China Economic Journal最新文献

{"title":"“RCEP from the middle powers’ Perspective”","authors":"F. Kimura","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1933059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1933059","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT East Asian countries signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) in November 2020. This paper demonstrates the importance of ASEAN centrality in East Asian economic integration and makes a preliminary assessment of the agreement in terms of the four expected roles: liberalization, rulemaking, reducing policy risks, and forming a pro-trade middle power coalition. The comparison with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) reveals the strengths and weaknesses of RCEP. The paper emphasizes the importance of dynamic aspects of mega-FTAs after being in effect and claims that RCEP must be further developed as an evolving agreement.","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/10.1080/17538963.2021.1933059","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41530144","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 EU—China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment: Lessons Learnt for Indonesia","authors":"Lili Yan Ing, J. J. Losari","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1934147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1934147","url":null,"abstract":"30 December 2020 marked a historical landscape for the European Union (EU) and China as they reached an agreement in principle on investment agreement known as the EU–China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) after 35 rounds of negotiations since February 2012 (European Commission 2021c). Although its future is unclear amid the ongoing tension between the EU and China (Peel and Fleming 2021), the CAI was originally expected to come into force after 2022. Our paper aims to assess specific concessions made by the EU and China and provides lessons learnt for Indonesia on the ongoing negotiation of the Indonesia–EU free trade agreement (FTA), so-called the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (the IEU CEPA). The negotiation was launched on 18 July 2016, and at the time of writing, there had been 10 rounds of negotiations (European Commission 2021b). Although some believe that CAI would replace the existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between China and the EU Member States (Jones Day 2021), the text of CAI indicates otherwise. China has BITs with almost all EU Member States, save for Ireland, with a total of 25 BITs. Despite having CAI as an investment agreement, China and the EU Member States do not terminate these existing BITs as Section VI of CAI clarifies that previous agreements between the Member States of the EU/the European Community and China are not superseded or terminated by the agreement. Thus, the BITs will remain in effect alongside CAI unless China and the EU Member States decide otherwise in the future. Section 2 presents a comprehensive overview of the main areas covered under CAI. Section 3 assesses potential impacts of CAI on Indonesia’s investment. Section 4 evaluates the current state of the IEU CEPA negotiations and lessons learnt from CAI. Section 5 concludes and offers policy recommendations.","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/10.1080/17538963.2021.1934147","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43481494","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":"Understanding RCEP and CPTPP: from the perspective China’s dual circulation economic strategy","authors":"Hai-Jun Jiang, Miaojie Yu","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1933055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1933055","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since initiating reform and opening up, especially since acceding to the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has made remarkable progress in international trade and economic development. Under the new development strategy of dual circulation, China looks to deepen regional integration through the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) after signing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This study describes the trade relations between China and the member states of RCEP and CPTPP and discusses the differences between the two agreements, as well as China’s strengths and challenges. The paper proposes suggestions for the further opening up of China’s economy.","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/10.1080/17538963.2021.1933055","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48869824","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":"Semi-inclusive regional economic agreements in the pacific: a perspective from global value chains","authors":"S. Wei, Xinding Yu","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1935519","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1935519","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A flurry of recent regional economic agreements in the Pacific are best characterized as ‘semi-inclusive,’ as each tends to include some large economies in the region but omit some others. With a perspective from global value chains (GVCs), we assess two particular dimensions of these agreements: (a) reduction in trade barriers, and (b) promotion of cross-border direct investment. We argue that China can be expected to gain from both the RCEP and China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), and it will likely gain even further from undertaking the necessary reforms to become a member of the CPTPP.","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/10.1080/17538963.2021.1935519","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47092880","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":"Steerer of global economic growth: did China step in role during the 2007-08 Great Recession? Evidence from some East Asian economies","authors":"Moussa K. Fall","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1893141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1893141","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, we investigate the impact of China’s fiscal stimulus on its major East Asian trading partners in the wake of the 2007–2008 world financial and economic crises, by estimating structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models with monthly data, spanning the 2000–2013 period, for four countries within the Asian Production Chain: Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, and the Philippines. In fact, China’s fiscal stimulus has had positive effects on output in all those countries coupled with an inflationary pressure, mostly fueled by the increasing domestic demand in China. The effects vary between countries and time horizons.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2021.1893141","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47770119","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":"Digital financial inclusion and economic growth: provincial data analysis of China","authors":"Mahmood Ahmad, Abdulai Abdul Majeed, Muhammad Asif Khan, M. Sohaib, K. Shehzad","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2021.1882064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2021.1882064","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT China’s rapid expansion of digital financial inclusion in the last few years has dramatically augmented the accessibility and affordability of financial services, predominantly serving formerly financially excluded people, and positively contributes to higher economic growth. Despite the importance of digital financial inclusion in promoting economic growth, empirical evidence is relatively thin. Moreover, none of the studies has considered human capital in the nexus. Therefore, this study examines the impact of digital financial inclusion and human capital on China’s provincial economic growth. Unlike previous studies, this study uses the new proxy of digital financial inclusion based on breadth of coverage, depth of usage, and digitalization level. The empirical findings show that digital financial inclusion and human capital significantly affect China’s provincial economic growth. Based on this study’s findings, we recommend investment in human capital development and, at the same time, upgrading digital financial inclusion to attain higher economic growth.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2021.1882064","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45623360","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":"Digitalization of cross-border payments","authors":"D. He","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2020.1870272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2020.1870272","url":null,"abstract":"Integration of the international trade and financial systems accelerated and reached historically high levels during the 1990s and 2000s. However, cross-border payments have remained expensive, slow, opaque, and inaccessible to many, especially in lower income and emerging countries. Those hit harder are countries with a higher share of unbanked population, greater reliance on remittances, lower access to correspondent banks, and less liquid foreign exchange markets. Based on a sample of 112 countries, Bank for International Settlements (BIS) (2020) reports that the average total cost of a $200 bank-based cross-border remittance is over 10% of the remittance value. Remittances to developing countries exceeded US$550 billion in 2019 surpassing FDI and portfolio flows. At the same time, the share of adults without access to a bank account stands above 50% in parts of the developing world, such as SubSaharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East (BIS, 2020). As a result, a majority of the population do not have access to banking services, including cross-border payments. These limitations have been widely recognized for some time, but not enough has been done to date. Countries tend to under-invest in solving issues of interoperability and in creating public goods available across borders – the international version of the collective action problem. We are living through a phase of unprecedented global drive to improve the efficiency of cross-border payments. The Group of Twenty (G20) has made enhancing cross-border payments a policy priority and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) has laid out a multiple stage roadmap to reach specific targets of achievements (FSB 2020a, 2020b; CPMI 2020). This drive in part reflects recent acceleration in the application of digital innovations. New digital technologies leverage the proliferation of cloud computing and mobile devices, explosion of big data on individuals and firms, advances in artificial intelligence, cryptography and the adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT) such as blockchains. The strong complementarities between these technologies are giving rise to an impressive array of new applications touching on services from payments to financing, asset management, insurance, and advising. The possibility now looms that large technological companies (‘Big Techs’) and fintech startups may emerge as competitive alternatives to traditional financial intermediaries, markets, and infrastructures. The impetus has also come from the rise of digital currencies such as the prospect of Facebook’s Libra, which pledges to improve cross-border payments and promotes financial inclusion of the unbanked population (Adrian and Mancini-Griffoli 2019). The rise of global stablecoins such as the Libra could hark back to an era when the","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2020.1870272","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45863092","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 on digital currency","authors":"Yang Ji, Yan Shen","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2020.1870283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2020.1870283","url":null,"abstract":"Although money in digital form is not new to modern economics, advances in technology have led to a revolution in digital currencies and have facilitated instantaneous peerto-peer transfers of value, which was previously impossible. The advent of new digital currencies could redefine the way in which payments and users’ data interact, reshape the nature of currency competition, and rebuild the architecture of the international monetary system (Brunnermeier, James, and Landau 2019). During the last decade, digital currencies have surfaced in a variety of contexts. The earliest context was cryptocurrencies (CPMI, 2015), such as Bitcoin and Litecoin, which are typically issued and transferred via a decentralized distributed ledger. They are not a liability of any entity and not backed by any authority and thus have zero intrinsic value. Their values are unstable as they are driven by the belief that other market participants would accept them as a means of payment or that their value will continue to increase at a later point. As a result, they are now viewed more as speculative assets rather than a medium of exchange. A special type of cryptocurrency called Stablecoin, such as Libra (proposed by Facebook) and Tether, share a decentralized nature with Bitcoin, but differ in that Stablecoin attempt to maintain price stability. There are generally two ways to ensure that Stablecoins are stable – through collaterals or through algorithms. Collateralized Stablecoins are usually backed by reserve assets, including fiat currency reserves like the US dollar, commodities like oil, or precious metals like gold or silver. Algorithmic Stablecoins do not use reserves but retain a stable price by controlling the supply of coins, implemented by an autonomous consensus mechanism and smart contracts. Given their (alleged) capacity to preserve value over time, the use of Stablecoins, especially those issued by Big-Tech firms, could rise as global payment instruments and pose governance challenges for international finance and monetary policies (FSB, 2020). Given that new technologies and market entrants challenge the traditional bank-based payment systems, 80% of central banks worldwide are currently considering a new type of digital currency controlled by central banks, that is, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) (Boar, Holden, and Wadsworth 2020). CBDCs are new variants of central bank money that are different from physical cash or central bank reserve/settlement accounts. There are two broad types of CBDCs which are based on their different levels of accessibility: wholesale CBDCs or retail CBDCs. The former is a restricted-access digital","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2020.1870283","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49148385","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 study of the economic impact of central bank digital currency under global competition","authors":"Wu Tong, Chen Jiayou","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2020.1870282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2020.1870282","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT From both theoretical and practical perspectives, we examine the global development and competition of digital currencies, and investigate the design of China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC). Moreover, on the basis of correcting shortcomings in the existing literature, we undertake a quantitative analysis of the economic impact of the issuance of DC/EP based on a four-sector DSGE model. The results demonstrate that the substitution effect of DC/EP on bank deposits is limited, while the unit impact can enhance the economic growth rate by 0.15% and the overall economic effect is positive, at the same time it reduces the leverage ratio to a certain degree, which is conducive to reducing systemic financial risk. Therefore, we contend that China should accelerate the research and development of DC/EP and launch pilot schemes to promote DC/EP. Moreover, China should actively participate in the drafting of international regulations for digital currencies, selectively liberalize the jurisdiction of overseas nodes, jointly establish an integrated digital infrastructure for future generations.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2020.1870282","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43900462","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":"China, the United States, and central bank digital currencies: how important is it to be first?","authors":"Martin Chorzempa","doi":"10.1080/17538963.2020.1870278","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17538963.2020.1870278","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In only a few years, central bank digital currencies (CBDC) have gone from a fringe idea promoted by cryptocurrency bloggers to an idea being seriously explored by 80% of the world’s major central banks, including the People’s Bank of China and the United States Federal Reserve. This paper gives an overview of the drive at the world’s central banks to evaluate CBDCs and examines the reasons behind the world’s two leading economies’ stark divergence in central bank digital currency development. China committed much earlier to launching a CBDC, doing so in early 2016, and has since taken more concrete steps towards piloting and issuing a CBDC than the Fed, which has yet to commit to ever issuing one.","PeriodicalId":45279,"journal":{"name":"China Economic Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17538963.2020.1870278","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42614150","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}