Business and Public Administration Studies (E-Journal, Washington Institute of China Studies - WICS)
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World Food Price Bubble and China’s Food Security
Get PDFThe price of nearly every agricultural commodity sharply increased in 2008, creating a global food price bubble. At their peaks in the second quarter of 2008, world prices of wheat and maize were three times higher than at the beginning of 2003, and the price of rice was five times higher (Figure 1-3). The surge in food prices has become a major political concern because of its role for inflation, its impacts on the whole economy, and because of adverse effects on the wage earning poor and middle class. The price developments can help reduce urban – rural income gaps in the aggregate, but some groups in rural areas lose and others gain. The issue is not only one of too fast increases in prices, but one of risky volatility and of inappropriate policy responses around the world posing threats for free trade and possibly for political stability in some countries. In China, Consumer Price Index (CPI) kept increasing in 2008. CPI increased 8.5% in April 2008, a monthly record in 12 years. The increases from food, vegetable, livestock prices are the main reasons behind the CPI increase
Ten Years after “Go West”
Get PDFAfter thirty years’ reform, China has experienced unprecedented changes and prosperity. As is known to all, China’s Reform and Opening-up Policy was initiated along the coastal region. By the end of the 1990s, the gap between the east and the west has been expanded increasingly. The eastern region had been far ahead of the west, which embedded instability for the whole society. Facing this situation, at the 4th Session of the 15th Communist Party of China Meeting in September 1999, West Development, or Xibu Da Kaifa named in Chinese, was forwarded for the first time
China’s Informal Institutions: the Case of Private Enterprise in Wenzhou
Get PDFThe private enterprises have been growing at a rapid pace during the last 20 years in China. The private sector now accounts for 62 percent of the total economic activity, contributing 71 percent of gross industrial output (China’s Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Despite this impressive growth, the private sector is still facing formal institutional restrictions, such as limited state bank loans, heavy tax burdens, higher requirement for registration and licensing, competitions from state-owned counterparts, and so on (Bramall, 2008). The survival and prosperity of private enterprises, to some extent, have to resort to the adaptive informal strategies by bending governmental rules. One of the Chinese cultural byproducts, guanxi, that is, an interpersonal network, plays a significant part in this process. Previous research has shown that guanxi, especially the patron-client ties, can help entrepreneurs reduce potential risks, facilitate business transactions, create alternative financing channels, and promote business success (Leung and Wong, 1995)
The Reform of The People’s Liberation Army
Get PDFThe People’s Liberation Army (PLA) holds a special place of honor in China as its liberator, its protector, the stalwart defender of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the guardian of the Revolution. Despite this honored position, the PLA has suffered an extraordinarily rocky history of alternating support and neglect, and has spent the last 20 years attempting to recoup its position from the mistakes of it’s past. It was both neglected and ill-used for 20 years by the Maoist regime. It’s strategies were muddled, its equipment obsolete, its funding was uncertain, its officer corps is underpaid and under trained, and its troops are a non-professional transient population. In the 80s it was authorized to create or acquire state owned enterprises (SOEs) and other businesses in the hope that it could largely finance itself and save the political leadership from the necessity of raising more taxes. This policy was a disaster for both the PLA and the Chinese economy from which both are still laboriously recovering
The Implications of China’s Increased Involvement in Africa: An Economic, Political and Cultural Analysis
Get PDFTwenty years ago, the People’s Republic of China was East Asia’s largest oil exporter. Today, it is the world’s second largest importer. Beginning in 1993, China became a net importer of oil, a status that is not likely to change in the foreseeable future, with analysts positing that “oil will be the only primary fuel capable of fulfilling China’s growing needs in both transportation and industry.” As China’s economy surges forward, growing by double-digits the past several years, the nation’s dependence on oil and, consequently, its demand for the energy resource has grown exponentially. With the country transitioning away from the use of coal, daily oil consumption doubled over the course of the last ten years. In the future, experts expect demand for the good to continue growing, predicting an increase of 130 percent by 2025. Such an increase comes on top of an already substantial demand for the good, one that is equal to 40 percent of the world’s total.
Financial Liberalization, Economic Growth, Stability and Financial Market Development in Emerging Markets
Get PDFThis paper provides stylized facts with respect to the relationships among financial liberalization, economic growth, stability, and financial market development, with a focus on emerging countries and particularly on Latin America and Caribbean countries in the context of the increasing use of the domestic currency in emerging markets and the issue of access to finance
Investment Tips
Get PDFThe other day an old client of mine asked me to come up with a short list of high quality stocks that have been “pulverized” in the markets over the last 18 months. The only specifications were that they must have a favorable earnings trend and have a dividend return of at least 6% a year. I decided it would make sense to pass my findings on in this publication
Budgeting for Local Governments in the United States: Deciding Who Gets What, How Much, and Who Pays?
Get PDFBudgeting in U.S. local governments is about more than finance. The annual operating budgets of cities and counties in the U.S. also serve as their most significant policy documents and their annual operating plans. Local budgets determine who gets what services, how much they get, and who pays. This article summarizes the role of local governments in the U.S., key principles in local government accounting, the evolution of different budget systems, decision making models, and budgeting strategies
Foreign Direct Investment Inequality (FDI) and Convergence of Growth: Evidence from Yangtze River Delta
Get PDFThe Yangtze River Delta (YRD) Economic Circle has experienced a long period of development. From the original Shanghai Economic Zone in 1983, altogether 10 cities encompassing Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Nantong and Hangzhou, Jiaxing, Huzhou, Ningbo and Shaoxing surrounding the Shanghai Core, to the final stage in 2003 when the latest leaguer, Taizhou of Zhejiang Province joined the family, the YRD has been experiencing a long time of expansion. Focusing on the aggregation, see Table 1, the YRD attracted almost half the FDI in the nationwide scale, over 1/3 export and import, around 6 percent of the fixed investment and produced nearly 1/5 of the GDP. We should say this was, and is a miracle in the river of regional economic growth