Search results

The purpose of this paper is based on China’s economic fundamentals. Factor input, structural optimization and institutional reform, which determine the fundamentals of China's economic development, will actively prop up long-term, sustained and stable growth of the Chinese economy and keep China's potential economic growth rate stabilized within a reasonable growth range in the long term.

The fundamentals of economic development of a country are the basic situation of economic operation determined by the country's main factors and the long-term trend thereof, and they have such characteristics as stability, internality and persistence.

Stability refers to economic operation that remains relatively stable within a reasonable growth range at a certain stage of development, and this does not rule out exceptional economic fluctuations in certain years due to the impact of unexpected short-term factors. For instance, the fundamentals of the Chinese economy during the period after the reform and opening-up are characterized by a sustained high growth rate.

Internality refers to the intrinsic quantity and quality of all factors supporting the economic development of a country, especially the quantity and quality of the factors that play a decisive role in the economic development of a country at a specific stage. For instance, demographic dividend and capital formation have bolstered the high-speed growth of the Chinese economy since the reform and opening-up.

This paper aims to reflect the quality of Chinese economic growth and analyze its influential factors through measuring the change rate of technological progress and its contribution rate to economic growth between 1978 and 2008.

In this paper, an all factor productivity (AFP) method is taken. AFP is essentially a weighted sum of all input factors' productivity. Besides, general hypotheses for production function, such assumptions are not required as neutral technological progress, constant returns to scale and producer equilibrium in method of AFP. Furthermore, specific forms of production function are not needed and can be calculated directly. This method tries to relax the assumptions to make the estimated rate of technological progress closer to the reality in China.

Empirical research using the AFP method shows a contribution rate of AFP to economic growth has been significantly improved since reform and opening‐up; however, that AFP fluctuates during different periods. China's economic growth is driven by investment and mainly depends on accumulation of capital input and moderate technological progress. Generally speaking, China's change of technological progress is consistent with its economic growth and technological progress plays an important role in its economic growth. The paper concludes that it is becoming significant for China to speed up its large‐scale technological progress, strengthen indigenous innovation, accelerate human resource development, and to facilitate promotion of system reform in an in‐depth manner.

First, in order to ensure the accuracy measurement, and taking into account the impact of macro‐economic control policies, the rate of change of technological progress and its contribution to economic growth are measured, according to the stages of China's economic cycles. Second, the perpetual inventory method is taken to calculate the annual value of fixed asset investment, and price deflated index is used to convert fixed asset investment into comparable data of the base year, 1978. Since the data of fixed assets price index began to be released from 1992, data from 1978 to 1991 are obtained by mathematical method through extension. Third, the theoretical model of AFP is transformed into an empirical one to estimate the change rate of technological progress and its contribution to economic growth in China.

Poverty alleviation has been a major theme of China's modernization process since the founding of New China. This paper points out that China's poverty alleviation process presents three stylized facts: “Miraculous” achievements of poverty alleviation have been made on a global scale; the poverty alleviation achievements mainly occurred in the high growth stage after reform and opening up; the poverty alleviation process is accompanied by the structural transformation of the urban–rural dual economy.

Therefore, a logically consistent analytical framework should form among the structural transformation of the dual economy, economic growth and the achievements in poverty alleviation. In logical deduction, the structural transformation of the dual economy affects rural poverty alleviation through the effects of labor reallocation, agricultural productivity improvement, demographic change and fiscal resource allocation.

The first two refer to economic growth, and the latter two are alleviation policies. The combination of economic growth and poverty alleviation policies is the main cause for poverty alleviation performance. China's empirical evidence can support the four effects by which the structural transformation of the dual economy affects poverty alleviation.

China's socialist system and its economic system transformation after reform and opening up provide an institutional basis for the effects to come into play. After 2020, China's poverty alleviation strategies will enter the “second-half” phase, namely, the phase of solving the problems of relative poverty in urban and rural areas by adopting conventional methods and establishing long-term mechanisms. This requires the facilitation of the reconnection between poverty alleviation strategies and the structural transformation of the dual economy in terms of development ideas and policy directions.

The purpose of this paper is to measure the effects of WTO accession on the economic growth of China, and the paths of those effects.

This article carries out a theoretical and empirical analysis on the effect on China's economic growth from WTO accession. First is about the theoretical analysis of the paths of those effects which WTO accession has on China's economic growth. Next is to make empirical test about the effects through dummy variable regression and cross variable analysis.

WTO accession has a remarkable and a positive effect on China's economic growth through the following specific paths, i.e. foreign trade path, economic system reform path and FDI path. But so far entry into WTO has not positively influenced China's economic growth through technological innovation.

Based on the theoretical and empirical analysis, this article puts forward relative policies and suggestions on what China should do in the future.

Constant or decreasing returns and increasing returns to scale are two kinds of mechanism in economic growth. The goal of supply-side structural reform is to promote the establishment of the mechanism with increasing returns to scale. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper argues that the overall economic structure of the developing economy has been divided into the sector of constant or decreasing returns to scale and the sector of increasing returns to scale due to the dual economic structure. Among them, the supply-side structural reform is mainly to reduce the sector of decreasing returns to scale and increase the sector of increasing returns to scale. Based on the hypothesis of such two-sector economic structure in the supply side of developing economies and on the industrial data, this paper empirically tests the returns to scale of China’s supply structure. The result suggests that so far the sector of constant or decreasing returns to scale dominates the supply structure of China’s economic growth, which results in the state of decreasing returns to scale in China’s overall economy.

Therefore, to realize the long-term sustained growth and transformation of the development pattern of China’s economy, the authors must carry out the supply-side structural reform, vigorously develop the modern industrial sectors characterized by modern knowledge and technology, and promote the development of an innovation-driven economy.

Besides, the authors must accelerate the transformation from traditional industrial sectors to modern industrial sectors, actively promote China’s industrial structure toward rationalization and high gradation, as well as build a modern industrial system so as to facilitate the formation of the mechanism of increasing returns to scale and accelerate the transformation of the driving force of China’s economic growth.

This study examines the impact of China’s trade, aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) on the economic growth of Africa.

Our study covered 41 countries in Africa, cutting across the western, eastern, central, southern and northern sub-regions. The study adopted the dynamic system generalized method of moments (SGMM), feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) and Dumitrescu–Hurlin Panel Granger causality techniques for estimations.

Overall, FDI, trade and aid from China have a nonlinear relationship with Africa’s economic growth. The findings reveal a key novelty in that the marginal effect on real per capita GDP increases when China’s FDI interacts with the manufacturing sector in Africa. These findings are robust to long-run estimations.

Given that we have examined the short-and long-run symbiotic effects of China’s FDI and Africa’s manufacturing sector and China’s aid and Africa’s manufacturing sector, more studies are warranted in this area, particularly to produce further empirical evidence of these findings. Moreover, future work could focus on investigating the country-specific effects of China’s trade, China’s FDI and China’s aid on real GDP per capita in each African country as our results reflect within-country elasticities.

This study provides new evidence on the impact of China’s trade, aid and FDI on the growth of African economies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically explore the long-run effects of China’s trade, FDI and aid on economic growth in African countries. This study also tests the claim of the displacement of Africa’s manufacturing industry by its Chinese counterparts.

In the second half of 2003 and the first half of 2004, the Chinese Government adopted a moderately tight macroeconomic policy, which aroused widespread attention from home and abroad. This is because China's deepening of reform and openness has led to its increasing economic links with the outside world. Starting from analysing the characteristics of the Chinese economy in 2003, this article discusses the issue of contractive macroeconomic regulation. The article highlights that the growth of the Chinese economy in 2003 has two features. One is that China 's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) exceeded US$1 ,000, which indicates the Chinese economy may possibly maintain the momentum for rapid growth for a fairly long period. The second is that its year-to-year GDP growth reached 9.3 per cent, putting an end to the continual sliding trend of the economy between 1993 and 1999. It also put a stop to the Chinese economy's continual sluggish growth of between 7 and 8 per cent between 1998 and 2002, in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. The Chinese economy has embarked on a fast track in the new round of the economic cycle. However, in the third and fourth quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004, China's GDP growth was as high as 9.6, 9.9 and 9.8 per cent, respectively, sparking a supply crisis in the coal, power, fuel and transportation sectors. As a result, important raw materials, such as steel and cement, faced a supply bottleneck and price inflation pressures intensified, Consequently, the Chinese Government, in a timely move, has adopted a moderately contractive macroeconomic policy to prevent the economy from fluctuating drastically and to avoid serious inflation to ensure a rapid, stable and sustainable economic growth. This is not only conducive to the growth of the country's economy itself, but also favorable for the development of the international trade and foreign investment in China.

What is the relation between the land system with Chinese characteristics and the country's high-speed economic growth in the past decades? There is a lack of rigorous academic research based on the general equilibrium theory of macroeconomics on this issue.

By building a multisector dynamic general equilibrium framework with land system, this paper explores how the land supply mode with Chinese characteristics affects China's economic growth as well as its transmission mechanism.

This paper confirms the importance of land system with Chinese characteristics in explaining the mystery of China's high-speed economic growth. Counterfactual analysis shows that if China adopts a land system similar to that of other developing countries, GDP will drop 36% from the current level under the baseline model.

As the industrial sector shrinks relatively and the output elasticity of infrastructure decreases, this inhibitory effect will become more apparent. China should improve its land supply mode, especially expand the supply of commercial and residential land and reduce the cost of land in the service sector. This can promote better economic development in the future and thus improve household welfare and the structure of aggregate demand, replace “land-based public finance” and thus inhibit the “high leverage” risks of local governments.

The purpose of this paper is to review the four large and two small fluctuations in China’s economic growth since the reform and opening up, which can be further divided into five periods of economic upturn and six periods of economic downturn.

This paper also analyzes the performance, causes and practical countermeasures of these fluctuations and summarizes the experience and lessons from the eight aspects of dealing with economic downturn and stabilizing growth since the reform and opening up.

At last, the paper puts forward some measures to cope with economic downturn and stabilize growth under the new normal in the new era.

Any country’s economic growth is a tortuous process with many fluctuations. The rate of economic growth cannot rise or go down straight for a long time, and China’s economic growth is no exception. The drastic fluctuations of economic growth can lead to serious overproduction, waste of resources, increased unemployment, decreased income or supply shortages, rising prices and decline of living standards.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the measurement of nominal level and actual strength of China's intellectual property protection (IPP), and examine whether the increase of actual protection strength (APS) is positive or negative impact on China's provincial economic growth.

A modified approach, based on Ginarte‐Park's (GP's) and HL's approaches, is used to measure nominal level and APS of China's intellectual property rights (IPR) from 1995 to 2007. The pooled EGLS method (cross‐section fixed effect) is used to estimate the effect of China's IPP and other variables on provincial economic growth.

The paper proves that China's APS appears an increase with a phase. China's IPP level by GP approach is on the high side, whereas China's IPP level by HL approach is slightly on the low side. Nominal level of China's IPP is largely influenced by the legislation level, whereas APS mostly embodies the effect of implementing law level. The increase of China's APS has significant positive impact on provincial economic growth. However, at the outset of building an independent innovation country, too strong IPP is bad for the development of innovation capability, and bad for provincial economic growth.

Because the APS is unknown, it is impossible to use APS as the dependent variable to estimate the weights of the main influencing factors. The method that the paper assumes three main factors the same weights is second best choice. Thus, several different weights are supplemented to measure the distribution values of China's APS.

China's APS quantified by a modified approach and strong evidences can be used to estimate the effect on economic growth. Policy effectiveness could be maximized at seeking the endogenous benefit balance between strengthening IPP and promoting economic development.

The paper proposes a modified approach to measure the APS of China's IPR, and proves that the reinforcement of China's APS is beneficial to promoting provincial economic growth. However, at the outset, too strong IPP is harmful.