China S Return To Expansionary Fiscal Policy

This volume examines China's government budgetary condition, analyses the new expansionary fiscal policy, and discusses policy options. China's government budgetary revenue has declined dramatically since the start of economic reforms. Facing slower economic growth, China's new fiscal policy is to increase government expenditures by issuing bonds. With a large increase in government spending, it should not be difficult to achieve 7% growth in 1999. The government should conduct serious cost-benefit analyses of every public project in order to prevent scarce funds from being wasted. In the long run, the government should focus on merging the extra-budgetary and off-budgetary revenues into budgetary revenues, instead of allocating more resources to the government sector.

Prepared by the East Asian Institute, NUS, which promotes research on East Asian developments particularly the political, economic and social development of contemporary China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), this series of research reports is intended for policy makers and readers who want to keep abreast of the latest developments in China. Lin Shuanglin examines China's government budgetary condition, analyses the new expansionary fiscal policy, and discusses policy options.

Prepared by the East Asian Institute, NUS, which promotes research on East Asian developments particularly the political, economic and social development of contemporary China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), this series of research reports is intended for policy makers and readers who want to keep abreast of the latest developments in China. This volume looks at China's foreign policy from the perspective of learning theory, a relatively new approach to foreign policy analysis based on social psychology.

Nine papers by various authors discussing aspects of economic reform in China over a 20 year period.

What the Jiang Zemin leadership faced in 1999 can be characterized by a century-old Chinese saying, neiyou waihuan (literally, ?internal disturbance and external threat?). What with the worst growth record in a decade, the Falun Gong sect's siege of Zhongnanhai, Nato's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, and Lee Teng-hui's new ?two-state? theory, the Chinese leadership was under tremendous pressure throughout the year. Many have wondered if that leadership could still hold its own at the turn of the century.This volume provides the reader with an in-depth analysis of how the Chinese leadership coped with the crises during the year. Though there was fair success in managing those crises, serious crises lie ahead which could significantly impact the leadership. China's economic slowdown may be bottoming out, but increasing Party decay, a growing spiritual vacuum, and volatile cross-strait relations are likely to pose serious threats to the leadership.

The greatest success of Chinese enterprise reform has been the creation of market competition. Competition has forced the state to retreat from non-strategic sectors and increased private ownership in the industry. This development has created ownership diversification in the Chinese industry, which is in line with the leadership's 2-R (?Retreat and Retain?) enterprise reform policy. The ownership diversification is a distinction of the reformed economy, called ?a socialist economy with Chinese characteristics?. The backbone of the economy is the large state firms in strategic sectors, largely shielded from international competition, in which most of them have been coping well with the domestically competitive environment. After China's entry to the WTO, can these firms still maintain their market dominance once all forms of protection are dismantled? Are Chinese firms ready for direct competition with their foreign rivals in the manufacturing sector? Will FAW, China's No. 1 state-owned automotive corporation, be defeated on its home ground by its foreign rivals in a freely accessed market? The core of these questions is about the sustainability of diversified ownership in the economy after it is integrated with the world trading system. Who will dominate the Chinese industry after the WTO entry: foreign or private ownership? The question is addressed by applying the market structure and entry theory of industrial economics, since WTO accession will basically result in change in both the market type and the market structure of the industry. Based on this, the study developed the market share testing theory to assess the competitiveness of dominant incumbents according to the type of market. The overall finding is that most large state incumbents will survive but their survival strategy will be changed from single ownership control to mixed ownership control. Thus, it is expected that more joint ventures between foreign and large state-owned firms will emerge in the post-WTO-entry economy. But whether such firms will evolve into foreign-controlled state-owned firms is an interesting question which remains to be answered.

This volume deals with the re-emergence of the drug problem in China in the reform era and the ways in which the authorities deal with it. Riding on a sweeping victory over the nationalists, the newly established communist government in the early 1950s was thorough and decisive in stamping out the drug problem that had plagued the country for centuries. What made the Chinese government's effort effective then were mass campaigns and China's almost total isolation from the outside world. In the reform era, however, with marketization and the country's increasing integration into the capitalist world economy, the effectiveness of the old methods has been called into question. Severe punishment of offenders has failed to curb the spread of drug trafficking, and mass campaigns have aroused scant interest from the populace. The much-reduced efficacy of the government's anti-drug efforts due to the changed macro-environment implies that the drug problem in China will persist if not worsen.

Prepared by the East Asian Institute, NUS, which promotes research on East Asian developments particularly the political, economic and social development of contemporary China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), this series of research reports is intended for policy makers and readers who want to keep abreast of the latest developments in China. This study suggests that China should accelerate economic growth of its backward interior regions by deepening market-oriented reforms on the one hand, and by strengthening fiscal transfers from richer to poorer regions on the other.