The China Lens A Political-Economic Analysis of Changing China

The China Lens A Political-Economic Analysis of Changing China
Author: Shiwei Jiang
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2013-01-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1479782629

This book grew out of a series of my doctoral essays and discussion with Fulbright scholar, Mr. Tasawar Baig and Professor David Earnest at Old Dominion University. Some ideas and thoughts were also inspired by Professor Robert Putnam at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (former US National Security Advisor) when they did lectures and special discussion with me at Old Dominion University in 2009 and 2012, respectively. In The Third Wave (1991), Samuel Huntington explains various sociopolitical factors caused radical political changes in developing countries. His analysis shows that for Africa, the main obstacle for building democracy is economy, While for East Asia and the Middle East, the major obstacle are culture and religion. Huntington’s analysis oversimplified the driving factors of democratization in specific case, such as China, a hybrid of Capitalist economy and communist politics. This paper measures the current democratization of Chinese politics from three perspectives: social capital, rapid economic development and radical social movement. Thus, the grand question is whether these factors can lead to a regime change in China? The author draws a conclusion that the radical political change is possible but not desirable in Chinese politics. In the eyes of rising Chinese middle Class, a Singaporean political transformation or South Korean democratization is more favored than radical democratization. Following the US Presidential election, China went through a one week meeting of the 18th National Congress starting on November 8, 2012. Without much surprise, Xi replaced Hu, becoming the core of Chinese communist power. The power transition seems to be smooth in Chinese media coverage. However, anecdotes, rumors, unofficial reports and foreign news exposed the political battle behind the stage. President Xi is now facing a stark different situation compared to Hu. Today, China is the world’s second largest economy. At the same time, China is experiencing rising mass disturbance every year. As a non-democracy, leaders’ past experience, network and personality can greatly influence state policies. With more people getting rich and educated, the mass claim the mismatch between Chinese politics and economy. Other than changing domestic Chinese politics, China has drawn much attention internationally. China’s presence in Africa and the Middle East tightens the nerves of U.S. policy makers. Is China a peaceful or benign riser? Where is China heading toward? What interests are Chinese companies pursuing and what strategies are they using globally? The book investigates these questions in different chapters. Globalization is the current trend. As a propeller, China’s participation in global trade greatly shapes world order. In return, global trade also produced effects on China’s domestic labor market, particularly on the traditional Chinese women labors. This book is a sound recipe integrating both faces of China domestically and internationally.

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap
Author: Yuen Yuen Ang
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2016-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501706403

WINNER OF THE 2017 PETER KATZENSTEIN BOOK PRIZE "BEST OF BOOKS IN 2017" BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS WINNER OF THE 2018 VIVIAN ZELIZER PRIZE BEST BOOK AWARD IN ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap truly offers game-changing ideas for the analysis and implementation of socio-economic development and should have a major impact across many social sciences." ― Zelizer Best Book in Economic Sociology Prize Committee Acclaimed as "game changing" and "field shifting," How China Escaped the Poverty Trap advances a new paradigm in the political economy of development and sheds new light on China's rise. How can poor and weak societies escape poverty traps? Political economists have traditionally offered three answers: "stimulate growth first," "build good institutions first," or "some fortunate nations inherited good institutions that led to growth." Yuen Yuen Ang rejects all three schools of thought and their underlying assumptions: linear causation, a mechanistic worldview, and historical determinism. Instead, she launches a new paradigm grounded in complex adaptive systems, which embraces the reality of interdependence and humanity's capacity to innovate. Combining this original lens with more than 400 interviews with Chinese bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, Ang systematically reenacts the complex process that turned China from a communist backwater into a global juggernaut in just 35 years. Contrary to popular misconceptions, she shows that what drove China's great transformation was not centralized authoritarian control, but "directed improvisation"—top-down directions from Beijing paired with bottom-up improvisation among local officials. Her analysis reveals two broad lessons on development. First, transformative change requires an adaptive governing system that empowers ground-level actors to create new solutions for evolving problems. Second, the first step out of the poverty trap is to "use what you have"—harnessing existing resources to kick-start new markets, even if that means defying first-world norms. Bold and meticulously researched, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap opens up a whole new avenue of thinking for scholars, practitioners, and anyone seeking to build adaptive systems.

Making Of An Economic Superpower, The: Unlocking China's Secret Of Rapid Industrialization

Making Of An Economic Superpower, The: Unlocking China's Secret Of Rapid Industrialization
Author: Yi Wen
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2016-05-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9814733741

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.

The Business of Lobbying in China

The Business of Lobbying in China
Author: Scott KENNEDY
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674039491

Based on over 300 in-depth interviews with company executives, business association representatives, and government officials, this study identifies a wide range of national economic policies influenced by lobbying, including taxes, technical standards, and intellectual property rights. These findings have significant implications for how we think about Chinese politics and economics, as well as government-business relations in general.

How China Escaped Shock Therapy

How China Escaped Shock Therapy
Author: Isabella M. Weber
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-05-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 042995395X

China has become deeply integrated into the world economy. Yet, gradual marketization has facilitated the country’s rise without leading to its wholesale assimilation to global neoliberalism. This book uncovers the fierce contest about economic reforms that shaped China’s path. In the first post-Mao decade, China’s reformers were sharply divided. They agreed that China had to reform its economic system and move toward more marketization—but struggled over how to go about it. Should China destroy the core of the socialist system through shock therapy, or should it use the institutions of the planned economy as market creators? With hindsight, the historical record proves the high stakes behind the question: China embarked on an economic expansion commonly described as unprecedented in scope and pace, whereas Russia’s economy collapsed under shock therapy. Based on extensive research, including interviews with key Chinese and international participants and World Bank officials as well as insights gleaned from unpublished documents, the book charts the debate that ultimately enabled China to follow a path to gradual reindustrialization. Beyond shedding light on the crossroads of the 1980s, it reveals the intellectual foundations of state-market relations in reform-era China through a longue durée lens. Overall, the book delivers an original perspective on China’s economic model and its continuing contestations from within and from without.

China and the International Order

China and the International Order
Author: Michael J. Mazarr
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2018-05-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1977400825

As economic power diffuses across more countries and China becomes more dependent on the world economy, Chinese leaders are being forced to abandon their largely passive approach to global governance. This report analyzes China’s interests and behavior to evaluate both the recent history of its interactions with the postwar international order and possible future trajectories. It also draws implications from that analysis for future U.S. policy.

China's Economy

China's Economy
Author: Arthur R. Kroeber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2020-06-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190946490

China's economic growth has been revolutionary, and is the foundation of its increasingly prominent role in world affairs. It is the world's second biggest economy, the largest manufacturing and trading nation, the consumer of half the world's steel and coal, the biggest source of international tourists, and one of the most influential investors in developing countries from southeast Asia to Africa to Latin America. Multinational companies make billions of dollars in profits in China each year, while traders around the world shudder at every gyration of the country's unruly stock markets. Perhaps paradoxically, its capitalist economy is governed by an authoritarian Communist Party that shows no sign of loosening its grip. China is frequently in the news, whether because of trade disputes, the challenges of its Belt and Road initiative for global infrastructure, or its increasing military strength. China's political and technological challenges, created by a country whose political system and values differ dramatically from most of the other major world economies, creates uncertainty and even fear. China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® is a concise introduction to the most astonishing economic and political story of the last three decades. Arthur Kroeber enhances our understanding of China's changes and their implications. Among the essential questions he answers are: How did China grow so fast for so long? Can it keep growing and still solve its problems of environmental damage, fast-rising debt and rampant corruption? How long can its vibrant economy co-exist with the repressive one-party state? How do China's changes affect the rest of the world? This thoroughly revised and updated second edition includes a comprehensive discussion of the origins and development of the US-China strategic rivalry, including Trump's trade war and the race for technological supremacy. It also explores the recent changes in China's political system, reflecting Xi Jinping's emergence as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. It includes insights on changes in China's financial sector, covering the rise and fall of the shadow banking sector, and China's increasing integration with global financial markets. And it covers China's rapid technological development and the rise of its global Internet champions such as Alibaba and Tencent.

Capitalism from Below

Capitalism from Below
Author: Victor Nee
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2012-06-19
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674065395

Over 630 million Chinese escaped poverty since the 1980s, the largest decrease in poverty in history. Studying 700 manufacturing firms in the Yangzi region, the authors argue that the engine of China’s economic miracle—private enterprise—did not originate at the top but bubbled up from below, overcoming initial obstacles set up by the government.

Global China

Global China
Author: Tarun Chhabra
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2021-06-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815739176

The global implications of China's rise as a global actor In 2005, a senior official in the George W. Bush administration expressed the hope that China would emerge as a “responsible stakeholder” on the world stage. A dozen years later, the Trump administration dramatically shifted course, instead calling China a “strategic competitor” whose actions routinely threaten U.S. interests. Both assessments reflected an underlying truth: China is no longer just a “rising” power. It has emerged as a truly global actor, both economically and militarily. Every day its actions affect nearly every region and every major issue, from climate change to trade, from conflict in troubled lands to competition over rules that will govern the uses of emerging technologies. To better address the implications of China's new status, both for American policy and for the broader international order, Brookings scholars conducted research over the past two years, culminating in a project: Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World. The project is intended to furnish policy makers and the public with hard facts and deep insights for understanding China's regional and global ambitions. The initiative draws not only on Brookings's deep bench of China and East Asia experts, but also on the tremendous breadth of the institution's security, strategy, regional studies, technological, and economic development experts. Areas of focus include the evolution of China's domestic institutions; great power relations; the emergence of critical technologies; Asian security; China's influence in key regions beyond Asia; and China's impact on global governance and norms. Global China: Assessing China's Growing Role in the World provides the most current, broad-scope, and fact-based assessment of the implications of China's rise for the United States and the rest of the world.

The Great Wall of Money

The Great Wall of Money
Author: Eric Helleiner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-09-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801454662

As an economic superpower, China has become an increasingly important player in the international monetary system. Its foreign exchange reserves are the largest in the world and its exchange rate policy has become a major subject of international economic diplomacy. The internationalization of the renminbi (RMB) raises critical questions in international policy circles: What kinds of power is China acquiring in international monetary relations? What are the priorities of the Chinese government? What explains its preferences? In The Great Wall of Money, a distinguished group of contributors addresses these questions from distinct perspectives, revealing the extent to which China’s choices, and global monetary affairs, will be shaped by internal political factors and affect world politics. The RMB is a likely competitor for the dollar in the next couple of decades; its emergence as an important international currency would have substantial effects on the balance of power between the United States and China. By illuminating the politics of China’s international monetary relations, this book provides a timely account of the global economy, the role of the renminbi in international relations, and the trajectory of China’s continuing ascendency in the coming decades.