Business and Public Administration Studies (E-Journal, Washington Institute of China Studies - WICS)
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The Historical Status of China’s Tibet (part 7)
No full textIn 1965, the Tibet Autonomous Region was founded. On the basis of the general democratic election conducted across the region, and with ratification from China\u27s National People\u27s Congress (NPC), it convened its first people\u27s congress on September 1 to elect the people\u27s committee (i.e. people\u27s government). For the first time in Tibetan history, laboring people and patriotic persons became masters of their own affairs. The people\u27s government, working for the interests of Tibetan people, enjoyed their warm support and was strong and vigorous.Van Praag, however, says this action imposed a kind of political system identical to other areas of the People\u27s Republic of China on Tibet. He also advocates "national self-determination" for Tibet, and accuses the CPC of "betraying" this principle it had put forward in earlier years
Corporate Governance and Performance of Listed Commercial Banks during Financial Crisis: Evidence from China’s Banking Industry
Full text linkThis paper examines the impact of corporate governance on bank performance. Using a sample of China’s listed commercial banks from years 2007 to 2009, we investigate how corporate governance practices affect the performance of China\u27s listed banks during financial crisis. We use two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression to solve the well-known endogeneity problem in corporate governance literature, and compare our results to OLS regression of bank performance on governance mechanisms. A number of interesting findings are yielded in our study. First, there are an inverted U-shaped relation between board size and bank performance, and between proportion of independent directors and performance. Second, the banks whose controlling shareholder is the State can generate better performance than other banks. Third, the shareholding of the largest shareholder affects bank performance but its effect is non-linear, while the shareholding of other large shareholders affects negatively on the bank performance. Fourth, executive compensation incentives have a significant positive impact on bank performance. Our results are robust to various specifications
The Culture of Poverty in China Rural Area: The Cases in Junxi Village
Full text linkOne of the motivations in writing this paper is that the social problems in Chinese rural areas, which is named “San Nong” problem (“San Nong” means issues of agriculture, farmer and rural areas). It is a concept posed by a Chinese economist in 1996, and after that, it became popular in Chinese media and official language. In 2003, this concept was formally used in the governmental report. The economic gap between urban and rural areas is a reflection of serious social problems. Overall, issues of farmers include low income, obstacles to increasing income and the absence of civil rights among the rural population etc.; Issues of agriculture mean low interests in farming and low agricultural industrialization level etc.; Issues of rural areas include “underdevelopment” of the countryside e.g. infrastructural, economical, political and “cultural” underdevelopment), have been regarded, by the government and scholars, as the most significant aspect of social development in China. In recent years, the concept of “Cultural Construction” or “Building Culture” in “underdeveloped” rural areas has been placed on the agenda in governmental conferences (Councils of governments and National People Congress). Meanwhile, a number of Chinese scholars have started paying attention to the culture of poverty thesis. Culture of poverty has unique modalities and distinctive social and psychological consequences for the poor. Oscar Lewis believes that the culture of poverty transcends the boundaries between nations and regions. However, Chinese sociological studies usually analyze this topic rural-urban separately, even though this thesis has been discredited in the past decades in western academic circles. Under this social and academic atmosphere, as one of the members of the project “sociological intervention in Chinese poor rural area”, I conducted research about the culture of poverty in Junxi Village, a small village located in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province.
China in Latin America: A Contemporary Story
Full text linkIn Americans’ minds, China’s rise to economic superpower status may evoke images of economic influence in Asian or African countries, or just the amount of U.S. dollar reserves the Chinese Government holds. But what happens when China quietly steps into America’s pre-eminent geographical sphere of influence and dominion: Latin America? After all, when was the last (first) time that you heard that a U.S. president visited a Latin American country to increase American exports to the region and create jobs at home? The answers to these questions lie within a careful analysis of the U.S. relationship with Latin America and the implications that a Chinese economic and diplomatic takeover of the region may have for the U.S. as the pre-eminent superpower in the Western Hemisphere and the world
The History of Insurance: Risk, Uncertainty and Entrepreneurship
Full text linkThe goals of presenting a short review of the history of insurance are to provide a historical perspective on this industry; explain how it has developed with an emphasis on its recent history; and show the relationship between insurance – pooling and transfer of risks- and entrepreneurship - broadly defined as the capability to introduce new combinations of productive factors. The analysis offered here is based on the distinction between risk and uncertainty as indicated by Knight (2002, or.pub.1921) arguing that risk involves situations where a decision maker face unknown outcomes but known ex-ante probability distributions, while uncertainty is characterized by situations in which the probability distribution of a random outcome is unknown. Consequently, while risk can be covered by insurance, uncertainty normally is not.Against this background, the history of insurance focuses on the development of insurance in developed and emerging markets with a particular attention to Latin America. The historical review is instrumental to investigate on two main aspects: whether insurance and entrepreneurship interact; and whether the widespread availability of insurance leads to a reduction of uncertainty and support the deployment of entrepreneurship
The Equal Opportunities Commission and the Courts in Hong Kong: A Partnership Model?
Full text linkSince the 1950s, the federal courts in the U.S. have developed a "new partnership" with public administrative agencies. The partnership enables the courts to play a large role in shaping public administrative decision making, implementation, other activity, and values. Severely criticized by scholars and practitioners as judicial meddling and interference with administration, the partnership model rests on the establishment of new constitutional rights for individuals in their encounters with public agencies, facilitation of suits against agencies, creation of remedial law, provision of qualified, rather than absolute, immunity in constitutional tort suits against public employees and officials, and adjustment of the level of judicial scrutiny of agencies on a continuum ranging from virtually "no look" to a "soft look" to a "hard look" depending on the administrative action involved. Our research demonstrates that some elements of the partnership model are present in Hong Kong, at least with respect to the courts and the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC). Specifically, the courts have: 1) strengthened the statutory right to equal opportunity and the constitutional right to equality; 2) applied a hard look to administrative rationales for breaching these rights; 3) rejected "administrative difficulty" as a basis for using discriminatory gender classifications; and 4) mandated substantial institutional reform. In so doing, the courts have strengthened the EOC\u27s ability to promote equal opportunity. This single case study adds to extant knowledge about courts and public administration and the adaptability of the partnership model to different political systems
Local Governments in the United States: An Overview of Cities and Counties
Full text linkAmerica’s local governments, while still evolving over time, trace their roots back to the English shire from centuries ago. The shire had a dual function, serving as the administrative arm of the national government as well as the citizen’s local government. The structural form of the shire was adopted along the eastern seaboard of North America by the original colonists, who adapted it to suit the diverse economic and geographic needs of each of the original colonies. When the United States national government was formed, the framers of the Constitution did not provide for local governments. Rather, they left this matter to the states. Subsequently, early state constitutions generally embraced local governments as arms of the state. Currently, the term county is used in 48 of the 50 states of the United States to describe that tier of government below the state. Louisiana has government entities similar to counties, but they are called parishes. Alaska is divided into boroughs, which typically provide fewer services than most counties, since the state provides most services directly to citizens. Units of government below the county level are often referred to generically as cities, but they are known by a host of different names that vary greatly from state to state. Common terms include towns, townships, boroughs, villages, and municipalities
Puzzling Questions Of Economic Growth
Full text linkObservation of economic reality reveals interesting facts and sparks several questions. For example: why did Australia split economically from New Zealand in spite of the fact that the latter is often considered as a paragon of free-market economic reforms? Why did Austria, which maintains state-controlled enterprises, nearly catch Switzerland, which still had at the beginning of the 1970s more than fifty percent higher per capita income? What is the source of difference in economic growth between Estonia and Slovenia? Which of the two attained bigger success in systemic transformation? Why is Mexico so much poorer than Spain, even though in 1960 it was more affluent? Why has Venezuela, which in 1950 enjoyed a per capita income higher than that of Norway’s––who currently exports significant amounts of petroleum––became even poorer than Chile? How did it happen then that Venezuelan currency, which until the 1970s was among the most stable in the world, ceased to be respected by Venezuelans themselves? Why did Chile, who during the 1970s and 1980s was strained by harsh crises, surpass other Latin American countries in terms of per capita income? Why did Costa Rica remain behind Puerto Rico even though during the 1970s the latter fell from the 10 fastest growing economies in the world to among the slowest? In what respect does Puerto Rico resemble former East Germany? Why did “communist” China surpass “capitalist” India? Why, in spite of this Chinese economic miracle, is there such disparity in per capita income of mainland China in relation to Taiwan? How did the disparity in income increase from two-fold in 1950 to six-fold in recent years? Why did Pakistan grow so much slower than Indonesia, although in the later country there have been systematic returns to extensive state intervention, and during 1997 and 1998 it experienced one of the most severe crises in the economic history of the world? Why does the Dominican Republic, which resides on the same island as Haiti, attract significantly more tourists than Haiti