China Economic Journal最新文献

{"title":"Is China market socialist? Comparing Western theory to Eastern practice","authors":"J. Yunker","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.2006457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.2006457","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The question of whether the contemporary Chinese economy is more accurately characterized as market socialist or market capitalist depends to some extent on semantic issues pertaining to the meaning of terms such as capitalism, socialism, and the market. Adding to these complications is the fact that there are several market socialist plans, quite different in their specifics, extant in the systems literature produced by Western economists. The present contribution attempts to shed a more focused light on this question by comparing the contemporary Chinese economy to a specific plan of market socialism known as ‘pragmatic market socialism.’ While obviously not a perfect match, there appears to be sufficient overlap for the Chinese economy to be considered a reasonable approximation to pragmatic market socialism.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42611871","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The elderly’s health capacity to work in China","authors":"Peng Zhan, Xinxin Ma, Takashi Oshio, Yibo Mao","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.2003534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.2003534","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT China’s rapidly aging population has diminished its labor force. This study examines the extent to which the elderly’s labor force participation could be enhanced given their health status. Using national aggregated data from the population census for 1990–2015 and survey data from the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study for 2011–2015, we simulated the potential and additional work capacity of China’s elderly using methods employed in previous studies. We obtained four main findings. First, a substantial amount of unused work capacity exists in the 60–69 years age group in urban China, accounting for approximately 30% of the potential work capacity. Second, the additional work capacity is greater for urban residents and men than for rural residents and women. Third, the additional work capacity increases for urban men but decreases for rural men and women. Fourth, the change in sensitivity of work to health reduces potential work capacity.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44638832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"One year after COVID: the challenges and outlook of Chinese micro-and-small enterprises","authors":"T. Kong, Xiaohan Yang, Ranran Wang, Zijun Cheng, Changyu Ren, Shuo Liu, Zhenhua Li, Fang Wang, Xiaoyin Ma, Xiaobo Zhang","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1995246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1995246","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Based on a large Online Survey of Micro-and-small Enterprises (OSOME) conducted in March 2021 on micro-and-small enterprises and self-employed businesses (MSEs) operating on the Alipay platform, this paper examines the operational status, challenges, responses, and confidence of MSEs after exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic for over a year in China. The operational status of micro-and-small enterprises has significantly improved despite cash flow constraints. Rising costs and weak demand were two key challenges. In response to the COVID-19 shock, a higher percentage of newly established businesses adopted online sales and electronic information systems than those established earlier. Tax reduction was the most inclusive type of policy support. The confidence indices on market demand, production, and revenues for the next quarter returned to positive territory, indicating an optimistic outlook. The employment index remained just below the normal level, suggesting subdued expectations of expanded employment in the near future.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42224510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A new algorithm for matching Chinese NBS firm-level with customs data","authors":"P. Egger, Susie Xi Rao, S. Papini","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1963046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1963046","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Combining accounting-type firm data and transactions-type customs data has become increasingly important for research in international and industrial economics. The statistical authorities in several countries such as the United States or France provide such linked data without details on sources, and researchers have to assume that the matching is correct and the firm identifiers are unique and flawless in the source data. For some other countries such as Switzerland or China, firm and customs data contain information which permits such linking ex post using string matching based on firm names and their meta-information like addresses. Due to spelling and typos, such matching is prone to some errors. Obtaining the largest-possible number of high-quality matches helps avoid potential biases while keeping crucial details. We report on a new algorithm which improves considerably the hitherto available linking efforts of the National Bureau of Statistics firm-level and the Customs trade data for China.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42181538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wage payments and fixed capital investment in imperfect financial and labor markets: the case of China","authors":"Tao Gu","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1964772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1964772","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines how wage payments and fixed asset investments are determined, and their interrelationship, under China’s imperfect financial and labor markets. We collect aggregate data on wages, the financial market, and fixed asset investments from several statistical yearbooks. The main results are as follows: (1) borrowing constraints hinder wage payments, but this phenomenon is not observed in the state-owned and foreign-funded units; (2) in the nonstate-owned sector, there is a strong reliance on internal reserves that is not observed in the state-owned units, suggesting that the nonstate-owned sector is treated differently in the financial market; and (3) in the state-owned units, wage growth has a positive correlation with fixed asset investments, whereas in the nonstate-owned sector, this relationship is not observed. This implies that in the nonstate-owned sector, the underpayment of wages may be used as a survival strategy to conduct business under financial constraints.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42785811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Overcoming the middle-income trap: International experiences and China’s choice","authors":"Pingping Wang, Xun Wang, Zhuo Huang, Baoqun Fan","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1965788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1965788","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Overcoming the middle-income trap is the main task of China’s next stage of economic development. International experiences show that continuous innovation and industrial upgrading in an open market environment are the keys to overcoming the middle-income trap. An open market is a prerequisite for a high-income economy. The expansion of trade, investment, and exchange activities helps emerging economies absorb technology transfer and knowledge spillover from advanced regions, which ultimately enhance innovation capacity and promote human capital accumulation and domestic industrial upgrading. Therefore, China will need to continue promoting domestic market-oriented reform, strengthen the construction of its domestic market, and open up to a greater extent to create a strong internal institutional environment and an external market environment for innovation. These will ensure the successful transformation of China from a middle-income to a high-income economy.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44946674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction to the special issue","authors":"Miaojie Yu","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1945255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1945255","url":null,"abstract":"The global economic growth has slowed down due to both the pandemic effects and the de-globalization. The world trade organization (WTO), as the most important representative organization of global multilateral economic corporations, is under threat due to the ineffective enforcement of its dispute settlement committee. Many countries, especially advanced economics, are suffered from the negative shocks and results in a negative economic growth in 2020. However, China, as the current largest developing country and the second-largest economy in the world, still realized a modest economic growth of 2.3% in 2020, when the pandemic was the most severe. This observation indeed raises two issues. First, as a locomotive of the whole world’s economic growth, how can China find a way to maintain its sustainable economic growth in the coming years? Second, how can China further open up to address the challenge of de-globalization caused by the weakened global multilateral economic corporation? Given China accounted for around 18% of global GDP in 2020, China’s sustainable economic growth and deep integration into the global economy are important not only for China but also for the rest of the world. To answer the first question, in this special issue, Justin Lin provides an insightful analysis of the dual-circulation development strategy advocated by the Chinese government. Notably, Justin discusses the following three questions: First, why does China put a particular focus on domestic circulation? Second, why is it important to fully employ both domestic and international resources and markets? Third, how will China structure its new development pattern? Justin forcefully argues that it is crucial to tap development potential through structural reform for China’s dual circulation. In addition, it is necessary to deepen the reform and clear obstacles that constrain the development of domestic circulations and implement the measures for further opening up, and better leverage the international resources and markets. To further open up, China indeed puts a particular focus on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement. East Asian countries signed the RCEP in November 2020. As carefully analyzed by Peter Drysdale and Shiro Armstrong, the RCEP agreement consolidated the 10-member ASEAN’s free trade agreements and the three northeast Asian economic powers, China, Japan, and South Korea, along with Australia and New Zealand.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48744750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"RCEP: a strategic opportunity for multilateralism","authors":"P. Drysdale, S. Armstrong","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1937092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1937092","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT East Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement was concluded in a time of heightened uncertainty in the global economy and in the middle of the largest economic downturn in almost a century from a pandemic-induced global recession. The agreement consolidated the 10 member ASEAN’s free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, and the three northeast Asian economic powers China, Japan and South Korea. RCEP's economic cooperation agenda incorporates ASEAN processes which go beyond helping countries to implement the agreement and has potential to expand cooperation to new areas. This economic cooperation process makes RCEP a living agreement that can serve the needs of members as they evolve. It can also be used to embrace non-RCEP members, especially India, around particular agendas. The agreement is an important opportunity for China to use the RCEP framework to trial reforms and demonstrate its commitment to broader international multilateral liberalisation and economic cooperation.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2021.1937092","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45555418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Putting the China-EU comprehensive agreement on investment in context","authors":"P. Egger","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1933057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1933057","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper reviews the content of as well as the reception of the current state of the planned China-European union Comprehensive Agreement on Investment as per January 2021. Moreover, it forms some expectations regarding its economic effects. Key conclusions are that, in spite of a limited scope of new concessions beyond ones that are realized or planned anyway unilaterally, the agreement will likely boost not only investment but also trade, and it will likely establish a closer political cooperation between China and the European Union. One reason for the positive economic effects is the reduction in uncertainty about the mutually granted concessions for investment. However, further stimulating effects of the very agreement will be possible when accompanying it with concessions on trade in goods and services in the future.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2021.1933057","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45189072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What does China’s ‘dual circulations’ development paradigm mean and how it can be achieved?","authors":"Justin Yifu Lin","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1933053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1933053","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT According to the law of economic development, the proportion of domestic circulation in a country’s economy increases with the growth of economic size and the enlargement of service industry, both caused by the rise of income. In the new development paradigm, the Chinese government puts forward the idea of “taking the domestic circulation as the mainstay”, which reflects this basic economic law. However, the policy of “making full use of the domestic and international markets and resources” is still equally important. Therefore, the new development pattern includes the idea of “the domestic circulation and international circulation reinforcing each other”. To implement the new development paradigm, the most important things are to tap the growth potential through structural reform, deepen reform to improve the efficiency of domestic circulation and deepen the opening up to make better use of international resources so as to promote development and raise income level.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2021.1933053","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49318465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}