transpired because both the Chinese firms and the Ecuadorian state have tended to see local communities as an obstacle to the development of the country’s extractive industries. As a result, local social and environmental safeguards have been weakened, tenuous consultation processes have eroded, environmental licenses have been granted under dubious circumstances, and local communities have been forcibly displaced. This paper explores the implications of the adaptive tactics chosen by the Chinese mining subsidiaries that run the Mirador and San Carlos Panantza mines. It also addresses how Chinese companies have, in some cases, negotiated with local communities to begin mining exploitation, while also analyzing the ways the Chinese mining consortium has interacted with the Ecuadorian government and other players, such as the Canadian mining company it acquired and other peer companies that set up successful coalitions for mining development in Ecuador. Finally, the paper explores the effects the agreements between the Ecuadorian government and the Chinese consortium have had on local actors.
Topic:
Development, Government, Mining, Indigenous, and Resistance
Political Geography:
China, Asia, South America, and Ecuador

5. Has U.S. Government Angst over the China Danger Diminished?

Author:
Robert Sutter
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The so-called “truce” in the trade war with the signing of the phase one U.S.-China trade agreement on January 15 comes amid indicators that the intense U.S. government consensus pushback against a wide range of perceived challenges posed by China may be subsiding.
Topic:
Government, Bilateral Relations, Economy, and Trade Wars
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

6. Challenges and Prospects for the CPTPP in a Changing Global Economy: Taiwanese Accession and Canada’s Role

Author:
Hugh Stephens
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
In the past, Canada has had to deal with the matter of Taiwan very delicately. China considers Taiwan to be an integral part of the nation: a rogue province that must eventually be reunified with the mainland. Since Canada relies much more on trade with China than with Taiwan, the stakes have favoured policies that avoid engaging with Taiwan in ways that would unnecessarily irritate China. As a result, there has been little appetite here for negotiating a bilateral trade deal with Taiwan. That attitude is finally changing. One main reason is because China is already angry with Canada, and vice versa. Relations between the two countries are at an all-time low, and domestic support for accommodating China is minimal. As a result, Canada is freer than before to consider negotiating a trade agreement with Taiwan. At the same time, Taiwan is interested in joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), to which Canada is already a party. By supporting Taiwan’s accession to the CPTPP, Canada can achieve a free-trade agreement with Taiwan without having to negotiate one bilaterally. The ability to do so under the aegis of a multilateral agreement should serve to mitigate any remaining concerns that China might further retaliate against Canada directly. However, striking back at China is not a reason for Canada to support Taiwan’s accession to the CPTPP. We should do so because it is in the interest of Canada and the other members of the CPTPP to add to the strength of the organization by welcoming an economy that is an important global trader and a key player in global supply chains. In addition, Taiwan is a country that is clearly willing and able to accept CPTPP disciplines. Canada should move quickly and enthusiastically to support Taiwan’s accession. The benefits of having Taiwan join Canada in a free-trade agreement are obvious. The opportunity to make it a reality is finally here. The Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which entered into force on Dec.30, 2018 for six of the 11 signatories that had completed ratification at that time (Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore),1 is a beacon of hope in a dark, protectionist landscape. Along with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, which was signed on Nov. 15, 2020, the CPTPP advances the trade and investment liberalization agenda at a time when protectionist measures by some major trading countries are threatening to undo decades of progress. The commitments and new disciplines of the CPTPP are particularly important because of malaise infecting the World Trade Organization, where the work of the Appellate Body has now ground to a halt because of actions by the United States, and to offset the negative impact of the U.S.-China trade war now underway.
Topic:
Government, International Trade and Finance, Partnerships, and Trade
Political Geography:
China, Canada, Taiwan, North America, and United States of America

7. China’s 40 Years of Fiscal and Tax Reform: A Basic Trajectory

Author:
Peiyong Gao
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The present paper describes the trajectory of China’s fiscal and tax reform in thepast 40 years, which can be summarized in five phases. The reform commenced with“decentralizing power and transferring benefits.” Then, under great fiscal pressure,institutional reform was instigated, which aimed to establish a new fiscal and tax system.To regulate the government revenue and expenditure beyond the fiscal and tax system,reforms were put in place to build an institutional framework for public finance. As thefiscal and tax reform had gradually entered the more sophisticated phases, China took aseries of measures to further improve the public finance system. Since 2012, based on theoverall plan of comprehensively deepening reform, China has embarked on establishinga modern public finance system. The present paper characterizes China’s fiscal and taxreform as gradually moving toward a system that aligns with the overall reform andcomplements the goal of marketization and modernization of state governance.
Topic:
Government, Governance, Finance, Economy, Tax Systems, and Fiscal Policy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

8. Internationalization of the Renminbi: Developments, Problems and Influences

Author:
Ming Zhang
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
Due to the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the Chinese government began to promote renminbi (RMB) internationalization in order to raise its international status, decrease reliance on the US dollar (USD) and advance domestic structural reform. RMB internationalization has achieved progress not only in cross-border trade settlement, but also in the offshore RMB markets. However, the rampant cross-border arbitrage and the relatively slow development of RMB invoicing compared to RMB settlement are becoming increasingly problematic. RMB internationalization has exerted significant influence on not only the Chinese economy but also other emerging market economies. RMB internationalization complicates domestic monetary policy, exacerbates the currency mismatch on China's international balance sheet and increases both the scale and volatility of short-term capital flows. It offers emerging economies another alternative for pricing domestic currency and investing foreign exchange reserves. Its overall impact on the international monetary system's stability will depend on how the capital account is liberalized and the consistency and transparency of Chinese monetary policy. This paper concludes with five recommendations for Chinese policy makers to promote RMB internationalization in a sustainable way that is conducive to international stability.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
United States and China

9. Two Paths to War: The Origins of the First World War versus the Dynamics of Contemporary Sino-American Confrontations

Author:
James Kurth
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
During the past year, there have been numerous and somber reflections, rather like those during a traditional period of mourning, about the great and tragic events that occurred just 100 years ago – the beginning of the First World War. And in the course of these melancholy reflections about the past, there naturally have arisen anxious concerns about the future. Is it possible that we may once again be entering into an era of great conflicts, or even of a great war, between the great powers of the time? Are there important and ominous similarities between the international situation before the First World War and the international situation of today?
Topic:
Development, Government, Politics, History, and Inequality
Political Geography:
China and United States of America

10. Air pollution in urban Beijing: the role of government-controlled information

Author:
Chiara Ravetti, Yana Popp Jin, Mu Quan, Zhang Shiqiu, and Tim Swanson
Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute (IHEID)
Abstract:
This paper looks at the problem of information control behind the unsustainable levels of air pollution in China. In particular, it focuses on a large urban area, Beijing, and it examines the role of the public, government-controlled information and the adaptation choices of households in response to signals about high pollution. Our analysis is based on a simple theoretical framework in which people migrate from rural areas to polluted cities, receiving a signal from the government about urban pollution; hence, they decide whether to adapt to pollution or not. We find that the government has no incentive to ensure sustainable air quality, as it can distort pollution information in order to attract cheap labour. We then analyse empirically two different air pollution indexes from different sources and agents’ behaviour in an original household survey collected in Beijing. We find that the official air pollution values are systematically distorted, creating perverse incentives for households to react to bad air quality, especially for people who rely on government-controlled sources of information.
Topic:
Government, Sustainability, Air Pollution, and Information
Political Geography:
China and Asia

11. Frames We Can Believe In: Official Framing and Ideology in the CCP's Quest for Legitimacy

Author:
Maria Bondes and Sandra Heep
Publication Date:
02-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
In the debate on authoritarian resilience, the importance of persuasion to regime legitimacy has been widely acknowledged, yet a conceptual framework explaining the role of persuasion is still lacking. Against this backdrop, we argue that the framing perspective (Benford and Snow 2000) provides a useful basis for such a framework. Drawing on Beetham's (1991) model of legitimacy, we contend that the ruling elites in authoritarian regimes propagate official frames in a continuous effort to reproduce the belief of the populace in the elites' leadership qualities and their determination to serve the common interest. In the empirical part of our paper we look at the case of China, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has in recent years reemphasized persuasion as a means of reproducing legitimacy. We then apply our theory in an analysis of the conceptual shifts in the CCP's frames and ideology, as propagated under its secretary general, Hu Jintao.
Topic:
Government, Political Theory, and Social Stratification
Political Geography:
China and Israel

12. Countering Chinese Cyber Operations: Opportunities and Challenges for U.S. Interests

Author:
Mark Stokes and L. C. Russell Hsiao
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
Chinese cyber espionage poses an advanced persistent threat to U.S. national and economic security. Groups operating from PRC territory are believed to be waging a coordinated cyber espionage campaign targeting U.S. government, industrial, and think tank computer networks. A dozen of these groups have been identified and linked with the PLA, and others connected with universities and information security enterprises. The largest and most active of these groups may operate from Beijing and Shanghai.
Topic:
Government, Cybersecurity, Economy, and Espionage
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and United States of America

13. Whose money? The tug-of-war over Chinese state enterprise profits

Author:
Mikael Mattlin
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
While China's reform strategy has largely been a success story that has seen living standards rise tremendously, it has also led to widening income gaps, regional disparities, and much wasteful investment. Large income gaps breed social discontent that may turn into political demands. The ruling Communist Party has proved itself adroit at preventing such demands from emerging, by taking timely pre-emptive action in response to people's needs.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Social Stratification
Political Geography:
China

14. Going Global: Chinese Oil and Mining Companies and the Governance of Resource Wealth

Author:
Jill Shankleman
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
This report is the result of a six-month research project undertaken at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The focus of the work is on the impact of China's oil and mining companies' recent overseas expansion on the governance of resource wealth. The paper covers four topics: The structure of the Chinese oil and mining industries, focusing on overseas operations; the emergence over the last ten years within the large-scale, OECD-based extractive industry, of a “new model” for resource extraction focusing on minimizing negative social and environmental impacts and on resource revenue transparency; the development of corporate social responsibility concepts in China, and the extent to which this is leading Chinese oil and mining companies to apply the “new model” for resource extraction, and the role of Chinese infrastructure loans to resource-rich developing countries in resource wealth governance.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Industrial Policy, and Oil
Political Geography:
China and Washington

15. Tradition in Chinese politics: The Party-state's reinvention of the past and the critical response from public intellectuals

Author:
Jyrki Kallio
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
This study discusses the role of history and tradition in the legitimization of the state in the People's Republic of China. In Chinese political debate, history has traditionally been the most important source of argumentation. Today, the Party-state is reinventing history and tradition to bolster its legitimacy, but the project has met with opposition. This study introduces and analyzes the related debate, ongoing among various actors in different public fora in China, and engaged in both by those affiliated with the Party-state and those outside the establishment.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Markets, Political Economy, and Politics
Political Geography:
China

16. The Imbalance between Patient Needs and the Limited Competence of Top-Level Health Providers in Urban China: An Empirical Study

Author:
Qunhong Shen, Liyang Tang, Yilin Feng, and Jenny Tang
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The increasing importance of patient satisfaction is a common trend for the global health delivery system. This development is one of the consequences of wider social movements toward consumerism (Sitzia and Wood 1997) and also is the result of the new public management (Christoffer 2002).
Topic:
Communism, Development, Government, and Health Care Policy
Political Geography:
China

17. Civil-Military Relations in China: Assessing the PLA's Role in Elite Politics

Author:
Phillip C. Saunders and Michael Kiselycznyk
Publication Date:
08-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
This study reviews the last 20 years of academic literature on the role of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in Chinese elite politics. It examines the PLA's willingness to support the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to obey directives from top party leaders, the PLA's influence on the selection of China's top civilian leaders, and the PLA's ability to shape the domestic political environment. Over the last two decades the discussion of these three issues has largely been shaped by five trends identified in the literature: increasing PLA professionalism, bifurcation of civil and military elites, a reduced PLA role in political institutions, reduced emphasis on political work within the PLA, and increased military budgets. Together, these trends are largely responsible for the markedly reduced role of the PLA in Chinese elite politics.
Topic:
Security and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

18. Comparing Public and Private Hospitals in China: Evidence from Guangdong

Author:
Karen Eggleston, Mingshan Lu, Congdong Li, Jian Wang, Zhe Yang, and Jing Zhang
Publication Date:
04-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Government and private roles in this segment of health service delivery remain controversial in China, as in many countries. Using 2004 data from over 360 government-owned and private hospitals in Guangdong Province, we find that non-government hospitals serve an overlapping but distinct market. They are smaller, newer market entrants, more likely to specialize, and less likely to be included in urban social insurance networks. We also document differences in staffing and financial performance, but no systematic ownership differences in simple measures of quality, controlling for size, location, case-mix and other confounding factors.
Topic:
Demographics, Government, Health, and Privatization
Political Geography:
China, Israel, and Guangdong

19. Liberalisierung in Zeiten der Instabilität: Spielräume unkonventioneller Partizipation im autoritären Regime der VR China

Author:
Günter Schucher
Publication Date:
06-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
Unkonventionelle Partizipation in autoritäre n Regimen wird in der Regel als Bedrohung für das politische System und als Beitrag zu se iner Demokratisierung gesehen. Diese Sichtweise vernachlässigt allerdings, dass Proteste nicht unbedingt gegen das System gerichtet sind und dass die politische Führung nicht nur reagiert, sondern auch selbst Möglichkeiten hat, Legitimität zu generier en. Sie kann z. B. die Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten erweitern, ohne Entscheidungsmacht abzugeben, oder au ch die Verantwortung für die Lösung von Konflikten auf die lokale Ebene verschieben, um so Schuldzuweisungen für negative Folgen ihrer Politik zu vermeiden. Eine Auswert ung von Protestereignissen in China zeigt, dass es der chinesischen Führung mit diesen Stra tegien bisher gelungen ist, ihre Position zu stabilisieren.
Topic:
Civil Society, Communism, and Government
Political Geography:
China

20. Soft budget constraints in China: Evidence from the Guangdong hospital industry

Author:
Karen Eggleston, Mingshan Lu, Congdong Li, Jian Wang, Zhe Yang, Jing Zhang, and Yu-Chu Shen
Publication Date:
03-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Using data from 276 general acute hospitals in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province from 2002 and 2004, we construct a preliminary metric of budget constraint softness. We find that, controlling for hospital size, ownership, and other factors, a Chinese hospital's probability of receiving government financial support is inversely associated with the hospital's previous net revenue, an association consistent with soft budget constraints.
Topic:
Government, Health, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
China and Asia

21. The Emerging Role of Private Health Care Provision in China

Author:
Cunrui Huang, Haocai Liang, Cordia Chu, Shannon Rutherford, and Qingshan Geng
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
China continues to face great challenges in meeting the health needs of its large population. The challenges are not just lack of resources, but also how to use existing resources more efficiently, more effectively, and more equitably. Now a major unaddressed challenge facing China is how to reform an inefficient, poorly organized health care delivery system. The objective of this study is to analyze the role of private health care provision in China and discuss the implications of increasing private-sector development for improving health system performance.
Topic:
Government and Health
Political Geography:
China and Asia

22. China and the Global Environment: Learning from the Past, Anticipating the Future

Author:
Katherine Morton
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
One of the greatest dilemmas of the early 21st century is how to satisfy the demands of densely populated states in the context of a global environmental crisis. As the world's biggest polluter and prominent emerging world power, China is at the centre of the global debate. Worsening pollution trends, increasing resource scarcity, and widespread ecological degradation have serious implications for China's ongoing modernisation drive. The spillover effects across borders also pose a challenge to its relations with the outside world. Although China's per capita CO2 emissions are low relative to the United States and Australia, they already exceed the world average. In 2007, China overtook the United States to become the world's largest aggregate emitter.
Topic:
Environment, Government, International Trade and Finance, and Reform
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Australia

23. Innovation Capacity and Economic Development: China and India

Author:
Peilei Fan
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Both China and India, the emerging giants in Asia, have achieved significant economic development in recent years. China has enjoyed a high annual GDP growth rate of 10 per cent and India has achieved an annual GDP growth rate of 6 per cent since 1981. Decomposing China and India's GDP growth from 1981 to 2004 into the three factors' contribution reveals that technology has contributed significantly to both countries' GDP growth, especially in the 1990s. R outputs (high-tech exports, service exports, and certified patents from USPTO) and inputs (R expenditure and human resources) further indicate that both countries have been very committed to R and their output is quite efficient.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
China, India, and Asia

24. The Political Economy of Successful Reform: Asian Stratagems

Author:
Dennis Arroyo
Publication Date:
06-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Major economic reforms are often politically difficult, causing pain to voters and provoking unrest. They may be opposed by politicians with short time horizons. They may collide with the established ideology and an entrenched ruling party. They may be resisted by bureaucrats and by vested interests. Obstacles to major economic reform can be daunting in democratic and autocratic polities alike.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
China, India, Asia, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Thailand

25. China's Economic Growth: Trajectories and Evolving Institutions

Author:
Jun Zhang
Publication Date:
04-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper investigates the institutional reason underlying the change in the trajectory of economic growth in post-reform China, and argues that the trajectory of growth was much more normal during the period of 1978-89 than in the post-1989 era. In the former period, growth was largely induced by equality-generating institutional change in agriculture and the emergence of non-state industrial sector. In the latter period, growth was triggered by the acceleration of capital investments under authoritarian decentralized hierarchy within self-contained regions. Such a growth trajectory accelerates capital deepening, deteriorating total factor productivity and leads to rising regional imbalance. This paper further argues that the change in the trajectory of growth is the outcome of changes in political and inter-governmental fiscal institutions following the 1989 political crisis.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Industrial Policy, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

26. Accountability and Inequality in Single-Party Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Vietnam and China

Author:
Regina Abrami, Edmund Malesky, and Yu Zheng
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Over the past two decades, no two economies have averaged more rapid economic growth than China and Vietnam. But while China's income inequality has risen rapidly over that same time frame, Vietnam's has only grown moderately. Structural and socio-cultural determinants fail to account for these divergent pathways. Existing political variables are also unhelpful. China and Vietnam are coded in exactly the same way, even in the path-breaking work on authoritarian regimes. In this paper, we take a deeper look at political institutions in the two countries, demonstrating that profound differences between the polities directly impact distributional choices. In particular, we find that Vietnamese elite institutions require construction of broader coalitions of policymakers, place more constraints on executive decision making, and have more competitive selection processes. As a result, there are stronger political motivations for Vietnamese leaders to provide equalizing transfers that limit inequality growth.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
China, Israel, Asia, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia

27. Globalization and Global Governance in the 21st Century

Author:
Jeffrey Hart and Joan Edelman Spero
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
An examination of international economic relations in the six decades since World War II reveals many ways in which political factors have shaped economic outcomes. The postwar security system significantly affected the postwar economic system. The creation of a bipolar security system following the outbreak of the Cold War led to the separation of the Eastern and Western economic systems and provided a basis for the dominant role of the United States in the Western system and of the Soviet Union in the Eastern system. The end of the Cold War led in turn to the end of the East-West economic divide and to the integration of the formerly Communist countries and China into the global capitalist economy.
Topic:
Cold War, Globalization, Government, International Cooperation, International Political Economy, International Security, and International Affairs
Political Geography:
United States and China

28. Incentives in China's Healthcare Delivery System

Author:
Karen Eggleston
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The economic approach of comparative and historical institutional analysis (Aoki 2001, Greif 2006) has virtually never been used in theoretical studies of healthcare incentives. This paper seeks to help fill this gap by exploring the explanatory power of such an approach for understanding incentives in China's healthcare delivery system. It focuses on positive analysis of why China's health system incentives evolved the way they did. The first section analyzes the institution of physician dispensing (MDD) and reforms toward separation of prescribing from dispensing (SPD), in historical and comparative perspective. It shows, for example, how MDD was a self-reinforcing institution; the longer a society remains under MDD, the higher the associated costs of supplier-induced demand can be before implementing SPD becomes the efficient self-enforcing social institution. Rapid technological change and adoption of universal coverage are likely to trigger SPD reforms. The second section seeks to explain the pattern and impact of price regulation and hospital payment reforms in contemporary China, which also reflect the legacy of MDD.
Topic:
Government, Health, and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
China, Israel, and Asia

29. The Implications of Service Offshoring for Metropolitan Economies

Author:
Howard Wial and Robert Atkinson
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
In the months running up to the 2004 election the issue of off- shoring—the movement of jobs from the United States to other nations—seemed to be on the front pages of newspapers every day. Some of the concern was about the loss of manufacturing jobs to lower-wage countries such as China and Mexico, a process that had been going on for decades. The offshoring of service jobs, though, was something new. Service workers—including college- educated professionals—who previously thought their jobs immune to foreign competition began to worry about this new source of job in security. Policymakers concerned about the American standard of living wondered whether service offshoring would eliminate the United States' advantage in high technology industries.
Topic:
Demographics, Economics, Government, and Poverty
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Mexico

30. EU Commercial Policy in a Multipolar Trading System

Author:
Simon Evenett
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
In recent years, the bipolar multilateral trading system of the post-war years has given way to a multipolar alternative. Although many specifics have yet to be determined, some contours of this new trade policy landscape are coming into focus and in this short paper I examine their implications for the European Union's external commercial policy. Particular attention is given to both the state of business-government relations and the propensity to liberalise under the auspices of reciprocal trade agreements by Brazil, India, and China; the potential new poles of the world trading system. I consider the likely consequences of these developments, plus factors internal to both the European Union and the United States, for the possible con-tent of future multilateral trade initiatives.
Topic:
Development, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, China, Europe, India, and Brazil

31. Narrativas del cambio: Cultura y desarrollo económico regional.

Author:
David Goodman
Publication Date:
04-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
CONfines de Relaciones Internacionales y Ciencia Política
Abstract:
China's economic growth since the late 1970s challenges economic theory so strongly that cultural explanations are often sought. A prime difficulty in such approaches is the operationalisation of the concept of Chinese culture. Culture is more readily and usefully analysed at the local rather than the national level. Local culture has been demonstrated to be important to politics and the emergence of modern Chinese nationalism. The relationship between local culture and economic development is more complex. Local culture provides ideology and often organisation that supports entrepreneurship and the development of specifically local economic activity. Through local studies in three Chinese provinces – Shanxi, Qinghai and Hainan – it is argued that local culture is not only a significant factor of production but also helps explain the trajectory and organisation of local business.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

32. Vote of Confidence, A? Voting Protocol and Participation in China's Village Elections

Author:
Xiaopeng Pang and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The goal of our paper is to provide an empirical basis for understanding progress (or stagnation) in the evolution of China's village committee elections. To meet this goal, we pursue three specific objectives. First, we seek to identify patterns (and trends) of voting behavior and develop ways to measure participation in the voting process. Second, we analyze who is voting and who is not (and document the process by which their votes are cast). Finally, we see to understand the correlation between propensity to vote and the quality of village elections.
Topic:
Government and Politics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

33. Village Elections, Public Goods Investments and Pork Barrel Politics, Chinese-style

Author:
Jikun Huang, Renfru Luo, Linxiu Zhang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
A key issue in political economy concerns the accountability that governance structures impose on public officials and how elections and representative democracy influences the allocation of public resources. In this paper we exploit a unique survey data set from nearly 2450 randomly selected villages describing China's recent progress in village governance reforms and its relationship to the provision of public goods in rural China between 1998 and 2004. Two sets of questions are investigated using an empirical framework based on a theoretical model in which local governments must decide to allocate fiscal resources between public goods investments and other expenditures. First, we find evidence—both in descriptive and econometric analyses—that when the village leader is elected, ceteris paribus, the provision of public goods rises (compared to the case when the leader is appointed by upper level officials). Thus, in this way it is possible to conclude that democratization—at least at the village level in rural China—appears to increase the quantity of public goods investment. Second, we seek to understand the mechanism that is driving the results. Also based on survey data, we find that when village leaders (who had been elected) are able to implement more public projects during their terms of office, they, as the incumbent, are more likely to be reelected. In this way, we argue that the link between elections and investment may be a rural China version of pork barrel politics.
Topic:
Democratization, Government, Political Economy, and Politics
Political Geography:
China

34. Water User Associations and the Evolution and Determinants of Management Reform: A Representative Look at Northern China

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Increasing demand for China's limited water resources (across China, but mostly in northern China) from rapidly growing industry, urban populations and agriculture implies potentially dire consequences for the sustainability of water use and drastic changes in cultivation patterns (Zhang, 2001). Problems in the water sector also have significant implications for China's future trade position in key crops and may affect the income of the farming sector (Huang et al., 1999).
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

35. Water Management Reform and the Choice of Contractual Form in China

Author:
Siwa Msangi, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, Jikin Huang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper explains the puzzling fact that in organizing the management of surface water, village leaders have provided incentives to canal managers in some areas, but not in all. Our study indicates that the optimal contractual choice depends on the relative abilities of the leader and the manager, the design of the cultivated land, the characteristics of the canal system and the opportunity costs of the leader and the pool of managerial candidates. The unifying mechanism is the relative change in the ability of the leader and manager to perform the unmarketable activities that are needed to provide irrigation services.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China

36. Why Did the Communist Party Reform in China, But Not in the Soviet Union? The Political Economy of Agricultural Transition

Author:
Johan Swinnen and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

37. Water price policy analysis in China:An experimental approach

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, Jun Xia, Scott Rozelle, and Dean Karlan
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Water scarcity is one of the key problems that affect northern China, an area that covers 40 percent of the nation's cultivated area and houses almost half of the population. The water availability per capita in North China is only around 300 m per capita, which is less than one seventh of the national average (Ministry of Water Resources, 2002). At the same time, expanding irrigated cultivated area, the rapidly growing industrial sector and an increasingly wealthy urban population demand rising volumes of water (Crook, 2000, Wang, et al., 2005). As a result, groundwater resources are diminishing in large areas of northern China (Wang, et al., 2005). For example, between 1958 and 1998, groundwater levels in the Hai River Basin fell by up to 50 meters in some shallow aquifers and by more than 95 meters in some deep aquifers (Ministry of Water Resource, et al., 2001).
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, Government, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
China

38. Challenging Party Hegemony: Identity Work in China's Emerging Virreal Places

Author:
Karsten Giese
Publication Date:
01-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
The Chinese Communist Party has chosen to base the legitimacy of its rule on its performance as leading national power. Since national identity is based on shared imaginations of and directly tied to territory – hence place, this paper analyses both heterodox models for identification on the national and potentially competing place-based collective identities on the local level. This analysis, based on communication within a number of popular communication forums and on observation of behavior in the physical reality of today's urban China, shows that communication within the virtual and behavior in the real world are not separated realities but form a new virreal spatial continuum consisting of imagined places both online and offline. I argue that ties to place are stronger and identities constructed on shared imaginations of place are more salient the more direct the experience of place is – be the place real, virtual or virreal. Hence in China challenges to one-party rule will probably accrue from competing localized collective identities rather than from heterodox nationalism.
Topic:
Democratization, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

39. Ideological Reform and Political Legitimacy in China: Challenges in the Post-Jiang Era

Author:
Heike Holbig
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
As a Socialist country undergoing rapid social and economic transition, China presents a revealing case study on the role of ideology in the process of institutional change. Based on Douglass North's theory of institutional change and on David Beetham's theory of political legitimation, this paper argues that recent ideological reforms have been a crucial factor in sustaining the legitimacy of Communist party rule. Ideological change is conceived as a path-dependent process which helps to stabilize the social perception of transition and to frame the party's modernization achievements. At the same time, the dominant role of ideology makes the Chinese party-state, despite its economic success, more vulnerable to legitimacy crises compared to other authoritarian regimes.
Topic:
Government and Politics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

40. The Economics of Young Democracies: Policies and Performance

Author:
Nathan Converse and Ethan Kapstein
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Since the “third wave” of democratization began in 1974, nearly 100 states have adopted democratic forms of government, including, of course, most of the former Soviet bloc nations. Policy-makers in the west have expressed the hope that this democratic wave will extend even further, to the Middle East and onward to China. But the durability of this new democratic age remains an open question. By some accounts, at least half of the world's young democracies—often referred to in the academic literature as being “unconsolidated” or “fragile”—are still struggling to develop their political institutions, and several have reverted back to authoritarian rule. Among the countries in the early stages of democratic institution building are states vital to U.S. national security interests, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, China, and Iraq

41. Development of Financial Intermediation and the Dynamics of Rural-Urban Inequality: China, 1978-98

Author:
Qi Zhang, Mingxing Liu, and Yiu Por Chen
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Using China as a test case, this paper empirically investigates how the development of financial intermediation affects rural-urban income disparity (RUID). Using 20-year province level panel data, we find that the level of financial development is positively correlated with RUID. Examining two subperiods, 1978-88 and 1989-98, we test several competing hypotheses that may affect RUID. We find that the increase of RUID may be explained by fiscal policy during the first period and financial intermediates during the second period. In addition, we show that the direction of the Kuznets effect on RUID is sensitive to changes in government development policies. The rural development policies during the first period may have enhanced the rural development and reduced RUID. However, the financial intermediary policy during the second period focused on urban development and increased both urban growth and intra-urban inequalities, thus leading to an increase in RUID. Finally, we show that RUID is insensitive to the provincial industrial structure (the share of primary industry in GDP). These results are consistent with the traditional urban-bias hypothesis and are robust to the inclusion of controls for endogeneity issues. This study adds to the economic inequality literature by clarifying the effects of government policies on the underlying dynamics on convergent and divergent effects on rural-urban inequality.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

42. Development Strategy, Viability, and Economic Institutions: The Case of China

Author:
Mingxing Liu, Pengfei Zhang, Shiyuan Pan, and Justin Yifu Lin
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper explores the politically determined development objectives and the intrinsic logic of government intervention policies in east developed countries. It is argued that the distorted institutional structure in China and in many least developed countries, after the Second World War, can be largely explained by government adoption of inappropriate development strategies. Motivated by nation building, most least-developed countries, including the socialist countries, adopted a comparative advantage defying strategy to accelerate the growth of capital-intensive, advanced sectors in their countries. In the paper we also statistically measure the evolution of government development strategies and the economic institutions in China from 1950s to 1980s to show the co-existence and coevolution of government adoption of comparative advantage defying strategy and the trinity system.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

43. The Long March in Hong Kong: Continuing Steps in the Transition from Colony to Democracy

Author:
Herman B. Leonard and Thomas S. Axworthy
Publication Date:
08-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
Avowedly apolitical, Hong Kong is in the midst of the most rapid political transition in China and the success of this transition is crucial not only for the seven million residents of Hong Kong, but also for the future of China itself. How the authorities in Beijing respond to democratic demands from Hong Kong, and how the government of Hong Kong treads a democratic pathway within the boundaries of the Basic Law, are two of the most important questions in international politics today. China's decisions about Hong Kong will tell us much about the prospects of democratic transformation in China itself, and on that crucible the future of the 21 st century might turn.
Topic:
International Relations, Globalization, and Government
Political Geography:
China, Israel, Beijing, and Hong Kong

44. Judicial Reform in China: Lessons from Shanghai

Author:
Veron Mei-Ying Hung
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The George W. Bush administration in September 2002 laid out in the “National Security Strategy of the United States” its strategy toward China: “We welcome the emergence of a strong, peaceful, and prosperous China.” During a trip to Asia in March 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice adopted a similar phrase to welcome “the rise of a confident, peaceful, and prosperous China.”
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
United States, China, Shanghai, and Asia

45. Civil-Military Relationship And Reform In The Defence Industry

Author:
Arthur S. Ding
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Abstract:
Three factors have contributed to China's defence industry reform. They are Deng Xiaoping's resolute will to push defense industry reform, overall reform toward marker economy system and the military's consciousness for the need of the defense industry reform. As time has gone by, direction for China's defense industry reform was gradually defines, and that created an environment conducive for innovation and to adapt to the changing economic environment. Many measures have been adopted, and the core idea being a gradual increase in competition in the economic sector. The implication for the civil-military relationship is that there might exist a consensus in both civilian and military sectors with regard to defense industry reform.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Civil Society, and Government
Political Geography:
China

46. Class Formation or Fragmentation? Allegiances and Divisions Among Managers and Workers in State-Owned Enterprises

Author:
Kun-Chin Lin
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This essay argues that crosscutting allegiances between managers and workers, and between existing workers and ex-workers, have formed strong social and psychological bases for sustained collective action and inaction during a period of organizational transformation in contemporary China. This thesis challenges the conventional wisdom that implies either class formation during marketization or the failure of such as an explanation for the alleged limits of the working class in mobilizing to defend its social contract against the central state. Through in-depth case studies of Chinese oilfields and refineries, I identify patterns of fragmentation deriving from intergenerational differences among the workers, managerial incentive structures, and the continuing reworking of patron-client relations between subgroups of workers and managers. I conclude that managers' and workers' passive and active responses to the state's rapid dismantling of the socialist notion of “class” in a self-sufficient work unit have placed a tangible social limit on authoritarian institutional innovation.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and Government
Political Geography:
China

47. Engaging Putin's Russia: Challenges and Opportunities for the West

Author:
Jason R. Wisniewski
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:
The small and medium-sized states in Southeast Asia have undergone significant geostrategic changes with the end of the Cold War and the rise of China. There has been a lively debate over the last decade about whether these countries would balance against or bandwagon with China, and how their relations with the other major powers in the region would change. Recent works that argue against the simple dichotomy of balancing versus bandwangoning are correct in asserting that Southeast Asian countries do not want to choose between the two major powers, the U.S. and China. But this paper goes further to present the results of an empirical study that fleshes out the conceptual thinking that underlies this avoidance strategy. It finds that instead of merely adopting tactical or time-buying policies, key Southeast Asian states have actively tried to influence the shaping of the new regional order. It argues that key Southeast Asian states in fact have (a) distinct coneptualisations of two main pathways to order in the region omni-enmeshment of major powers and complex balance of influence; and (b) a concrete vision of the preferred power distribution outcome, which is a hierarchical regional order.
Topic:
International Relations and Government
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, and Southeast Asia

48. Taiwan Strait IV: How an Ultimate Political Settlement Might Look

Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Each side's most preferred solution for resolving the continuing Taiwan Strait issue – in the case of Taipei, widely recognised de jure independence; and in the case of Beijing, reunification of China on the same 'one country, two systems' basis as Hong Kong – are both non-starters. Neither society is likely to accommodate the other or change to the degree necessary to make either option realistically achievable, even ten or fifteen years down the road. If the risk of conflict across the Taiwan Strait – too serious to be accepted with equanimity, as the tensions of the last few months have shown – is to be reduced, then there has to be new thinking about what an ultimate political settlement might look like, and how to get there.
Topic:
Government, Politics, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
China, Israel, Taiwan, Beijing, East Asia, and Hong Kong

49. Doubling the Global Work Force: The Challenge of Integrating China, India, and the Former Soviet Bloc into the World Economy

Author:
Richard B. Freeman
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
In 1985, the global economic world (N. America, S. America, Western Europe, Japan, Asian Tigers, Africa) consisted of 2.5 billion people. In 2000 as a result of the collapse of communism, India's turn from autarky, China's shift to market capitalism, global economy encompassed 6 billion people. Had China, India, and the former Soviet empire stayed outside, global economy would have had 3.3 billion.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Africa, Japan, China, America, India, Asia, and Western Europe

50. Could Humphrey Have Gone to China? Measuring the Electoral Costs and Benefits of Making Peace

Author:
Kenneth Schultz
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Theoretical arguments for why “it takes a Nixon to go to China” emphasize either the superior credibility that hawks have in advocating peace or the superior political benefits they enjoy in doing so. This paper looks for evidence of these effects in the canonical case: that of U.S. rapprochement with China in the early 1970s. I use counterfactual simulations on data from the 1968 National Election Study to explore the political effects of a proposal to open relations with China, focusing on whether and how those effects would depend on who made the proposal: Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey. I find evidence of both the credibility and electoral security effects hypothesized in the theoretical literature. In particular, there is a very dramatic asymmetry in the political costs and benefits of proposing peace: while such a proposal would have been electorally costly for Humphrey, it could have been an electoral boon for Nixon.
Topic:
International Relations and Government
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, and North America

51. China and State/Space: Scale Relations and the City in an Era of Globalization

Author:
Carolyn Cartier
Publication Date:
03-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Since the onset of reform and opening in the People's Republic of China after 1978, decentralization of state power has arguably been the most consequential transformation of the Chinese political economy, underpinning the dynamics of economic growth and state-society relations. The growth of the number and size of cities and the urban population—urbanization—are the outstanding geographical manifestations of these processes. How should we analyze the relationships between them? This chapter introduces scale relations as a basis for assessing the decentralization of state power and urbanization, and to demonstrate the 'rescaling' of the Chinese state in an era of globalization as spatial processes and their manifestation at the urban scale.
Topic:
Globalization and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

52. Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Urban Dynamics in Chengdu, 1975–2002

Author:
Douglas Webster, Jianming Cai, Binyi Luo, Annemarie Schneider, and Karen C. Seto
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, has undergone rapid transformation during China's post-reform period between 1978 and 2003. One of the leading cities in southwest China, Chengdu is second only to Chongqing in population. Chengdu anchors one end of the Chongqing-Chengdu urban corridor, the fourth most populous urban cluster in China. Although the upgrading of Chongqing Municipality to the equivalent of provincial status in 1997 has increased the city's profile and potential as an administrative, land transportation, and manufacturing center, it is expected that Chengdu's regional and strategic importance as a service and high-tech center will increase in the future. With increased economic specialization among Chinese cities, it is expected that Chengdu and Chongqing cities will increasingly complement each other in terms of function, both enhancing their developmental prospects as a result. Further, the development of western China is a major objective of the Tenth Five Year Plan. The “Go West” policy was introduced in 1999.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Chongqing, and Chengdu

53. Tax Reforms for Enhancing the Stable Development of the Chinese Financial System

Author:
Lawrence J. Lau and Guijuan Wang
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The Chinese economy has had the highest rate of growth in the world in the past two decades. However, despite its rapid growth and the significant improvements in its financial system, serious risks and problems still exist in both the commercial banking sector and the stock market, that may potentially threaten the stable development and growth of the entire economy. In this paper, these risks and problems in the stock market and the commercial banking sector are identified. Possible solutions are then discussed. Finally, tax reforms are proposed that have the effects of (1) eliminating the double taxation on cash dividends from corporate profits; (2) encouraging the substitution of new equity for existing debt by corporations, which can lower the P/E ratios without lowering the stock prices and improve quality of commercial bank assets by reducing the probability of new nonperforming loans; and (3) attracting new and longer-term investors, both domestic and foreign, to the Chinese stock market. It is also shown that the proposed tax reforms will not result in a significant reduction in total fiscal revenue.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

54. The Politics of China's Shareholding System

Author:
Mary Comerford Cooper
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper considers two questions. First, why did the Chinese government establish stock markets? Second, how have political interests shaped the key features of these markets? Based on both interviews and statistical analysis, the paper argues that China's top Party-State leaders attempted to create stock market institutions that allow the state to maintain control over listed companies, and over “the market” as a whole.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

55. Local Governments and the Chinese Stock Market

Author:
Mary Comerford Cooper
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper examines a key aspect of the politics of stock markets in China—the distinct differences in interests between central government leaders and local governments. Central government leaders have a powerful incentive to promote macroeconomic stability and good performance of the stock market. Local leaders, for their part, are less concerned with the overall performance of the stock market than with gaining access to the stock market for companies under their own jurisdiction. The paper demonstrates that company listing brings tangible economic benefits to municipalities. Listed companies are associated with higher levels of gross domestic product (GDP), budgetary revenue, and industrial and commercial tax revenue. Therefore, it is not surprising that local officials put substantial effort into lobbying for the right to list additional companies on the national stock exchanges.
Topic:
Communism, Democratization, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

56. Sociological Dimensions of China's Economic Transition: Organization, Stratification, and Social Mobility

Author:
Andrew G. Walder
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Despite skepticism about official economic statistics, there is little doubt that China since 1978 has undergone an economic transformation of historic proportions. This outcome stands in stark opposition to arguments that were once widely accepted in several scholarly communities, and which are still highly influential even today. In the early 1980s there was wide agreement that “partial” reform, under a single party dictatorship that sought indefinitely to preserve public ownership, was a recipe for failure. China specialists, students of comparative economic systems, and economists who advised governments and international agencies about postcommunist restructuring in Eurasia were initially in broad agreement on this point.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

57. International Organizations and Democratization: Testing the Effect of GATT/WTO Membership

Author:
Mary Comerford Cooper
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Does the World Trade Organization promote democracy? A large part of the heated and protracted debate over China's application for WTO membership revolved around this question. Prior to China's WTO accession in December 2001, this debate had dragged on for nearly fifteen years. While one side argued that WTO membership would promote democratization in China, others argued that the wealth generated through economic integration would provide the resources to maintain authoritarian rule. Only time will tell whether WTO accession will contribute to pressures for democratization in China. In the meantime, however, this paper examines the empirical basis for these competing claims about the effects of GATT/WTO memberships on domestic political systems. Based on statistical analysis of a global data set, this paper concludes that members of the international trade regime are more likely than nonmembers to be democracies. However, there is little evidence that WTO membership in itself can promote democratic transition. Instead, it appears to be the case that democratic countries are more likely to seek to join the WTO.
Topic:
Communism, Democratization, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

58. Politics and Property in Transitional Economies: A Theory of Elite Opportunity

Author:
Andrew G. Walder
Publication Date:
04-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Command economies gave communist-era elites administrative control and material privilege but severely restricted money income and private wealth. Markets and privatization inject new value into public assets and create unprecedented opportunities for elite insiders to extract incomes or assume ownership. These opportunities vary with the extensiveness of regime change and the barriers to asset appropriation. Within these limits, they further vary with the concentration and form of economic assets and structural changes induced by reform. Elite advantages are smallest where regime change is extensive and barriers to asset appropriation are high, and in small-scale economies that grow rapidly. In China, there has been no regime change and privatization has been delayed and slow. In the rural economy, elites keep their posts as a source of economic advantage, while low entry barriers to household enterprise and rapid growth have created new entrepreneurial elites. After two decades, rural officials nonetheless enjoy large net income advantages that grow along with the expansion of labor markets and private entrepreneurship. These are not generic outcomes of market reform, but the product of market reform in distinctive political and structural conditions.
Topic:
Communism, Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China and Asia

59. China's New Leadership: Paradoxes, Characteristics and Implications

Author:
Cheng Li
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
In his seven-decade-long academic career, the great British historian, Joseph Needham, tried to explain what Sinologists later called “the Needham Paradox.” It was a paradox that, while traditional China had many talented people and was advanced in science, the country declined during the middle part of the last millennium. According to Needham, a primary reason for the decline of China was that the country “lost its edge” by suppressing technicians and merchants “whose power posed a threat to the Emperor.”
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

60. Taiwan's Approach to Cross-Strait Relations

Author:
Ying-jeou Ma
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
Civil war broke out between the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) Government of China and the Chinese Communist forces shortly after Japan surrendered to the Allied forces in 1945. Having occupied most of the country by mid-1949, the Chinese Communists proclaimed in Beijing the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949. The Nationalist Government retreated to Taiwan, an island of 13,969 square miles just 90 miles off the coast of the Chinese Mainland, in December that year and continued to call itself the Republic of China (ROC). Sporadic battles continued in coastal areas of the Chinese Mainland.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Israel, Taiwan, Beijing, East Asia, Asia, and Island

61. Taiwan Strait I: What's Left of 'One China'?

Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
In the last decade, Taiwan has moved slowly but surely away from its commitment to the idea of 'one China', the proposition, long agreed on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, that Taiwan and the mainland are parts of one country. This has led to steadily mounting tension between Taiwan and China, for both of whom the issue goes to the heart of their sense of identity. While the prospect of an outbreak of war across the Strait remains distant, action is needed by all relevant parties to contain and reverse the situation.
Topic:
Government, Politics, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

62. Central Asian Leadership Succession: When, Not If

Author:
Eugene B. Rumer
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The Central Asian political landscape yields few signs of an impending storm in the near term. The absence of threats to the status quo, however, does not mean that it is acceptable or that it represents a stable political equilibrium in the region. Leadership succession in Central Asia bears watching for several reasons: as a precedent-setting process, it will provide the key missing element for the emerging political structures of the Central Asian states the tenure of the next generation will either make up for the shortcomings of its predecessors or aggravate them in the event of the latter, the stage will be set in Central Asia for more radical changes that could reverberate far beyond remote regional boundaries.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

63. Modernizing China's Military: A High-Stakes Gamble?

Author:
Howard M. Krawitz
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
China's accelerated push to modernize the People's Liberation Army (PLA) raises two important questions: What impact will such change have upon the PLA image, status, and role in Chinese society? And how will Chinese military modernization affect the strategic interests and security concerns of the United States and China's neighbors in the region? Making the PLA into a more professional, technologically proficient force would certainly strengthen its capability to perform national defense, regional security, and other externally oriented missions more effectively. But modernization could also significantly change internal PLA demographics, resulting in a drastic alteration of the social contract that has traditionally existed between China's military and civilian society.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
United States and China

64. From the Grabbing Hand to the Helping Hand: A Rent Seeking Model of China's Township-Village Enterprises

Author:
Jiahua Che
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
I present a study of ownership of firms under government rent seeking. Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such a government rent seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership is shown to serve as a second best commitment mechanism through which the government agency will restrain itself from the rent seeking activity and even offer the manager support and favor such as tax breaks and subsidies. This mechanism works at a cost as government ownership compromises ex post managerial incentives and creates distortion in resource allocation. Nevertheless, government ownership may Pareto dominate private ownership under certain conditions. These conditions correspond to a host of stylized empirical observations concerning local government-owned firms (township-village enterprises) during China's transition to a market economy.
Topic:
Development, Emerging Markets, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

65. The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution

Author:
Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas
Publication Date:
07-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
It is widely believed that the Internet poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. But political science scholarship has provided little support for this conventional wisdom, and a number of case studies from around the world show that authoritarian regimes are finding ways to control and counter the political impact of Internet use. While the long-term political impact of the Internet remains an open question, we argue that these strategies for control may continue to be viable in the short to medium term.
Topic:
Communism, Government, Science and Technology, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
China and Asia

66. The Diffusion of the Internet in China

Author:
William Foster and Seymour E. Goodman
Publication Date:
11-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
Abstract:
China and the United States share a new and rapidly expanding border—the Internet. It is a border that neither country fully understands. The possibility for misunderstanding is great because the Internet is not only transforming the relationship between the two countries, it is also transforming the countries themselves. It could be argued that China is going through the greater change. Unlike the past where information was mediated by the State, the mass media, and the work unit, Chinese citizens with Internet connections and a command of English have unprecedented direct and immediate access to information and people around the world. Because of abundance of Chinese language content, Chinese who can only read Chinese still have access to a wealth of information. The Chinese government has imposed its own unique regime on the networks in China that connect to the Internet. Though the United States and China both participate in the Internet, the regimes that they use to govern their networks are very different.
Topic:
Government and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

67. "One China" and Relations Across the Taiwan Strait

Author:
James J. Przystup, Ronald N. Montaperto, and Gerald W. Faber
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Relations across the Taiwan Strait have reached an apparent impasse. Both China and Taiwan have, in a sense, painted themselves into corners. Yet, aware of the considerable costs that will inevitably be incurred by new and higher levels of tension or conflict, both President Jiang Zemin of China and Chen Shui-bian, the newly elected President of Taiwan, share a vital interest in finding a face-saving way out of their respective dilemmas without compromising their longer term objectives. In the process, each is being influenced and constrained by a number of factors related to politics, economics, and broad strategic interests. Overall, these factors will provide incentives to seek a reduction of tensions, at least in the short term. At the same time, years of mutual mistrust and the stark and growing differences between their respective political and social cultures will continue to affect the prospects for a mutually acceptable resolution of the issues separating China and Taiwan.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Government
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Taiwan

68. The Nonproliferation Regime under Siege

Author:
George Bunn
Publication Date:
09-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
Abstract:
The nuclear nonproliferation regime was challenged in 1998 by nuclear-weapon tests in India and Pakistan, by medium-range missile tests in those countries and in Iran and North Korea, by Iraq's defiance of UN Security Council resolutions requiring it to complete its disclosure of efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and by the combination of “loose nukes” and economic collapse in Russia. Additional threats to the regime's vitality came in 1999 from the erosion of American relations with both China and Russia that resulted from NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia—with additional harm to relations with China resulting from U.S. accusations of Chinese nuclear espionage and Taiwan's announcement that it was a state separate from China despite its earlier acceptance of a U.S.-Chinese “one China” agreement. Major threats to the regime also came from the continued stalemate on arms-control treaties in the Russian Duma and the U.S. Senate, from a change in U.S. policy to favor building a national defense against missile attack, and from a Russian decision to develop a new generation of small tactical nuclear weapons for defense against conventional attack.
Topic:
International Relations, Arms Control and Proliferation, Economics, Government, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Russia, United States, China, Europe, Iran, South Asia, Middle East, Israel, East Asia, Asia, and Korea

69. Blazing New Trails: Villagers' Committee Elections in P. R. China

Author:
Linda Jakobson
Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Though the Chinese Communist Party clings to its monopoly on power and fully intends to avoid “walking down the road of the Soviet Union,” it is implementing revolutionary political reform in the countryside. For the past decade, multi-candidate elections, in which candidates need not be members of the Communist Party, have been held in hundreds of thousands of Chinese villages. Abdicating its prerogative to appoint village chiefs, the Party has conceded that elected ones are more effective. The grassroots-level governance reform (jiceng zhengquan gaige) not only empowers ordinary citizens and encourages them to take part in the decision-making process. It also institutionalizes the concepts of accountability and transparency.
Topic:
Democratization and Government
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Soviet Union

70. Cooption and Repression in the Soviet Union

Author:
Dmitriy Gershenson and Herschel I. Grossman
Publication Date:
12-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Independent Institute
Abstract:
The Soviet ruling elite, the nomenklatura, used both cooption and political repression to encourage loyalty to the communist regime. Loyalty was critical both in defusing internal opposition to the rule of the nomenklatura and in either deterring or defeating foreign enemies of the Soviet Union. The cost of coopting people into the communist party was a decrease in the standard of living of members of the nomenklatura, whereas the cost of political repression was the danger that members of the nomenklatura would themselves be victimized. We assume that the nomenklatura determined the extent of cooption and the intensity of political repression by equating perceived marginal benefits and marginal costs.
Topic:
Cold War and Government
Political Geography:
Russia and China

71. Right Makes Might: Freedom and Power in the Information Age

Author:
David C. Gompert
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
China's emergence begs a fresh look at power in world affairs—more precisely, at how the spread of freedom and the integration of the global economy, due to the information revolution, are affecting the nature, concentration, and purpose of power. Perhaps such a look could improve the odds of responding wisely to China's rise.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Government, and International Law
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Soviet Union