v****o
发帖数: 978 | 1 Chinese economic reform and development: achievements, emerging challenges
and unfinished tasks
Jane Golley and Ligang Song
The economic transformation that has taken place in China since the late
1970s is now regarded as one of the most significant social changes in human
history. Within just three decades, China has succeeded in transforming
itself from a centrally-planned closed economy into one of the world’s most
dynamic and globally-integrated market economies. The dynamics unleashed by
Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, open-door policies and institutional changes have
unleashed enormous entrepreneurial energy and propelled continuous capital
accumulation, productivity gains and trade and income growth on a scale the
world has never seen before. During this period, China’s total gross
domestic product (GDP), industrial output, foreign trade and, importantly,
its per capita income increased respectively by factors of 8, 59, 124 and 60
.[1] As a result, the incidence and severity of poverty have declined
dramatically in China. According to a recent World Bank report (2009),
between 1981 and 2004, the fraction of China’s population consuming less
than US$1 a day in today’s purchasing power fell from 65 per cent to 10 per
cent and about half a billion people were lifted out of poverty. This
achievement has contributed critically to global progress in reducing world
absolute poverty and indeed ‘a fall in the number of poor of this magnitude
over such as short period is without historical precedent’ (World Bank
2009:iii).[2]
The fundamental causes of this remarkable performance are by now familiar to
most China observers. Market-oriented reforms centred on changes in the
price system led to improved resource allocation and allowed the most
dynamic private sector to flourish, thereby increasing the overall level of
efficiency in the economy. Liberalisation programs allowed trade and foreign
direct investment (FDI) to flourish according to China’s underlying
comparative advantage, resulting in enormous gains from trade.
Decentralisation and ownership transformation helped to solve incentive
problems and enhance the performance of firms and local governments. And
institutional reforms that abandoned the decades-long restraints on the
mobility of labour unleashed an unprecedented scale of urbanisation, with
the ratio of the urban in the total population rising from less than 20 per
cent in the late 1970s to 46 per cent in 2009. This gradual process of ‘
reform and opening up’ coincided with a surge in the proportion of the
working-age population, generating in a ‘demographic dividend’, which,
according to Cai and Wang (2005), accounted for about one-quarter of the
growth rate in per capita GDP between 1982 and 2000. The sustained high
rates of economic growth that resulted have fundamentally transformed the
Chinese economy and its position in the world.
China has also benefited during the past three decades from some favourable
internal and external conditions. Internally, there were some positive
legacies inherited from the planning system that were conducive to reform
and growth, including a basic industrial base and reasonable infrastructure,
the irrigation system and a relatively well-developed education system. In
the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, there were overwhelming domestic
forces pushing for reform that helped overcome the resistance to change,
especially during the early years of reform. The low base from which the
economy started enabled China to benefit from low-cost advantages in
production that contributed enormously to the rising output and
competitiveness of the economy. Moreover, as a latecomer to economic
development, China enjoyed the advantage of backwardness—that is, the
ability to adopt the world’s more-advanced technologies relatively rapidly.
Externally, China’s reforms have coincided with a new era of globalisation,
characterised by a more open global trading environment, resulting from
significant reductions in tariffs and other forms of trade protection
through various rounds of multinational trade negotiations in the post-war
period, and from the mid-1980s through unilateral liberalisation in the
Western Pacific region. This era has also been characterised by rapid global
economic structural adjustment in response to cross-border flows of capital
, people and technology; and by rapid reductions in transaction costs
stemming from substantial improvements in transport, communication and
information management. ‘As a result, international markets have provided
China with opportunities (and also risks) that far exceed those available at
the time of Japan’s and Korea’s big growth spurts’ (Brandt and Rawski
2008:13).
While some of these favourable conditions will remain in place during the
next two decades, many of them will no longer yield the sizeable benefits to
China’s economic growth that they have in the past. If China is to
continue along its remarkable path of economic reform and development, it
will need to adapt to these changing internal and external conditions and to
steer skilfully through a number of challenges. This book 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 and the
rebalancing of economic growth, 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 and
compete in the global economy; 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.
Evidence presented in this volume and elsewhere indicates that China has
entered the turning point—or more accurately, the turning period—in
economic development, signalled by the end of surplus labour and the
consequent rapid rise in wages in some, albeit not all, sectors of the
economy. The tightening of the labour market will be compounded by the
combined impact of three decades of the One-Child Policy and rapid income
growth on Chinese fertility rates, which has already heralded a rapidly
ageing population, with the growth rate of the labour supply predicted to
turn negative by about 2020 (Tyers et al. 2009). This will necessitate
changes in the industrial structure and composition of trade, as China loses
its comparative advantage in the labour-intensive exports that have been an
engine of growth in the past. To facilitate these changes, building human
capital through education, accelerating technological change through
innovation and raising labour productivity through further labour-market
reform are becoming increasingly urgent national priorities.
Economic growth in the past has been characterised by extensive growth
resulting in a number of structural imbalances, including highly resource-
and energy-intensive production. Now China has entered a stage of growth in
which metal and energy intensities (that is, consumption per unit of GDP)
are exceptionally strong. This will significantly add to the global pressure
to balance the supply of, and demand for, resources and energy products,
and the impact on world markets for these products is likely to be intense (
Garnaut and Song 2006). Confronting this challenge will require China to
accelerate its pace of structural change by moving more quickly towards
higher valued-added industrial production and the service sector and by
adopting resource- and energy-saving technologies in all productive sectors.
Reforming the pricing systems for energy and resources so that prices truly
reflect the balance between supply and demand will be critical in this
regard. Such pricing reforms will enhance supply capacities and encourage
resource- and energy-saving technological change, substitutions for resource
use and conservation.
As one of the largest economies and the largest carbon emitter in the world,
China needs to confront environmental degradation and climate change by
moving more rapidly towards a low-carbon growth economy. This is not only
for the health and welfare of China’s own population, but for the world to
stand any chance of achieving the goal of significantly reducing global
emissions before catastrophic problems occur (Stern 2007; Garnaut 2008). In
so doing, China will need to overcome many difficulties associated with the
current level of per capita income, the mid-phase of its industrialisation
and the vast regional disparities with respect to the levels of income and
industrial development. The transition towards developing a low-carbon
economy might not necessarily compromise economic growth, as developing
environmentally-friendly industries can generate new sources of growth. The
key challenge is to set up an appropriate system in which all parties
involved, including the central government, local governments, firms and
households, will have incentives to make the necessary adjustments (Cai and
Du 2008). The stark conflict between the contemporary style of industrial
development and the health of the biosphere indicates strongly that now is
the time for China to make the adjustments that will underpin sustainable
long-term growth (McKay and Song 2010).
Enhancing productivity is a crucial component of the shift towards a low-
carbon mode of economic growth. Technological progress and innovation hold
the key. There is huge potential for China to change the relationship
between economic output and carbon emissions through the absorption, mass
production and improvement of green technologies from the developed
countries. Government will play a crucial role in ensuring that China
reaches this potential, most importantly by facilitating the dynamic private
sector’s active engagement in this endeavour. A concerted effort to
generate and commercialise environmentally- sound technologies would also
enable China to quicken the pace of industrial structural change and alter
the current trajectory of its industrialisation path.
Another feature of China’s growth strategy has been the reliance on exports
and investment, which has contributed to the rise in global imbalances in
recent decades and to numerous structural problems within China as well.
While not all of the remedies lie in China’s hands, there is now widespread
recognition that a rebalancing of growth is called for, in the direction of
a strategy that relies more heavily on the growth of domestic consumption
and productivity. Boosting domestic consumption will take time but there are
some clear reform options that will play a positive role. Song et al. (
forthcoming), for example, show that an effective way of boosting domestic
demand is to accelerate the pace of ‘urbanising’ migrant workers (
estimated to have reached 160 million in China in 2009) by granting these
workers urban residency, which would change their consumption behaviour.
This particular task can be accomplished only by deepening institutional
reforms affecting labour mobility and the social security system. Ongoing
economic development will also play a role. As China enters the turning
period, higher wages will naturally lead to higher domestic consumption,
possibly having a greater impact than any institutional reforms. Higher
consumption will raise China’s import demand, enabling the country to
contribute to more balanced growth in the global economy and to become a
sustainable engine for global growth. Reforms to China’s exchange-rate
regime and land-management system will also play crucial roles in solving a
range of imbalance issues. Low domestic consumption is just one of many
indicators that China’s growth strategy needs to be readjusted as far as
its social impact is concerned. For example, the World Bank (2009) has found
that the responsiveness of poverty reduction to economic growth has fallen
in recent years. Rising income inequality and widening regional disparities,
along with uneven access to health services and social welfare systems, are
some of the most undesirable outcomes associated with the rapid economic
growth of the past. Failure to deal with these issues could pose the
greatest threats to social stability, which in turn could become a serious
obstacle for growth and development in the decades ahead. While entering the
turning period will offer some respite for income inequality, much more
will need to be done. Apart from strengthening the redistributive functions
of the government and building a more comprehensive social security system,
further reforms to enhance rural–urban migration will be crucial for the
continued growth of productivity and income while narrowing the income
inequality among different social groups. Strengthening local public finance
through reforming the current system of intergovernmental transfer payments
and improving the health system will also be critical if the government is
to achieve its objective of more equitable development.
Finally, China is likely to become the largest economy in the world by 2030,
regardless of the measurement used (Maddison 2001). China’s rise as a
global economic powerhouse will thrust on it increasing responsibilities in
a range of global affairs—whether it wants those responsibilities or not.
China will thus be expected, and will surely find it desirable, to
contribute positively to global stability, progress and prosperity through
cooperation with other players in the global system. High on the agenda for
China’s strategic engagement are reducing global imbalances, reforming the
international financial system, pushing forward with multilateral trade
negotiations under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), confronting the
challenges of climate change and fighting global poverty. In all of these
realms, it is not merely a question of how China manages its external
economic relations but how it conducts itself politically.
China has made tremendous progress in reforming its institutions in the
first 30 years of reform and transformation. What has been achieved in the
past has laid the groundwork for China to deepen institutional reforms
during the next stage of its development. There is reason to be optimistic
as far as the link between future institutional change and growth is
concerned, since ‘[o]nce economic growth has begun, institutions change
more and more in directions favourable to growth, and so strengthen the
forces making for growth’ (Lewis 1955:143). China’s experience during the
past 30 years illustrates this point.
The next two decades of reform and development are likely to be more
challenging than the past, as China embraces a new mode of economic growth
driven not only by efficiency, but also sustainability and equity
considerations. Indeed, the overarching challenge for China in the decades
ahead is to successfully shift into this new mode of growth. This will not
be possible unless China tackles the overarching task that remains
unfinished: completing the transition to a true market economy by further
reforming the country’s factors markets and carrying out more comprehensive
institutional reforms—in the economic system, in governance, in its legal
and regulatory systems, as well as in the political system. If successful,
the next two decades will see China elevated to a position of global primacy
or at least of ‘co-primacy’ alongside the United States. Success is,
however, more easily presumed than achieved. A smooth Chinese ascendancy to
global primacy will require many changes from the status quo, as each of the
chapters that follow demonstrates from a variety of different angles.
Part I of this book focuses on China’s long-term development trends and
issues. It begins with Ross Garnaut’s (Chapter 2) analysis of the turning
period in Chinese development. Garnaut presents a new conceptual framework
based on Arthur Lewis’s model of economic development in a labour-surplus
economy, which provides the basis for understanding China’s transition
through the end of this period of labour surplus and beyond. He reflects on
chapters in the 2006 China Update book, The Turning Point in China’s
Economic Development, which provided early and partial evidence that China
had already begun its entry into the turning period. This is followed by a
summary of more recent evidence that the economy has now moved more
decisively and deeply into this period, signalled in particular by rapidly
rising real wages since 2004. Garnaut sees China’s economic success in the
future depending on the flexibility of the economy; its openness to foreign
trade, investment and ideas; and the quality of human resources and
regulatory systems that are required to deal with the more complex economy
that is emerging. He argues that, with this flexibility and structural
adjustment, the growth of the Chinese economy will not necessarily slow
during the Lewis turning period and beyond.
China’s gradual and piecemeal approach to economic reform has been heralded
by many as an alternative—and preferable—path to economic development, as
reflected in the discourse about the ‘Beijing Consensus’ versus the ‘
Washington Consensus’. Where the Beijing Consensus has often been
interpreted as a development model in which an authoritarian government is
heavily involved in most economic activities, the Washington Consensus has
been interpreted as a development model requiring a relatively rapid
transition to a market-based economy as prescribed by neoclassical economics
. Yang Yao (Chapter 3) contests both of these interpretations in his
analysis of China’s development model and sees China’s reform and
development as being perfectly compatible with the Washington Consensus, and
the ‘China model’ as a process of convergence towards neoclassical ideals
. Yao describes the Chinese government as a ‘disinterested’ government
that has managed to remain detached from various social groups within China
rather than being captured by exclusive interest groups. This ‘disinterest
’—rather than its authoritarianism—has enabled growth-enhancing policies,
which, while creating winners as well as losers, have collectively
delivered higher living standards across the nation in the past three
decades. Despite this success to date, Yao concludes that China’s future
development model will inevitably require explicit political reform, and
ideally democratisation, to counterbalance the formation of strong interest
groups with increasingly contradictory goals—beyond that of economic growth
alone.
Where Yao argues for democratisation in the future as a way of balancing
government actions and public interests, Yongsheng Zhang (Chapter 4) sees it
as a way to establish effective central–local government relationships,
the evolution of which will have a crucial impact on China’s future
development. He proposes a new analytical framework for intergovernmental
relations based on two distinct dimensions—personnel and fiscal—each of
which can be either ‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’. This gives rise to four
possible structures into which the world’s wide range of intergovernmental
relations can be categorised. Zhang argues that most industrialised Western
countries fall into Structure 1, represented by the combination of bottom-up
personnel relationships and top-down fiscal relationships. China’s
evolving central–local relations during the reform period are then depicted
as a journey from Structure 3 (top-down personnel, top-down fiscal) to
Structure 4 (top-down personnel, bottom-up fiscal), as a result
of fiscal decentralisation between 1978 and 1994, and then back to Structure
3 after the 1994 tax reforms. Zhang suggests that the most likely outcome
for China in the foreseeable future is that central–provincial relations
continue to be top-down personnel and top-down fiscal (Structure 3), while
provincial–local relations become increasingly bottom-down personnel, top-
down fiscal (Structure 1). For the successful evolution towards Structure 1
for all levels of intergovernmental relations in China, Zhang sees two
critical requirements: the strengthening of the rule of law and the
deepening of grassroots democracy over time. Like so much of China’s reform
and development process, however, Zhang is clear that this process will be
gradual and certainly not without Chinese characteristics.
Huw McKay, Yu Sheng and Ligang Song (Chapter 5) revive the theoretical field
that relates economic development to metal usage and shed light on China’s
future path of ferrous-metal demand by referencing the experience of
relevant peers over the entire course of the industrialisation process.
Their chapter formally identifies the existence of the Kuznets inverted-U
curve for steel (KCS) and validates the synthesis view of metal intensity,
which sees a role for both technological leapfrogging and evolving consumer
preferences in determining changes in metal intensity. Their econometric
analysis indicates that China will reach the turning point in its own KCS
when its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita exceeds about US$15 000—
predicted to be about 2024. They conclude that, as China progresses towards
high-income status, it is unlikely to continue to closely follow the Korean
path characterised by its exceptionally high metal intensity. This is
because China will be compelled to alter its mode of economic growth away
from the current reliance on heavy industry, investment and export
orientation. As a consequence, China’s final path of metal intensity is
likely to be a blend of certain aspects of the experiences of North America,
the Commonwealth of Independent States, Western Europe, Japan and emerging
Asia.
The global and local environmental consequences of China’s rapid growth and
industrialisation during the past three decades have been immense. There is
increasing pressure within and outside China for the Chinese leadership to
be more ambitious in their plans to combat global climate change and,
according to Zhongxiang Zhang (Chapter 6), they are at least beginning to
step up to the plate. This is reflected first and foremost in China’s
target to reduce its carbon intensity by 40–45 per cent by 2030—a target
that goes well beyond ‘business as usual’. Zhang is well aware that
stating ambitious targets is one thing, while achieving them is another. On
this front, he recognises that the (lack of) reliability of China’s energy
and GDP statistics makes it difficult to assess real progress while raising
the issue of credibility as well. Moreover, the conflicting objectives of
lower-level governments could result in actions that counteract rather than
support national-level environmental objectives. These issues
notwithstanding, he provides considerable and detailed evidence of the
achievements to date in terms of energy conservation and carbon-intensity
reductions. Zhang concludes that the likelihood of China achieving its
environmental goals rests on the strengthening of existing policies,
industrial restructuring away from highly energy-consuming, polluting and
resource-intensive industries and the cooperation of local governments.
Jane Golley (Chapter 7) reflects on an issue that has plagued Chinese
leaders for millennia: regional disparities in development. By 2050, the
current leadership has set itself the formidable task of ‘considerably
reducing’ the disparities that exist between western China and the other
regions—most prominently, the east, where the vast share of China’s
industrialisation has occurred throughout time, and in particular,
throughout the reform period. Golley’s analysis of provincial-level
industrial growth rates during the period 2000–07 provides some indication
that the glory days of the eastern region could be coming to an end,
although its dominance in terms of China’s industrial output is still
clearly evident. Although she finds some theoretical and empirical reasons
for optimism on the likelihood that some industries will spread westward in
the next two decades, the balance of evidence suggests this will translate
into no more than a minimal reduction in regional disparities during this
time. Reducing regional inequalities will remain unfinished business in
China for a long time to come.
Part II of the book turns to the challenges and opportunities relating to
China’s global integration. Xiao Geng (Chapter 8), and Rod Tyers and Ying
Zhang
(Chapter 9) contribute to the continuing renminbi exchange-rate debate. Both
chapters begin by reflecting on the international pressure for renminbi
appreciation, which stems from the expectations of the Balassa–Samuelson
hypothesis (BSH): a developing country experiencing productivity catch-up in
its tradable goods sectors is likely to experience a rising real exchange
rate as a consequence of the associated rise in wages and non-tradable
sector prices. Focusing on the problem of global imbalances, Xiao takes it
as given that China will remain reluctant to appreciate the renminbi and
considers alternative Chinese policy options—such as privatisation and
deregulation—to reduce the excessive savings of the corporate sector and
measures to increase domestic consumption. He then turns to what he sees as
the key factor driving global imbalances: cheap money. This, he argues, has
created property and stock-market bubbles all over the world, including in
China, and has also had a significant impact on driving down the prices of
Chinese goods (thereby keeping the real exchange rate low). Xiao calls for a
higher Chinese interest rate and improved capital-control mechanisms to
combat this, by ensuring that capital flows into efficient investments—
whether domestic or international—rather than towards speculative and
inefficient investments. He closes by noting that the rise in Chinese prices
in the future can achieve the necessary real exchange rate appreciation, if
and when China is able to tolerate this. The sooner this happens, the
sooner external pressure for renminbi appreciation will subside.
Tyers and Zhang look closely at China’s real exchange rate movements over
time, observing that, despite the expectations of the BSH, it showed no
tendency to appreciate until after 2004. Since then, substantial real
appreciation has taken place, which they attribute primarily to rising
prices and wages in agriculture, along with the slowing of trade reforms.
They then explain clearly why the setting of the renminbi rate is not as
discretionary for the Chinese authorities as suggested by critics and that,
should international pressure result in a nominal appreciation either via a
monetary contraction or via export disincentives, the consequences would be
harmful for Chinese and global interests. Both this chapter and Xiao’s
demonstrate the importance of understanding the peculiarities of China’s
transitional economy when entering into one of the world’s hottest debates.
Chunlai Chen (Chapter 10) addresses the question of whether China’s
phenomenal success in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) during
recent decades has been at the expense of other developing economies—in
Asia in particular. His econometric analysis of the ‘China effect’ on FDI
into 12 other developing Asian economies during the period 1992–2008
suggests the commonly expressed fears about China’s FDI dominance are
unfounded. In particular, Chen finds that an increase in FDI inflows into
China is positively and significantly related to FDI inflows into other
Asian economies. He attributes this investment-creation effect during the
period of analysis to the increased resource demand by a rapidly growing
Chinese economy and the production-networking activities within Asia. Chen
predicts that these positive linkages are likely to strengthen in the next
two decades, in light of deepening Asian integration and expectations of
continued rapid growth for China. Moreover, with the ageing and increasing
wealth of China’s population, not only will other Asian economies become
more attractive alternative locations for labour-intensive manufacturing,
they are likely to be the destinations of choice for China’s increasingly
large FDI outflows. For developing Asia, on average at least, China’s FDI
success is a win-win story.
Prema-chandra Athukorala and Archanun Kohpaiboon (Chapter 11) examine the
export experience of China and other East Asian economies in the aftermath
of the global financial crisis against the backdrop of pre-crisis trade
patterns. The analysis is motivated by the ‘decoupling’ thesis, which
posits that the East Asian region has become a self-contained economic
entity with the potential for maintaining dynamism regardless of the
economic outlook in the industrialised world. Athukorala and Kohpaiboon
dispel this thesis by examining the changes in intra and extra-regional
trade shares in East Asia since the global financial crisis. Emphasising the
importance of including parts and components—as well as final goods—in
trade-flow analysis, they show that the rising importance of global
production sharing has in fact strengthened, rather than weakened, East Asia
’s links with the wider global economy. Noting that the global recovery is
likely to remain patchy at best in the medium term, they call for an
integrated East Asian policy response that emphasises rebalancing growth
away from exports and towards domestic markets, particularly in the case of
China. Their findings caution against a possible policy backlash against
openness to foreign trade arising from the newly found enthusiasm for
rebalancing growth and they make a strong case for a long-term commitment to
non-discriminatory multilateral and unilateral trade liberalisation.
On the impact of the global financial crisis on rural–urban migration,
Sherry Tao Kong, Xin Meng and Dandan Zhang (Chapter 12) reveal some
unexpected findings. With the global financial crisis leading to a sharp
reduction in export orders in the second half of 2008, it was expected that
the most significant impacts would fall on rural migrants—in terms of
either employment or wage reductions—and indeed millions of laid-off
migrants lamented lost jobs and protested over closed factories. Drawing on
the panel surveys of rural–urban migrants and rural households in the Rural
-Urban Migration in China and Indonesia (RUMiCI) Project, Kong, Meng and
Zhang find, however, only very small changes in employment and almost no
wage reductions for migrants in cities between 2008 and 2009. Instead, they
find that the real effects were felt mainly in the rural sector, to which
close to 15 million rural migrants returned in 2009, and with 80 per cent of
those taking up jobs in the rural agricultural sector. Thus, it was the
agricultural sector that effectively provided an employment buffer for
return migrants and also for workers in the rural off-farm sector, which was
also hit by the economic downturn. Although this evidence indicates a
relatively—and surprisingly—positive outcome for migrants during the
global financial crisis, the authors point out that the agricultural sector
is unlikely to provide such a buffer in the future, so migrant employment
shocks will have to be absorbed in other ways. A universal welfare system
and property rights over rural land are seen as crucial in this regard.
Section III of the book focuses on ‘Policy and reforms: unfinished tasks’.
It begins with Wing Thye Woo’s depiction (Chapter 13) of the Chinese
economy as a speeding car that is running the risk of three potential types
of failure. Fiscal instability and a slowdown in productivity growth are
discussed as two potential ‘hardware’ failures—or breakdowns in a key
economic mechanism. Flaws in governance are likened to a crash caused by
people fighting in the car—a potential ‘software’ failure—while severe
environmental degradation is seen as a natural or externally imposed limit,
a ‘power supply’ failure analogous to crashing into a wall. After
explaining the reasons why each of these particular failures might occur in
the foreseeable future, Woo presents a reform agenda to avert the occurrence
of these, and other, potential obstacles along China’s road to prosperity.
His agenda for addressing hardware failures includes the creation of more
new entrepreneurs, urbanisation according to the principle of future
homeownership and the development of a modern financial system in which the
private sector has a greatly enhanced role. Political reforms lie at the
heart of his ‘software reforms’, which require the adoption of free
elections, a free press and an independent judiciary. The solution to ‘
power supply’ failures rests on China’s ability to mobilise international
consensus, cooperation and scientific research on key global issues. If
adhered to, Woo’s reform agenda offers much hope that China’s rocky path
to prosperity can be smoothed out significantly.
Yiping Huang and Bijun Wang (Chapter 14) examine the evolution of structural
imbalances in China and offer one overarching solution: factor-market
reform. In particular, they demonstrate that the fundamental cause of China
’s structural imbalances—reflected in its very high investment share of
GDP and current account surplus, inefficient resource use, income
inequalities and environmental degradation—lies in the gradual and
piecemeal approach to economic reforms in which product markets have been
completely liberalised while distortions in factor markets have remained.
This has resulted in the repression of prices for labour, land, capital,
resources and the environment, which Huang and Wang interpret as providing
subsidy equivalents for producers, exporters and investors. While this has
clearly been beneficial for China’s economic growth in the past, it has
also increased the structural risks associated with incomplete reforms,
which will threaten the stability, balance and sustainability of China’s
growth pattern in the future unless adequately addressed. Huang and Wang
note that the efforts of the Chinese leadership to date in addressing these
issues have been limited and they call for a major shift in policy towards a
comprehensive package of factor-market reforms. Only after the successful
implementation of these reforms—which is likely to take decades in some
areas—will China’s transition to a market economy be truly complete.
Almost all aspects of China’s economic reform and development process have
exhibited uniquely ‘Chinese characteristics’ and Cai Fang and Meiyan Wang
(Chapter 15) show that urbanisation is no exception. Their chapter begins
with evidence that China has already reached the Lewis turning ‘point’,
which they point out is in fact more a transitional ‘period’, beginning in
2004. Their investigation of recent trends in rural-to-urban migration and
more general changes in the labour market shows that agriculture no longer
serves as a pool of surplus labour, but rather that rural workers’
migration to and settlement in urban areas have become irreversible and
inevitable. As a consequence, one of their key arguments is that Chinese
policymakers need to let go of the ‘Todaro dogma’, which depicts labour
migration in a dual economy as a pattern of ‘come and go’, rather than of
permanent settlement, and which thus results in the implementation of
policies that control and even restrict the process of rural-to-urban
migration—as exemplified by China’s hukou system. While acknowledging
progress in reforming the hukou system to date, Cai and Wang explain that
impediments in the system have resulted in the transformation of farmers
into migrant workers without entitlement to crucial public services and
social protection in their urban destinations, thereby driving urbanisation
with Chinese characteristics. Further hukou reforms are seen as critical for
transforming these farmers-turned-migrant workers into migrants-turned-
urban residents in the decades ahead.
For Yanrui Wu (Chapter 16), indigenous innovation will be crucial for
sustainable growth and development in China in the decades ahead. After
reviewing China’s achievements in innovation, skills and capacity during
the past three decades, Wu presents an econometric analysis of Chinese
innovation at the firm level and then considers China’s performance in an
international context. After showing that rapid growth in investment in
innovation has resulted in a rapid expansion of innovation outcomes, Wu then
demonstrates a significant gap between China and the world’s leading
innovators and questions whether growth in the quantity of innovations has
come at the expense of quality. While closing this gap and promoting quality
are two obvious policy recommendations that stem from Wu’s analysis, his
firm-level analysis presents more of a policy dilemma. In particular, he
shows that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have performed much better than
foreign-invested firms and privately owned Chinese firms as far as research
and development propensity and efforts are concerned. Wu calls for specific
policies to encourage the participation of non-state firms in innovation and
to improve the legal system and protection of intellectual property in
order to ensure that privatisation does not come at the expense of
innovation in the future.
Finally, Ryan Manuel (Chapter 17) focuses on one particular aspect of China
’s reforms that is sparking much discontent—and with good reason: the
healthcare system. Manuel provides some historical context for China’s
healthcare experience. After noting the achievements of the collective
period (1950–79), in which China’s public health system was world leading
in terms of its high levels of ‘bang for your buck’, he describes the
second, post-collectivisation period (1980–2003) as one that became
increasingly inequitable, costly and ineffective. Since then, the
introduction of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) and the beginning
of the ‘cover the countryside’ campaign of public finance have resulted in
far greater public funds being injected into the healthcare system. Despite
this increase in funding, Manuel sees continuing problems during the next
20 years of health reform, unless the Chinese government can effectively
address the flawed incentives facing individual health service providers and
the lack of supervision, coordination and governance in the system.
References
Brandt, L. and Rawski, T. G. 2008, ‘China’s great economic transformation
’, in L. Brandt and T. G. Rawski (eds), China’s Great Economic
Transformation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, pp. 1–
26.
Cai, F. and Du, Y. 2008, ‘The political economy of emissions reduction in
China: are incentives for low carbon growth compatible?’, in L. Song and W.
T. Woo (eds), China’s Dilemma: Economic growth, the environment and
climate change, ANU E Press and Brookings Institution Press, Canberra and
Washington, DC, pp. 226–42.
Cai, F. and Wang, D. 2005, ‘Demographic transition: implications for growth
’, in R. Garnaut and L. Song (eds), The China Boom and Its Discontents,
Asia Pacific Press, Canberra, pp. 34–52.
Garnaut, R. 2008, Climate Change Review Report, Cambridge University Press,
UK.
Garnaut, R. and Song, L. 2006, ‘China’s resources demand at the turning
point’, in R. Garnaut and L. Song (eds), The Turning Point in China’s
Economic Development, Asia Pacific Press, Canberra, pp. 276–93.
Lewis, W. A. 1955, The Theory of Economic Growth, Unwin University Books,
London.
McKay, H. and Song, L. 2010, ‘China as a global manufacturing powerhouse:
strategic considerations and structural adjustment’, China and World
Economy, vol. 18, no. 1 (February), pp. 1–32.
Maddison, A. 2001, The World Economy: A millennial perspective, Organisation
for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris.
National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) 2007, China Statistical Yearbook 2007,
China Statistics Press, Beijing.
Song, L., Wu, J. and Zhang, Y. (forthcoming), ‘Urbanisation of migrant
workers and expansion of domestic demand,’ Social Sciences in China, vol.
XXXI, no. 3 (August).
Stern, N. 2007, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern review, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge and New York.
Thirlwall, A. P. 2006, Growth and Development with Special References to
Developing Countries, Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Tyers, R., Golley, J. and Bain, I. 2009, ‘Projected economic growth in the
People’s Republic of China and India: the role of demographic change’,
From Growth to Convergence: Asia’s next two decades, Palgrave, London.
World Bank 2009, From Poor Areas to Poor People: China’s evolving poverty
reduction agenda, an assessment of poverty and inequality in China, March,
East Asia and Pacific Region, The World Bank, Washington, DC.
[1] Calculated using the data taken from NBS (2007).
[2] The Millennium Poverty Reduction Target aims to halve the proportion of
people living in absolute poverty by 2015 compared with the level in 1990 (
Thirlwall 2006). | L********g
发帖数: 141 | | e******e
发帖数: 3472 | 3 读后感：
中国经济改革成就很大，成功有很多原因，外部的内部的都有
现在到了一个关口，有很多挑战，总得来说保持高速增长越来越难
结论：没有结论，让我们一起迎接挑战吧。。。。
感觉着文章虽然很长，还是讨论的不细致，感兴趣的看看
Loren Brandt, Thomas G. Rawski, "China's Great Economic Transformation"
http://www.avaxhome.ws/ebooks/0521885574.html
（不好意思，刚刚发现美帝已经block所有网盘了，这本书很厚，将近1000页） | v****o
发帖数: 978 | 4 tnk
【在 e******e 的大作中提到】
: 读后感：
: 中国经济改革成就很大，成功有很多原因，外部的内部的都有
: 现在到了一个关口，有很多挑战，总得来说保持高速增长越来越难
: 结论：没有结论，让我们一起迎接挑战吧。。。。
: 感觉着文章虽然很长，还是讨论的不细致，感兴趣的看看
: Loren Brandt, Thomas G. Rawski, "China's Great Economic Transformation"
: http://www.avaxhome.ws/ebooks/0521885574.html
: （不好意思，刚刚发现美帝已经block所有网盘了，这本书很厚，将近1000页）
|
|
