Hongyi Lai

Uneven Opening of China's Society, Economy, and Politics: pro-growth authoritarian governance and protests in China

This article evaluates Chinas model of development, especially its main component, i.e. its model of governance. It suggests that Chinas model of development is marked by an imbalance between fast opening of the economy and the society and sluggish opening of the political system. The Chinese society has become much more open, reflected in the Chinese growing awareness of their legal rights. The Chinese economy has become highly internationalized and open, but much of Chinese politics is closed. Chinas governance is marked by pro-growth authoritarianism. The Chinese state is effective in opening up the economy, promoting reform, and generating economic growth, but offers weak protection of peoples rights and ineffectual mitigation of social grievances. These imbalances help produce social protests. Viable solutions are discussed.

China's "Dash for Gas": Challenges and Potential Impacts on Global Markets

Two UK-based researchers examine the significant recent growth in Chinas demand for natural gas, a fuel not long ago considered of marginal importance but now viewed as critical for the countrys future economic growth. Based on a range of databases as well as industry and media reports, the authors demonstrate how rapid demand growth since 2005 has transformed China from a minor, self-sufficient gas producer to a major buyer on international gas markets. They also analyze projections for future demand growth (25 years), showing Chinas demand for gas will grow faster that anywhere else in the world, and explore the potential for development of Chinas substantial domestic gas reserves to mitigate import demand over the short to medium term. The study concludes with an assessment of Chinas potential impact on global gas markets over short, intermediate, and long time horizons.

Domestic Bureaucratic Politics and Chinese Foreign Policy

One of the outstanding features of Chinas domestic politics is the prominence of the bureaucracy in the policy-making process. Arguably, bureaucracy is the next major player in the policy-making process in China after the top leaders. In this article, the three following aspects of the role of bureaucracy in the Chinese foreign policy-making process are examined: (1) the structure of the bureaucracy, especially the main agencies of the bureaucracy involved in foreign policy making; (2) the respective responsibilities of these agencies and their roles in the process; and (3) inter-agency coordination including the resolution of conflict among them. It observes that while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs plays a key role in the process, other ministries and bureaucratic agencies have significant and even growing input in an increasing number of functional areas, such as trade, finance, economy, climate change, soft power and military affairs. In addition, coordination among these agencies has become a key in the policy-making process.

Harmony and Development : ASEAN-China Relations

This book celebrates the 15th anniversary of China–ASEAN dialogue, which has captured the limelight as a key development in international relations in the Asia-Pacific. The contributions discuss a wide range of complex and challenging issues concerning ASEAN–China relations in a readable, informative, concise and comprehensive way. In three parts, the volume begins with an introduction and three speeches. The second and third parts discuss the political, security and economic aspects of ASEAN-China relations. Some of the specific issues covered in the book include Chinas rise and its implication on ASEAN, Chinas political and economic relations with ASEAN, and Chinas relations with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar and the Philippines. Contributors include leading scholars and analysts from these countries.

Transformation of China's energy sector: trends and challenges

The conclusions presented here sum up the contributions in the Special Issue regarding the managing of Chinas energy sector, particularly regarding the demand and profile of energy as well as the marketization of the sector. Strategic, organizational and policy issues relevant to the main theme are set out. Both demand and supply scenarios for the nations energy are seen as in flux, as the economy slackens and dependence on imports rises. Unprecedented levels of urban environmental pollution and steady growth of energy consumption in the wake of a rising living standard have brought the issue to headline-prominence as never before. Chinas rapidly increasing renewable energy will not change its heavy reliance on coal and a lesser extent oil in the coming decade. After decades of transformation, Chinas energy sector now operates in a domestic market characterized by strong governmental influence and monopolistic state firms. Abroad, Chinas firms are exposed to heavier market pressure and competition. While the states policies have succeeded in ensuring energy supplies and propelling Chinas renewable energy manufacturers into global prominence and opening up domestic market, much room for improvement exists in the competitiveness of the domestic market and domestic energy firms, transparency of pricing and the effectiveness of regulation.

Managing Elite Conflict and Policy Cycles

Two outstanding issues regarding China’s reforms will be examined in this chapter—policy conflict within top leadership and the progress of national reform policies during 1978–1994. Top leaders occupy central positions and wield a primary and even overriding influence in policy making. They were, however, divided into contending factions. This division affected the progress of reforms, resulting in cyclical changes of policies.

Extending the Open Policy

The previous chapter outlines the politics of the Open Policy in the earlier years, especially between 1978 and 1985. It focuses on reformists’ political and economic considerations in their selecting the SEZs in Guangdong and Fujian as well as the reformist strategy of generating competitive liberalization for opening among the other provinces. Two questions naturally arise—how can we account for the opening of all provinces between 1978 and 1994? Do any possible factors underline the pattern of the nationwide opening of the provinces? This chapter addresses these questions. Using the central government’s selection of open areas in the provinces during 1978–1993 as an example, I test the relevancy of possible factors which, according to the existing literature, shaped national policies toward reforms in the provinces.

Divergent Reform Paths in Two Provinces

Our understanding of the actual process of reforms in China’s provinces can be enhanced by an in-depth case study of selected provinces. This chapter compares the evolution of reform policies in Shandong and Jilin provinces during 1978–1994. Although sharing many similar economic conditions prior to 1978, the two provinces witnessed divergent reform policies after the mid-1980s. This chapter finds that fiscal resources and arrangements, the provincial bureaucracy, provincial leadership, the size of non-state sectors, coastal access, external trade potential, and national opening of the provinces accounted for their divergence. This chapter will first discuss the strategy for the comparative case study, introduce the profiles of Jilin and Shandong Provinces, and then compare policies toward non-state sectors in the two provinces. Finally, it will examine in detail the causes of their divergent reform policies.

Provincial Reform Initiatives

National strategies of opening the first two provinces and opening up the rest of the nation have been discussed. Questions concerning reform initiatives naturally arise—did provinces carry out reform at a similar pace? Why or why not? What helped to account for possible provincial differences in reform? According to the existing literature and views, provincial reform efforts could have been conditioned by a number of institutional factors—distance from Beijing, distance from a sea port, central-local fiscal arrangements, provincial leadership, influence and size of labor in non-state sectors, the size of the provincial bureaucracy, as well as national promotion of reforms through its opening up of provinces. In this chapter I will examine closely the correlation of the measure of provincial reform with these factors.

How China’s Leaders Made Reforms Happen

Many post-communist economies where reforms were introduced have witnessed economic decline, and soaring unemployment. Even when some of these economies have started to recover, their unemployment has remained at an uncomfortably high level, and deteriorating public health and urban infrastructure continue to raise concerns.1 In the aftermath of economic setbacks, economic liberalization in Russia, the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, and Southeastern European countries moved forward only sluggishly. There the economy is dominated by oligopolies run by former state bureaucrats and managers of state enterprises. In contrast, China took an incremental path to reforms. Although many Western analysts, economists, and even political scientists doubted in the 1980s and early 1990s that this path would succeed, it did eventually. Into the 2000s and with hindsight, a comprehensive and well-researched survey published in the United States on the literature on post-communist reforms concluded, however, that the Chinese incremental reform could be regarded as the most successful (Roland 2000). The success of China’s economic reform has important implications for other postcommunist economies as well as other developing nations that contemplate economic liberalization.