The year 2018 marks 40 years of reform and development in China (1978–2018). This commemorative book assembles some of the world’s most prominent scholars on the Chinese economy to reflect on what has been achieved as a result of the economic reform programs, and to draw out the key lessons that have been learned by the model of growth and development in China over the preceding four decades. This book explores what has happened in the transformation of the Chinese economy in the past 40 years for China itself, as well as for the rest of the world, and discusses the implications of what will happen next in the context of China’s new reform agenda. Focusing on the long-term development strategy amid various old and new challenges that face the economy, this book sets the scene for what the world can expect in China’s fifth decade of reform and development. A key feature of this book is its comprehensive coverage of the key issues involved in China’s economic reform and development. Included are discussions of China’s 40 years of reform and development in a global perspective; the political economy of economic transformation; the progress of marketisation and changes in market-compatible institutions; the reform program for state-owned enterprises; the financial sector and fiscal system reform, and its foreign exchange system reform; the progress and challenges in economic rebalancing; and the continuing process of China’s global integration. This book further documents and analyses the development experiences including China’s large scale of migration and urbanisation, the demographic structural changes, the private sector development, income distribution, land reform and regional development, agricultural development, and energy and climate change policies.
This book first shows that the past 40 years of China's economic reform and opening up represents the greatest magnitude of economic growth in history. Based on field trips, extensive and intensive interviews and literature surveys, this book argues that there are five general lessons for a rapid growing economy from China's economic reform and opening up, all in the area of the relationship between the government and the economy. First, the local governments need to be incentivized to help rapid entry and development of enterprises. Second, local governments need to be incentivized to help rapid land conversion from agricultural to non-agricultural. Third, financial deepening is vital; that is, inducing households to hold more and more financial assets in local currency. Financial deepening is essential to convert savings into investments. This requires financial stability, which is crucial. Fourth, the learning through opening up is the key to endogenous economic growth. The fundamental benefit of opening up is learning rather than enjoying comparative advantage. The fifth and final lesson from China is that the central government must proactively manage the macroeconomy. The rationale is that enterprises compete with each other in games of industrial organization. In order to resolve this problem, proactive measures including market-oriented means, administrative orders and reform measures should be implemented. Overall, the main lesson from China's past 40 years of reform and opening up is that proper incentives and behavior of the government, local and central, are important for economic growth. China has been conducting reforms in this regard and as a result, the government more or less has been playing the role of a "helping hand" regarding economic growth, although China's economic system is far from perfect and many reforms are still needed.
Prior to the initiation of economic reforms and trade liberalization 36 years ago, China maintained policies that kept the economy very poor, stagnant, centrally-controlled, vastly inefficient, and relatively isolated from the global economy. Since opening up to foreign trade and investment and implementing free market reforms in 1979, China has been among the world's fastest-growing economies, with real annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaging nearly 10% through 2016. In recent years, China has emerged as a major global economic power. It is now the world's largest economy (on a purchasing power parity basis), manufacturer, merchandise trader, and holder of foreign exchange reserves.The global economic crisis that began in 2008 greatly affected China's economy. China's exports, imports, and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows declined, GDP growth slowed, and millions of Chinese workers reportedly lost their jobs. The Chinese government responded by implementing a $586 billion economic stimulus package and loosening monetary policies to increase bank lending. Such policies enabled China to effectively weather the effects of the sharp global fall in demand for Chinese products, but may have contributed to overcapacity in several industries and increased debt by Chinese firms and local government. China's economy has slowed in recent years. Real GDP growth has slowed in each of the past six years, dropping from 10.6% in 2010 to 6.7% in 2016, and is projected to slow to 5.7% by 2022.The Chinese government has attempted to steer the economy to a "new normal" of slower, but more stable and sustainable, economic growth. Yet, concerns have deepened in recent years over the health of the Chinese economy. On August 11, 2015, the Chinese government announced that the daily reference rate of the renminbi (RMB) would become more "market-oriented." Over the next three days, the RMB depreciated against the dollar and led to charges that China's goal was to boost exports to help stimulate the economy (which some suspect is in worse shape than indicated by official Chinese economic statistics). Concerns over the state of the Chinese economy appear to have often contributed to volatility in global stock indexes in recent years.The ability of China to maintain a rapidly growing economy in the long run will likely depend largely on the ability of the Chinese government to implement comprehensive economic reforms that more quickly hasten China's transition to a free market economy; rebalance the Chinese economy by making consumer demand, rather than exporting and fixed investment, the main engine of economic growth; boost productivity and innovation; address growing income disparities; and enhance environmental protection. The Chinese government has acknowledged that its current economic growth model needs to be altered and has announced several initiatives to address various economic challenges. In November 2013, the Communist Party of China held the Third Plenum of its 18th Party Congress, which outlined a number of broad policy reforms to boost competition and economic efficiency. For example, the communique stated that the market would now play a "decisive" role in allocating resources in the economy. At the same time, however, the communique emphasized the continued important role of the state sector in China's economy. In addition, many foreign firms have complained that the business climate in China has worsened in recent years. Thus, it remains unclear how committed the Chinese government is to implementing new comprehensive economic reforms.China's economic rise has significant implications for the United States and hence is of major interest to Congress. This report provides background on China's economic rise; describes its current economic structure; identifies the challenges China faces to maintain economic growth; and discusses the challenges, opportunities, and implications of China's economic rise.
This landmark study provides an integrated analysis of China's unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. The authors combine deep China expertise with broad disciplinary knowledge to explain China's remarkable combination of high-speed growth and deeply flawed institutions. Their work exposes the mechanisms underpinning the origin and expansion of China's great boom. Penetrating studies track the rise of Chinese capabilities in manufacturing and in research and development. The editors probe both achievements and weaknesses across many sectors, including China's fiscal, legal, and financial institutions. The book shows how an intricate minuet combining China's political system with sectorial development, globalization, resource transfers across geographic and economic space, and partial system reform delivered an astonishing and unprecedented growth spurt.
How will China reform its economy as it aspires to become the next economic superpower? It's clear that China is the world's next economic superpower. But what isn't so clear is how China will get there by the middle of this century. It now faces tremendous challenges such as fostering innovation, dealing with ageing problem and coping with a less accommodative global environment. In this book, economists from China's leading university and America's best-known think tank offer in depth analyses of these challenges. Does China have enough talent and right policy and institutional mix to transit from input-driven to innovation-driven economy? What does ageing mean, in terms of labor supply, consumption demand and social welfare expenditure? Can China contain the environmental and climate change risks? How should the financial system be transformed in order to continuously support economic growth and keep financial risks under control? What fiscal reforms are required in order to balance between economic efficiency and social harmony? What roles should the state-owned enterprises play in the future Chinese economy? In addition, how will technological competition between the United States and China affect each country's development? Will the Chinese yuan emerge as a major reserve currency, and would this destabilize the international financial system? What will be China's role in the international economic institutions? And will the United States and other established powers accept a growing role for China and the rest of the developing world in the governance of global institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, or will the world devolve into competing blocs? This book provides unique insights into independent analyses and policy recommendations by a group of top Chinese and American scholars. Whether China succeeds or fails in economic reform will have a large impact, not just on China's development, but also on stability and prosperity for the whole world.
" In 1978, China launched economic reforms that have resulted in one of history’s most dramatic national transformations. The reforms removed bureaucratic obstacles to economic growth and tapped China’s immense reserves of labor and entrepreneurial talent to unleash unparalleled economic growth in the country. In the four decades since, China has become the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, and a leading force in international trade and investment. As the contributors to this volume show, China also faces daunting challenges in sustaining growth, continuing its economic ransformation, addressing the adverse consequences of economic success, and dealing with mounting suspicion from the United States and other trade and investment partners. China also confronts risks stemming from the project to expand its influence across the globe through infrastructure investments and other projects under the Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, appears determined to make his own lasting mark on the country and on China’s use of its economic clout to shape the world around it. "
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics, WINE 2008, held in Shanghai, China, in December 2008. The 68 revised full papers presented together with 10 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 126 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on market equilibrium, congestion games, information markets, nash equilibrium, network games, solution concepts, algorithms and optimization, mechanism design, equilibrium, online advertisement, sponsored search auctions, and voting problems.
This book is unique in covering all important topics of the Chinese economy in depth but written in a language understandable to the layman and yet challenging to the expert. Beginning with entrepreneurship that propels the dynamic economic changes in China today, the book is organized into four broad parts to discuss China's economic development, to analyze significant economic issues, to recommend economic policies and to comment on the timely economic issues in the American economy for comparison.Unlike a textbook, the discussion is original and thought-provoking. It is written by a most distinguished economist who has studied the Chinese economy for thirty years, after making breathtaking contributions to the fields of econometrics, applied economics and dynamic economics and serving as a major adviser to the government of Taiwan during its period of rapid development in the 1960s and 1970s. In the last thirty years, the author has served as a major adviser to the government of China on economic reform and important economic policies and cooperated with the Ministry of Education to introduce and promote the development of modern economics in China, including training hundreds of economists in China and placing many graduate students to pursue a doctoral degrees in economics in leading universities in the US and Canada. These graduates now plays pivotal roles in China and in the US in academics, business or government institutions. The essays, a culmination of the author's expertise in China over five decades, are being widely read in China. When the author became professor emeritus at Princeton, the University named the Econometric Research Program as the Gregory C Chow Econometric Research Program in his honor.
The rise of China is no doubt one of the most important events in world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. Mainstream economics, especially the institutional theory of economic development based on a dichotomy of extractive vs. inclusive political institutions, is highly inadequate in explaining China's rise. This book argues that only a radical reinterpretation of the history of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West (as incorrectly portrayed by the institutional theory) can fully explain China's growth miracle and why the determined rise of China is unstoppable despite its current 'backward' financial system and political institutions. Conversely, China's spectacular and rapid transformation from an impoverished agrarian society to a formidable industrial superpower sheds considerable light on the fundamental shortcomings of the institutional theory and mainstream 'blackboard' economic models, and provides more-accurate reevaluations of historical episodes such as Africa's enduring poverty trap despite radical political and economic reforms, Latin America's lost decades and frequent debt crises, 19th century Europe's great escape from the Malthusian trap, and the Industrial Revolution itself.
