Sujian Guo

The Ownership Reform in China: What direction and how far?

Post-Mao China has obviously moved away from the centrally planned command economy in the past two decades of reform. However, the key issue is in what direction and how far. To determine what direction China is headed for and how far China has moved in that direction, this article examines and evaluates the nature of institutional change in the ownership structure, particularly collectives, SOEs, and land ownership, which is then followed by a closer look at the post-Mao shareholding reform, its trends and problems from the basic perspective of property rights theory.

Political economy of FDI and economic growth in China: A longitudinal test at provincial level

This study asks two central questions: (1) how we can explain the dynamic relationships between economic growth and FDI distributions at national and regional levels; (2) what determines Chinese rapid economic growth and unprecedented volume of FDI at national and regional levels. Two empirical models are developed to test the two main hypotheses of FDI-led growth model and growth-driven FDI model based on time-series and cross-provincial data of 174 observations (29 provinces for 6 years, 1995–2000). The results confirm main findings of earlier studies on the links between FDI and economic growth in China, but disapprove the impact of human capital, historical, and geographical conditions on FDI distributions in the regions during the research period.

Climate change challenges and China’s response: mitigation and governance

Abstract China clearly matters when it comes to global efforts to mitigate climate change and any successful international efforts to stabilize greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions must inevitably include the country. In terms of climate change responses, it is argued that governments are important actors that play a key role in defining appropriate rules, institutions and modes of governance to meet these changes at different levels and scales and in enforcing the defined rules and regulations. This article presents a detailed case study aimed at the analysis of how Chinese policies and governance structures related to climate change have evolved over the past 20 years, particularly from 1992 to 2015, and how they have influenced Chinese GHG emissions during this period.

Fiscal Federalism: a refined theory and its application in the Chinese context

Chinas central–local relations have been marked by perpetual changes amidst economic restructuring. Fiscal decentralization on the expenditure side has been paralleled by centralization on the revenue side, accompanied by political centralization. Hence, our understanding of Chinas fiscal relations is not without controversy. This paper aims to make a theoretical contribution to the ongoing debate on ‘fiscal federalism’ by addressing crucial questions regarding Chinas central–local fiscal relations: first, to what extent do Chinese central–local fiscal relations conform to fiscal federalism in the Western literature? Second, are there any problems with existing principles of fiscal federalism and, if so, how to refine them? Third, how are refined principles relevant to the Chinese case and what policies should the Chinese government pursue in the future? Based on an in-depth and critical review of the theories on fiscal federalism, we develop a refined prototype of fiscal federalism. The model shows that quasi-traditional fiscal federalism is a much closer reality in China, while we argue that the refined fiscal federalism should be the direction of future reform in China.

The totalitarian model revisited

Abstract A theoretical problem in defining “regime identity” of a political regime in conceptual and comparative terms is that there are no generally accepted theoretical criteria that could be used to demarcate the beginning and ending of a political regime and to assess the nature of a regime change in communist and post-communist countries. This article attempts to address the significance of this problem, revisit the utility of the totalitarian model, and develop a refined macro-model that can serve as the means to solve the problem and as reference points to define regime identity, assess and measure the regime change in theoretical and comparative terms. The refined model can serve both to observe, explain, and predict the regime change in general and to enrich our understanding of specific cases in particular. Based on the insights yielded by the new model, other researchers could modify this model by using techniques of formal modeling or by dropping some features while retaining others of the model.

The Party-State Relationship in Post-Mao China

party, for which the special term ’party-state’ has been created. The Communist Party is ’the state of the state’. All the key policy decisions in China since 1949 are made outside the government but are entirely monopolised by the party. The Party defines its function as that of making all the crucial decisions, which the government must carry out. The existence of party leading groups in units of the state organ ensures the structural dominance of the party. Members of Party standing committees at the various levels are each in charge of one or the other governmental function or operation. Two decades of post-Mao reform have brought about a considerable change in many aspects of China. However, to what extent has the post-Mao reform changed the nature of the Chinese political system? Does the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continue to construct and mould government, regime and state in its own ideology, principles, norms, rules, image and need? Does the CCP continue to dictate politics and do party organisations continue to dominate every sector of the state? In other words, what is the party-

The Political Economy of Asian Transition from Communism

Introduction: Patterns and explanations Historical background and pre-transition models Explaining Asian transition from communism Strategic choices and patterns of Asian transition The nature of Asian transition from Communism Redesigning market socialism: a future for socialism Selected bibliography Index.

Totalitarianism: An outdated paradigm for post-Mao China?

China’s considerable changes since the early 1980s suggest the need to assess the nature of the post-Mao reform and change. Many scholars on China in recent years have not thought totalitarianism to be a useful term anymore. The article attempts to assess the validity of the totalitarian model, investigate and analyze the major changes in post-Mao China, and evalaute the significance of the changes and the nature of the post-Mao reform, so as to determine whether the post-Mao regime can still be described as totalitarian or has been transformed into something else.The article demonstrates that the dynamic core and essential features of the Chinese communist regime have not fundamentally changed. China has just repeated the “dynastic cycle” of communist totalitarianism from Mao’s regime to Deng’s regime, though Deng’s regime has many differences from Mao’s at the operative level. The paradigm of totalitarianism, rather than outmoded, is still useful and applicable to the study of the Chinese communist regime.

The Nature and Direction of Economic Reform in North Korea

In this article we critically examine the nature and direction of economic reform in North Korea. While North Korea began to experiment with reforms and a partial open-door policy in the mid-1980s, the most substantial attempt at economic restructuring occurred in July 2002. In these latest reforms, the government attempted to change the planned economic system through the introduction of price reforms, market and commodity relations, profit motivation and material incentives. However, scholars disagree on the nature and direction of economic restructuring. In order to analyze the state of economic transformation, we develop a conceptual framework of market socialism with a set of empirical indicators against which we examine the trends, direction and limitations of reforms. Our study strongly suggests that North Korea is moving away from the command economy towards a model of market socialism as practiced in China and Vietnam.

Enigma of all enigmas: Capitalist takeover? Assessment of the post-mao economic transformation

Post-Mao’s economic reforms have led many China analysts to observe that post-Mao China has been moving toward capitalism or “capitalist takeover” has occurred in post-Mao China. This observation has a significant implication both for the US foreign economic policy and in the study of regime change in post-Mao China. The purpose of this article is to revisit and reassess the economic transformation in post-Mao China to obtain a holistic understanding of the central reality in post-Mao China on the one side, while on the other to rebut the assertion of “capitalist takeover” in post-Mao China. Through a systematic survey of party documents, policy statements, leaders’ speeches, official newspapers and magazines, general academic studies on the post-Mao reform in English and in Chinese, this article examines the post-Mao economic transformation along the three key empirical dimensions in terms of systemic change: the existence of capitalist elements, the ownership structure, and the role of the market in the Chinese economy. The findings based on fresh empirical evidence suggest that China has not made any significant change from communism toward capitalism in any of those fields despite the considerable change made in the past 20 years.