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Begin New Search Political Geography China Publication Year within 25 Years

5371. 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

5372. Household Income Dynamics in Rural China

Author:
Martin Ravallion and Jyotsna Jalan
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
It is well known in theory that certain forms of non-linear dynamics in household incomes can yield poverty traps and distribution-dependent growth. The potential implications for policy are dramatic: effective social protection from transient poverty will be an investment with lasting benefits, and pro-poor redistribution will promote aggregate economic growth. We test for non-linearity in the dynamics of household expenditures and incomes using panel data for rural south-west China. While we find evidence of non-linearity, there is no sign of a dynamic poverty trap. Existing private and social arrangements in this setting appear to protect vulnerable households from the risk of destitution. However, the concavity we find in the recursion diagram does imply that the speed of recovery from an income shock is lower for the poor, and that current inequality reduces growth in mean incomes.
Topic:
Development and Economics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

5373. Political Office, Kinship, and Household Wealth in Rural China

Author:
Andrew G. Walder and Litao Zhao
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
For more than two decades after the demise of Maoist collectivism, a resurgent market economy has deeply transformed the social structure of rural China. By the mid-1980s, peasant households had already returned to historical marketing patterns of agricultural produce and other sidelines and services. By the turn of the century, almost 140 million individuals, or 30 percent of the rural labor force, earned regular incomes from wage labor outside agriculture. Twenty million rural households had registered individual family enterprises, and two million of them had already grown into substantial private firms. A massive rural industrial sector grew up under public ownership in the 1980s, employing more than 80 million at its height. It was then extensively privatized in the 1990s, and is now less than half its former size. While these developments have been widely noted in studies of rural industrialization and income inequality, it is still far from clear how they have altered the structure and wealth of village political and economic elites.
Topic:
Communism, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

5374. Inaugural Oksenberg Lecture: The United States and China: A President's Perspective. An address by Jimmy Carter

Author:
Jimmy Carter
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The Oksenberg Lectures honor the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938–2001), Senior Fellow at the Asia/Pacific Research Center, professor of political science, and a foremost authority on China.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

5375. Privatization and Elite Mobility: Rural China, 1979-1996

Author:
Andrew G. Walder
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The ideal types that motivate research on transitional economies have led to a neglect of the varied mechanisms that generate social change. One example is the implicit treatment of privatization as a single process whose initial impact will become more pronounced through time. Privatization in fact occurs via distinct mechanisms that have different consequences across types of assets and through time, as shown in an analysis of career trajectories over two decades in rural China. During the first decade, when privatization proceeded via the rapid expansion of household enterprise, ordinary individuals with nonagricultural work experience were the most likely to become private entrepreneurs. Village officials, their relatives, and public enterprise managers did not enter the private sector at rates higher than others. However, during the second decade the privatization of public enterprises began to transfer collective assets to individual ownership. During this period, public enterprise managers and the relatives of cadres emerged as the most likely to become private entrepreneurs. Private entrepreneurs, however, have yet to move into cadre posts, and cadres have yet to move into private entrepreneurship, at rates higher than others. Administrative elites have therefore proven resilient in the face of private-sector expansion, and the benefits of privatization have gradually shifted in their favor.
Topic:
Communism and Economics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

5376. Challenges of Peri-urbanization in the Lower Yangtze region: The Case of the Hanzhou-Ningbo Corridor

Author:
Douglas Webster
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This discussion paper is based on analysis of peri-urbanization dynamics in the Hangzhou- Ningbo Corridor of the Lower Yangtze Region of China. The case-study area is of particular interest, both because of the scale of the phenomenon in the area and the fact that the corridor typifies the long-running and dynamic peri-urbanization process occurring in the Lower Yangtze Region as a whole, arguably the world's largest extended urban region (EUR). Analysis focuses on adaptation, successful and otherwise, to the severe stresses, demographic, social, and environmental, accompanying peri-urbanization. Policy implications are then drawn; anticipated future stresses in the case-study area, and by implication the larger extended urban region, are used to trigger recommendations.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
China

5377. The United States and Russia in Central Asia: Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran

Author:
Fiona Hill
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
Before 1991, the states of Central Asia were marginal backwaters, republics of the Soviet Union that played no major role in the Cold War relationship between the USSR and the United States, or in the Soviet Union's relationship with the principal regional powers of Turkey, Iran, and China. But, in the 1990s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union coincided with the re-discovery of the energy resources of the Caspian Sea, attracting a range of international oil companies including American majors to the region. Eventually, the Caspian Basin became a point of tension in U.S.-Russian relations. In addition, Central Asia emerged as a zone of conflict. Violent clashes erupted between ethnic groups in the region's Ferghana Valley. Civil war in Tajikistan, in 1992-1997, became entangled with war in Afghanistan. Faltering political and economic reforms, and mounting social problems provided a fertile ground for the germination of radical groups, the infiltration of foreign Islamic networks, and the spawning of militant organizations like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). The IMU first sought to overthrow the government of President Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan, later espoused greater ambitions for the creation of an Islamic caliphate (state) across Central Asia, and eventually joined forces with the Taliban in Afghanistan. With the events of September 11, 2001 and their roots in the terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, Central Asia came to the forefront of U.S. attention.
Topic:
Cold War and Religion
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, United States, China, Europe, Iran, Central Asia, Turkey, Asia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Taliban, and Soviet Union

5378. Central Asia: Border Disputes and Conflict Potential

Publication Date:
04-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
For the past decade Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have all been involved in high stakes negotiations to define their respective borders. Strong-arm politics, economic pressures, shadowy backroom deals, nationalist sentiments, public dissatisfaction and an environment of mutual mistrust have marked this process. The resolution of border issues peacefully and transparently would have a positive impact on regional security, economic cooperation, ethnic relations and efforts to combat drug trafficking and religious extremism. But progress has been slow, and no immediate breakthrough can be seen in an all too often antagonistic process that is defining the new map of Central Asia.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Ethnic Conflict, and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan

5379. Staying the Course: Limitations in U.S. -China Relations

Author:
Gen. Jack N. Merritt
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The People's Republic of China (PRC). As of mid-2002, the PRC's policy is to emphasize the positive, stressing its desire for an improved – and hopefully more stable – relationship with the United States. This policy reflects China's recognition of the need for stability at a time of many challenges. In the next few years, the PRC leadership will be seeking to extend economic reform and build prosperity beyond the limited areas in big cities and the eastern provinces that have made great strides in recent years. China will need to adjust the economy to the market-opening demands that World Trade Organization (WTO) membership will bring and it will face the problem of moving successfully over the next decade through a transition in leadership without compromising the continued power of the Party leadership group.
Topic:
International Relations and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

5380. People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF): Shifting Airpower Balance and Challenges to India's Security

Author:
Ramesh V. Phadke
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
Abstract:
China is India's largest and most important neighbor, and despite recent efforts at improving relations between the two countries, the over half-century-old border dispute remains unresolved. China is an expansionist power trying to enhance the security of its peripheral areas. It is important to note that in the recent past, China has resolved its border disputes with almost all its neighbors except India. Relations between the two countries have no doubt improved since 1988, when then-Indian prime minister, the late Rajiv Gandhi, visited Beijing, and since the conclusion of 1993 and 1996 agreements on maintenance of peace and tranquility on the borders, but the progress so far has been slow. China continues to claim some 90,000 square kilometers of Indian territory in the northeast while it illegally occupies some 23,000 square kilometers of Aksai Chin in the north of India.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Religion
Political Geography:
China, South Asia, and India