Search

Begin New Search Topic Development Political Geography China

301. China Bashing 2004

Author:
Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Yee Wong
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
On April 26, 2004, Senator John Kerry released his six-point trade pro - gram, “Trade Enforcement: Asleep at the Wheel,” and conspicuously targeted China for violating worker rights, dumping, and supporting “illegal currency manipulation” (Kerry 2004). Five days earlier, senior Bush administration officials met with Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi to settle a few trade disputes (e.g., WiFi) but did not resolve the most contentious ones (exchange rates, semiconductors, and labor rights).
Topic:
Development, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China and Asia

302. What Went Right in Japan

Author:
Adam S. Posen
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Japan's recovery is strong. Real GDP growth will exceed 4 percent this year and likely be 3 percent or higher in 2005 and perhaps even 2006. The Japanese economy has been growing solidly for the last five quarters (average real 3.2 percent annualized rate), and the pace is sustainable, given Japan's underlying potential growth rate (which has risen to 2 to 2.5 percent per year) and the combination of catch-up growth closing the current output gap and some reforms that will raise the growth rate for quarters to come (though not permanently). Indicators of domestic demand beyond capital investment are increasingly positive, including housing starts bottoming out, inventories drawing down, and diminished deflation. Moreover, on the external side, while China was the main source of export growth in 2003, the composition of exports has become more balanced this year and is widening beyond that seen in other recoveries. Just as in the United States and other developed economies, a sharp slowdown in Chinese growth and a sustained further increase in energy prices represent the primary risks to the outlook.
Topic:
Development and Economics
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

303. Divergent Means and Convergent Inequality of Incomes among the Provinces and Cities of Urban China

Author:
John Knight, Li Shi, and Zhao Renwei
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Two precisely comparable national household surveys relating to 1988 and 1995 are used to analyse changes in the inequality of income in urban China. Over those seven years province mean income per capita grew rapidly but diverged across provinces, whereas intra-province income inequality grew rapidly but converged across provinces. The reasons for these trends are explored by means of various forms of decomposition analysis. Comparisons are also made between the coastal provinces and the inland provinces. The decompositions show the central role of wages, and within wages profitrelated bonuses, together with the immobility of labour across provinces, in explaining mean income divergence. The timing of economic reforms helps to explain the convergence of intra-province income inequality. Policy conclusions are drawn.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

304. Income Inequality in Rural China: Regression-based Decomposition Using Household Data

Author:
Guanghua Wan and Zhangyue Zhou
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
A considerable literature exists on the measurement of income inequality in China and its increasing trend. Much less is known, however, about the driving forces of this trend and their quantitative contributions. Conventional decompositions, by factor components or by population subgroups, only provide limited information on the determinants of income inequality. This paper represents an early attempt to apply the regression-based decomposition framework to the study of inequality accounting in rural China, using household level data. It is found that geography has been the dominant factor but is becoming less important in explaining total inequality. Capital input emerges as a most significant determinant of income inequality. Farming structure is more important than labour and other inputs in contributing to income inequality across households.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
China and Asia

305. Fifty Years of Regional Inequality in China: A Journey through Central Planning, Reform, and Openness

Author:
Ravi Kanbur and Xiaobo Zhang
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper constructs and analyses a long-run time-series for regional inequality in China from the Communist Revolution to the present. There have been three peaks of inequality in the last fifty years, coinciding with the Great Famine of the late 1950s, the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s, and finally the period of openness and global integration in the late 1990s. Econometric analysis establishes that regional inequality is explained in the different phases by three key policy variables; the ratio of heavy industry to gross output value, the degree of decentralization, and the degree of openness.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Industrial Policy, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
China and Asia

306. Trade and Labor Standards: A Strategy for Developing Countries

Author:
Sandra Polaski
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
A debate has raged between developed and developing country governments for several years over whether or not to establish a global agreement on minimum labor standards that would be enforced at the international level through the World Trade Organization (WTO) or some other mechanism. That debate has become stale and ritualized. In the meantime the world has changed. For developing countries, the environment in which global labor standards must be considered was transformed in 2002.
Topic:
Development, Industrial Policy, International Organization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
China

307. Central Asian Leadership Succession: When, Not If

Author:
Eugene B. Rumer
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
The Central Asian political landscape yields few signs of an impending storm in the near term. The absence of threats to the status quo, however, does not mean that it is acceptable or that it represents a stable political equilibrium in the region. Leadership succession in Central Asia bears watching for several reasons: as a precedent-setting process, it will provide the key missing element for the emerging political structures of the Central Asian states the tenure of the next generation will either make up for the shortcomings of its predecessors or aggravate them in the event of the latter, the stage will be set in Central Asia for more radical changes that could reverberate far beyond remote regional boundaries.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
China and Asia

308. Modernizing China's Military: A High-Stakes Gamble?

Author:
Howard M. Krawitz
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
China's accelerated push to modernize the People's Liberation Army (PLA) raises two important questions: What impact will such change have upon the PLA image, status, and role in Chinese society? And how will Chinese military modernization affect the strategic interests and security concerns of the United States and China's neighbors in the region? Making the PLA into a more professional, technologically proficient force would certainly strengthen its capability to perform national defense, regional security, and other externally oriented missions more effectively. But modernization could also significantly change internal PLA demographics, resulting in a drastic alteration of the social contract that has traditionally existed between China's military and civilian society.
Topic:
Security, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
United States and China

309. Development of the civil realm in Shanghai environmental politics

Author:
Seungho Lee
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This chapter analyses the development in the civil realm of environmental politics in Shanghai. This study is an effort to identify environmental communities based on Mary Douglas's grid/group theory and an attempt to comprehend the nature of the dynamic interaction of the private and the public spheres, particularly within the public sphere between the state (the Shanghai government) and ethical social entities (environmental NGOs and other social groups). The contribution of the study lies in its revelation of how the civil realm in Shanghai has developed with a self - capacity to redress environmentally unfriendly policies over the last decade. Fieldwork carried out in 2002 identified a number of environmental Non Governmental Organisations, NGOs, and other social groups in Shanghai. It proved to be possible to highlight the recent emergence of environmental NGOs, including university students based organisations. The study evaluates how these groups have evolved and have survived in the transitional period in alliance with Government Organised NGOs, GONGOs, local communities (shequ), the media, international NGOs and the government. Although these environmental groups now commit themselves to various environmental issues, Shanghai does not have any particular NGO mainly engaged in freshwater issues. It is concluded that a collaboration of GONGOs, NGOs, and various environmental groups alongside international NGOs has led to the formation of a civil force that impacts Shanghai's environmental policy - making.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Environment
Political Geography:
China and Shanghai

310. CERI: Developing Border Cooperation between China and Russia

Author:
Sébastien Colin
Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Since the resumption of talks between China and Russia – still the Soviet Union when this occurred in the mid-1980s, relations between the two countries have been particularly dynamic. On the international level, the two countries in fact share the same viewpoint on a number of issues. These mutual concerns led to the signing of a strategic partnership in 1997, then a new treaty of friendship in 2001. The complementarity between the two countries in the energy and arms sectors also stimulates cooperation. However, this alliance is not without its limits. The United States, its primary target, can easily short-circuit it, as it did just after the September 11, 2001 attacks. In the field of cooperation, the intensity and structure of trade between the two countries are both inadequate. The rise in trade during the 1990s was very uneven and marked by a drop between 1994 and 1996. The main causes of this are situated at the local echelon along the Chinese-Russian border. After the dynamism characteristic of the 1988-1993 period, the opening of the border triggered new problems, such as illegal Chinese immigration in the little-inhabited border zones of Russia. Although this trend caused friction among the local Russian population, it was mainly the retrocession of certain Russian territories to China when the border was demarcated between 1993 and 1997 that radicalized the inhabitants, paralyzing border cooperation. The Russian and Chinese government played an active role in attempting to resolve most of these disputes, as the Tumen program illustrated. Since then, the various authorities in the two countries have tried to revitalize border cooperation, but a number of problems remain that are mainly economic in nature and vary depending on the border region.
Topic:
Development and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, Europe, and Asia