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361. Water Management Reform and the Choice of Contractual Form in China

Author:
Siwa Msangi, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, Jikin Huang, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
This paper explains the puzzling fact that in organizing the management of surface water, village leaders have provided incentives to canal managers in some areas, but not in all. Our study indicates that the optimal contractual choice depends on the relative abilities of the leader and the manager, the design of the cultivated land, the characteristics of the canal system and the opportunity costs of the leader and the pool of managerial candidates. The unifying mechanism is the relative change in the ability of the leader and manager to perform the unmarketable activities that are needed to provide irrigation services.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
Political Geography:
China

362. Why Did the Communist Party Reform in China, But Not in the Soviet Union? The Political Economy of Agricultural Transition

Author:
Johan Swinnen and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union

363. Information, Incentives and Institutions: Experimenting with Private-Public Partnerships to Link the Poor with Modern Supply Chains

Author:
Jikun Huang, Johan Swinnen, Marcel Fafchamps, Tom Reardon, Bart Minten, and Scott Rozelle
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
To lift more than 10,000 farmers directly out of poverty by developing new Best-Practice Models for linking the poor to modern supply chains and after scaling up by our private and public partners to lift more than 1 million farmers out of poverty.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Non-Governmental Organization, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Africa, China, India, Asia, Senegal, and Madagascar

364. Water price policy analysis in China:An experimental approach

Author:
Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, Jun Xia, Scott Rozelle, and Dean Karlan
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Abstract:
Water scarcity is one of the key problems that affect northern China, an area that covers 40 percent of the nation's cultivated area and houses almost half of the population. The water availability per capita in North China is only around 300 m per capita, which is less than one seventh of the national average (Ministry of Water Resources, 2002). At the same time, expanding irrigated cultivated area, the rapidly growing industrial sector and an increasingly wealthy urban population demand rising volumes of water (Crook, 2000, Wang, et al., 2005). As a result, groundwater resources are diminishing in large areas of northern China (Wang, et al., 2005). For example, between 1958 and 1998, groundwater levels in the Hai River Basin fell by up to 50 meters in some shallow aquifers and by more than 95 meters in some deep aquifers (Ministry of Water Resource, et al., 2001).
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Environment, Government, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
China

365. "BRIC countries are opaque"

Author:
George Vojta
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Media Tenor International
Abstract:
Media Tenor: Even within the BRIC States one cannot say that all three are on the Media Agenda, not mention developing countries. What could be the reason for this salience? Vojta: My sense is that the four BRIC countries are rising in media visibility as they become more significant players in the global system. Very shortly these four countries will surpass the G7countries in annual absolute growth results.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
Russia, China, South Asia, and Latin America

366. The International Politics of the Chinese Arms Embargo Issue

Author:
Nicola Casarini
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The Chinese arms embargo issue has gone beyond Sino-European bilateral relations to become a matter of significance - and concern - for East Asian and US policymakers. Thus, an eventual solution depends not only on the interplay between EU and Chinese policymakers' interests and considerations, but is now interconnected with China's domestic developments and regional posture, the security concerns of China's neighbours (especially Japan and Taiwan), the evolution of US-China relations and transatlantic relations.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Europe, Taiwan, and East Asia

367. Asia: Towards Security Cooperation

Author:
Michael Vatikiotis
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
Asia has enjoyed a remarkable climate of peace and security in the post-Cold War era. However, there is much that could have gone wrong. Tensions on the Korean peninsula, in the Taiwan Straits, between China and India, India and Pakistan – the hot spots and fault lines of tension are well known and warily watched. Rarely has serious conflict erupted, though. The last major 'conventional' conflict in Asia was the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, though smaller wars have been fought between states in Kashmir and along the Chinese border with Vietnam. The region is also wracked by protracted internal disputes that generate sustained fears for internal security and destabilized inter-state relations. All the same, for a region that lacks the kind of sophisticated collective security arrangements that have kept the northern hemisphere at peace for the past sixty years, Asia's security environment is remarkably benign.
Topic:
Security, Development, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, India, Taiwan, Asia, Soviet Union, Vietnam, Kashmir, Korea, and Korean Peninsula

368. Central Asia and the Caucasus: A Vulnerable Crescent

Author:
Anna Matveeva and Thomas de Waal
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
The Caucasus and Central Asia – eight countries of the former Soviet Union stretching to the south of Russia and to the west of China – form a chain of weak states, vulnerable to conflict, extremism, and spillover from potential instability in the Middle East, Iran and Afghanistan. Once on the path of the Silk Road, these countries are still transit routes in the world economy rather than major economic players. The overarching problem for the Caucasus countries situated on the eastern fringe of Europe – Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the Russian North Caucasus – is unresolved conflicts that hamper development and poison politics. The Caucasus has become a field for latter-day Great Power battles of influence, in which competing policy agendas, sometimes even from within the same state, make for a fragmented international response that hampers regional integration and development. The autocratic states of Central Asia by contrast risk isolating themselves from the wider world, becoming a source of danger because of their deliberate remoteness. Here the globalized threats of drug trafficking and militant Islam are the biggest potential source of instability. Multilateral organizations such as the UN are still struggling to articulate a coherent response to the two regions as a whole, tending to make more narrow interventions that have limited impact.
Topic:
Security and Development
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, China, Europe, Iran, Central Asia, Asia, Soviet Union, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia

369. The Role of China in Asia: Engine, Conduit, or Steamroller?

Author:
Beth Anne Wilson, Jane T. Haltmaier, Shaghil Ahmed, Brahima Coulibaly, Ross Knippenberg, Sylvain Leduc, and Mario Marazzi
Publication Date:
09-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper assesses China's role in Asia as an independent engine of growth, as a conduit of demand from the industrial countries, and as a competitor for export markets. We provide both macroeconomic and microeconomic evidence. The macroeconomic analysis focuses on the impact of U.S. and Chinese demand on the output of the Asian economies by estimating growth comovements and VARs. The results suggest an increasing role of China as an independent source of growth. The microeconomic analysis decomposes trade into basic products, parts and components, and finished goods. We find a large role for parts and components trade consistent with China playing an important and increasing role as a conduit. We also estimate some regressions that show that China's increasing presence in export markets has had a negative effect on exports of some products for some other Asian economies, but not for other products, including those of the important electronic high-technology industry.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

370. A Match made in Heaven? Strategic Convergence between China and Russia

Author:
Indra Øverland and Kyrre Braekhus
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
This paper examines the strategic convergence between Russia and China. Strategic convergence is understood as the overlap of key objectives and interests with regard to long-term developments in world politics, which provides the basis for extensive tactical co-operation between two or more states. The paper focuses on the compatibility of Russia and China in terms of complementary economies, location and political outlook. The match between Russian natural resources and Chinese markets is examined in particular. The paper concludes that a closer relationship between the two countries in many ways would be of mutual advantage, but that it is far from certain that an alliance will develop.
Topic:
International Relations and Development
Political Geography:
Russia and China