China's Economic Challenge: Unconventional Success

Contents
About the Author
Preface
List of Tables
List of Figures
Chapter 1 China’s Economic Performance, Prospects, and Challenges
1.1. China’s 40 years of 40-fold growth
1.2. Macrocycles, investment rates, and reforms
1.2.1. Gradual increases in investment’s share in GDP
1.2.2. A cyclical fast-slow mechanism raised investment’s GDP share
1.2.3. Cyclical factors and the timing of market reforms
1.2.4. Sources of independent productivity gains
1.3. Necessary institutions and strategies
1.4. Prospects and challenges
Chapter 2 China’s Pre-1978 Economy: Failures and Accomplishments
2.1. A repeat of China’s age-old dynastic cycle?
2.2. Modern China before the 1978 start of economic reforms
2.2.1. Pre-1949 China
2.2.2. From 1949 to 1958
2.2.2.1. The Korean War
2.2.2.2. Hong Kong and Taiwan
2.2.2.3. Mainland China
2.2.3. The 1958–1970 period
2.2.4. The 1970–1976 period
2.2.5. 1976–1978: The period after Mao but before reforms
Endnotes
Chapter 3 1978–1989: Early Pro-market Restructuring
3.1. From the 1978 beginning: A bumpy start to structural reconfiguration
3.2. The one-child policy
3.3. Urban reforms
3.3.1. Reforms in urban finance
3.3.2. Profit-based enterprise management reforms
3.3.3. Labor reforms
3.3.4. Higher-education reforms
3.4. Rural reforms
3.4.1. Family contract farming reforms
3.4.1.1. Communes and early efforts to revive family farms
3.4.1.2. Mao only tolerated family farming in drought emergencies
3.4.1.3. High-level post-Mao resistance to family farming
3.4.1.4. Deng’s surreptitious start to family farming reforms
3.4.1.5. Anhui drought in 1978 helped promote reforms
3.4.1.6. Shifting national policies affecting family contract farming
3.4.1.7. National-level debates on Dazhai and family farming
3.4.1.8. Family farming: Spontaneous eruption or reform-led success?
3.4.2. Rural enterprises
Endnotes
Chapter 4 1978–1989: Prices, Trade, and Rural–Urban Interactions
4.1. Price reforms and inflation
4.2. International commercial reforms and trends in the 1980s
4.2.1. Air-lock trading companies
4.2.2. Shotgun-and-rifle trade policies
4.2.3. Exchange rates
4.2.4. Special economic zones
4.2.5. Trade patterns and balance of payments
4.3. Urban–rural interactions
4.3.1. The 1982–1984 surge in rural purchasing power
4.3.2. Urban China’s policy response: Alarm and retreat
4.3.3. The political-economic aspects of 1985–1986 student protests
4.4. China’s 1980s high-level economic policy leadership split
4.4.1. Deng Xiaoping’s fundamental opposition to laissez-faire liberalization
4.4.2. Chen Yun’s insistence on free-market boundaries
4.4.3. Hu Yaobang pressed for rapid liberalization from the early 1980s
4.4.4. Zhao Ziyang joined Hu Yaobang in resisting Deng’s cardinal principles
4.4.5. The political economics of 1988–1989 events
4.5. The 1980s in retrospect
Endnotes
Chapter 5 1990–2000: Accomplishing the Harder Reforms
5.1. Measuring China’s economic performance
5.2. Austerity, recovery, and new reforms
5.2.1. Price reforms: The next stage
5.2.2. Major new international commercial opening: Shanghai’s Pudong
5.2.3. Stock markets open
5.3. Before and after Deng’s early 1992 “Tour in the South”
5.4. The 1994–1995 reform extravaganza
5.4.1 Government revenue reform
5.4.2. Enterprise management reform
5.4.3. Financial sector reform
5.4.4. Stabilizing inflation and rural purchasing power, again
5.5. The capstone reform: State enterprise and urban labor restructuring
5.5.1. State enterprise and labor restructuring
5.5.2. Bank recapitalization
5.5.3. Housing, healthcare, and pension reform
5.5.3.1. Housing reform
5.5.3.2. Healthcare reform
5.5.3.3. Pension reform
5.6. International shocks and breakthroughs
5.6.1. The Asian Financial Crisis (AFC)
5.6.2. China’s uncertain most favored nation (MFN) status
5.6.3. The US–China bilateral agreement on China’s WTO accession
5.7. Launch of rural and western regional initiatives
5.7.1. Rural poverty and China’s end-of-the-decade policy challenge
5.7.2. The plight of western regions and preparations for a new “Go West!” policy
Endnotes
Chapter 6 2001–2008: China’s Economy Before the Financial Crisis
6.1. Coastal foreign assembly trade, capital flows, and exchange rates
6.2. China’s exchange rate controversy and US–China economic dialogue
6.2.1. The exchange rate controversy
6.2.2. Strategic dialogues with China
6.3. Early stimulus, SARS pandemic, coastal export boom, and macroeconomic cycles
6.3.1. SARS epidemic and its economic impact
6.3.2. Cyclical imbalances in 2006–2007
6.4. Fiscal reforms: National and local
6.4.1. Single treasury expenditure reforms and tax system adjustments
6.4.2. Rural fiscal reforms
6.5. Rural output, investment, and worker migration
6.5.1. Grain, pork, and poultry price crises
6.5.2. Rural investment: The new village construction program
6.5.3. Labor migration and household registration reform
6.6. Privatization, labor restructuring, and sun-setting older factories
6.6.1. Rise of the private sector: Employment and sales
6.6.2. Return of the state?
6.6.3. The 2008 Labor Contract Law
6.6.4. Rising wages, labor shortage worries, and labor disputes
6.7. Finance, real state, property price bubbles, and birth of a “financial waterbed”
6.7.1. Financial sector modernization
6.7.2. Institutional development
6.7.3. Cyclical trends in funding from the financial sector
6.7.4. Monetary policy
6.7.5. International financial developments
6.8. China’s economy before the global crisis: On the eve of the 2008 Olympics
Endnotes
Chapter 7 China’s Economy During and After the Financial Crisis: 2007–2012
7.1. Did China cause the 2007–2009 financial crisis?
7.1.1. The 2007–2009 financial crisis: The result of multiple factors
7.1.2. Did China cause the 2007–2009 financial crisis?
7.1.3. China’s increases in US securities holdings were modest in pre-crisis years
7.2. Chinese and American financial leaders debated the cause of the crisis
7.3. China responded so well that it may have benefited from the crisis
7.4. The crisis unfolds and initially worsens China’s domestic growth slump
7.4.1. China during the financial crisis years, 2007–2009
7.4.2. Statistical system progress and ongoing shortcomings
7.4.2.1. Introducing seasonally adjusted sequential quarterly growth statistics
7.4.2.2. Lingering local statistical reporting inaccuracies — China’s northeast region in 2016–2017
7.5. China’s stimulus response
7.5.1. Stimulus’ heavy reliance on local project borrowing
7.5.2. Reform of local government post-stimulus indebtedness
7.5.3. The real trade impact on China
7.5.4. RMB internationalization
7.6. The offshore impact of the financial crisis on China
Endnotes
Chapter 8 China’s Economy under Xi Jinping
8.1. Public investment platform company clean-up after 2010
8.2. The party’s third plenum of late 2013 and related urban developments
8.2.1. Post-crisis continuity with pre-crisis economic reforms
8.2.2. China’s 2014 “New Urbanization” plan and its future reform consequences
8.2.2.1. Real estate bubble-and-slump cycles?
8.2.3. China’s financial “waterbed” effect and foreign reserve losses
8.3. Exchange-rate reform and volatility
8.4. New international banks and Multilateral Trade and Investment Innovations
8.5. Trade war with the US
8.6. Managing the COVID-19 pandemic
8.7. China’s economy in the 2020s
Endnotes
Chapter 9 Government’s Essential Economic Leadership Role
9.1. What is the government’s function in an economy like China’s?
9.2. China’s economic leadership structure, strengths, and weaknesses
9.2.1. The Party Congress process
9.2.2. Government and the State Council
9.2.3. Consensus and legislative powers
9.2.4. China’s most instrumental economic policy bodies
9.3. Corruption in government
9.4. Well-managed macroeconomic demand in cyclical patterns
9.4.1. China’s various economic cycles
9.4.1.1. Growth-inflation cycles
9.4.1.2. Grain cycles
9.4.1.3. Real estate cycles
9.4.1.4. Political cycles
9.4.2. Benefits of China’s economic cycles
9.5. High rates of investment: A necessary driver for rapid consumption growth
9.5.1. Lifting investment shares improved consumption trends
9.5.2. Investment efficiencies of “repressed” interest rates and platform companies
Endnotes
Chapter 10 Managing Poverty Reduction
10.1. China’s poverty-reduction success explained poverty’s global decline
10.2. When rising inequality is a good sign for poverty reduction
10.3. Transfers from rich cities and provinces to poor areas
10.4. China’s rural–urban poverty gap
Endnotes
Chapter 11 Foreign Finance and Trade
11.1. A consideration of “Savings Glut” theories
11.2. A kind of Dutch disease
11.3. China’s exchange rate: The essential background
Endnotes
Chapter 12 Conclusions: China’s Challenge to the World
12.1. Economic challenges that China presents to the world
12.2. The challenge of economic planning: Competition and freedom
12.3. Social unrest and economic policy in China
Endnotes
Logical Annex: Near-Zero-Sum Theorem and Illustrative Future Growth Trends
A.1. The Near-Zero-Sum Theorem
A.2. Illustrative 21st Century Growth Trends
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index