Unfinished Reforms In The Chinese Economy

China has quickly moved into a critical point in the sense that its past performance in economic growth and development has created so many unsolved problems, and for such problems to be addressed, a better understanding of these problems and a clear policy framework are required for policy makers to conduct reforms. Based on high–level empirical research on China's economic development by each of the contributors, this edited book provides an in-depth and clear analysis of many of important issues facing China's move to new phase of economic development and transformation, and discusses policy issues involved in further reforms. Contents:Reforming SOEs under China's State Capitalism (Julan Du and Yong Wang)Rebalancing China's Economy: Increasing the Role of Interest Rates and RMB Exchange Rates Reform (Qianjin Lu)China's Labour Market, Rural-Urban Migration and Growth Pattern: Future Prospect (Zhao Chen, Shiqing Jiang, Ming Lu and Hiroshi Sato)China's Poverty Reduction via Economic Growth: Looking Back and Forward (Yuan Zhang)Poverty of Chinese Farmers: What Should the Chinese Government Do? (Tangjun Yuan)Rising Inter-industrial Income Inequality in China: Can It Be Narrowed and How? (Zhao Chen, Ming Lu and Guanghua Wan)China's Health Transition and Future Health Care Financing (Jin Feng)Enhancing the Income Distribution Effect of the Social Security System in China: Empirics and Policy Suggestions (Lixin He)The Challenge of Housing Affordability in Urban China (Jie Chen)Intergovernmental Transfer and Regional Balanced Development: New Reform Agenda (Ziying Fan)Redesigning China's Trade Policy in the Post-Crisis Era (Changyuan Luo and Lin Chen)Energy-Saving and Emission-Abating: China's New Development Strategy in 2009–2049 (Shiyi Chen)The Costs and Benefits of Relational Governance and China's Road to Modernity (Yongqin Wang)The Future Trajectory of China's Political Reform: A Property Rights Interpretation (Gary H Jefferson and Jun Zhang) Readership: Academics, professionals and students interested in China's economic development. Keywords:Chinese Economy;Economic Development;Exchange Rate Reforms;Poverty Reduction;Income Inequality;Labor Market;Rural-Urban Migration;Health Care Financing;Housing Affordability;Trade PolicyKey Features:Touches upon the hottest issues facing China's further economic development, with an in-depth and explicit analysisProvides insiders' views and predictions on China's economy by young and well-trained Chinese economistsWith jargon-free language, the book serves as a good reference for both the professional and general public

China has made some remarkable achievements during the first three decades of economic reform and opening up, rising to become one of the world's most dynamic and globally-integrated market economies. Yet there remains much unfinished business on the reform and development agenda, coupled with newly emerging challenges. CHINA: THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS OF REFORM AND DEVELOPMENT highlights how the deepening of reforms in critical areas such as domestic factor markets, the exchange rate regime and the health system, combined with the strengthening of channels for effective policy implementation, will enable China to cope with the challenges that lie ahead. These include responding to the pending exhaustion of the unlimited supply of labour; playing a constructive role in reducing global trade imbalances; enhancing firms' ability to innovate; coping with migration, urbanisation and rising inequalities on scales unknown in world history; and dealing with rising energy and metal demand in an era in which low-carbon growth has become a necessity rather than a choice.

China's Unfinished Economic Revolution offers a fundamentally different interpretation of China's economic reform. The common view that China's gradualistic approach has served it well overlooks the fact that state-owned banks for the last two decades have channeled a large share of sharply rising household savings into what are mostly unreformed, money-losing companies. The result is that several of China's largest financial institutions now are insolvent. To avoid a major domestic banking crisis the book argues that China must recapitalize and restructure its domestic banking system and end the long-standing practice of making lending decisions based on political rather than economic criteria. Nicholas Lardy explains that this course will inevitably be costly in political terms, in part because it will lead for a time to a slower rate of economic growth. But the alternative is even less attractive—permanently slower growth, continued macroeconomic instability, an inability to meet the expectations of the international community for the opening of its domestic financial markets, and insufficient resources to deal with severe environmental deterioration, growing water shortages, and a rapidly aging population. This timely book also analyzes the new reform initiatives China has launched in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, suggests additional steps that must be taken, and evaluates the implications for U.S. policy.

Gradual change has been a hallmark of the Chinese reform experience, and China's success in its sequential approach makes it unique among the former command economies. Since 1979, with the inception of the continuing era of reform, the Chinese economy has flourished. Growth has averaged nine percent a year, and China is now a trillion dollar economy. China has become a major trading power and the predominant target among developing countries for foreign direct investment. Despite all this, China remains poor and the reform process unfinished. This book takes its defining theme from Deng Xiaopeng's famous metaphor for gradual reform: “feeling the stones to cross the river.” How far has China progressed in fording the river? The experts who contributed to this volume tackle many aspects of that question, assessing Chinese progress in policy reform, priorities for further reform, and the research still needed to inform policymakers’ decisions.

The authors of this work argue strongly that the decentralization that has taken place in China over the past two decades threatens to undermine the future of reform and perhaps even the state itself. They contend that reform has undermined state capacity in China, and that the state's fiscal revenues, as a percentage of GNP, have declined and will continue to decline into the foreseeable future, thereby weakening China's ability to mobilize resources for modernization.

This book discusses the very latest issues relating to China's remarkable economic growth. It provides comprehensive coverage of them, including economic, political-economic, environmental and philosophical questions.

Using a historical, comparative and analytic approach grounded in mainstream economics, the authors develop a consistent and rational framework of state-owned enterprises and individual agents to analyze the internal logic of the traditional Chinese planning system. In this revised edition, the authors update the data and information in the book and include a new chapter on the impact of China's WTO accession on its reform.

Abstract: The author applies a systems-oriented "holistic" approach to China's radical economic reforms during the past quarter of a century. He characterizes China's economic reforms in terms of a multidimensional classification of economic systems. When looking at the economic consequences of China's change of economic system, he deals with both the impressive growth performance and its economic costs. The author also studies the consequences of the economic reforms for the previous social arrangements in the country, which were tied to individual work units-agriculture communes, collective firms, and state-owned enterprises. He continues with the social development during the reform period, reflecting a complex mix of social advances, mainly in terms of poverty reduction, and regresses for large population groups in terms of income security and human services, such as education and, in particular, health care. Next, the author discusses China's future policy options in the social field, whereby he draws heavily on relevant experiences in industrial countries over the years. The future options are classified into three broad categories: policies influencing the level and distribution of factor income, income transfers including social insurance, and the provision of human services.