Conversation

04.18.13

How Fast Is China’s Slowdown Coming, and What Should Beijing Do About It?

Patrick Chovanec, Barry Naughton & more
Slower Chinese GDP growth is not a bad thing if it’s happening for the right reasons. But it’s not happening for the right reasons.Instead of reining in credit to try to curb over-investment, Chinese authorities have allowed a renewed explosion in...

Media

03.15.13

CNBC Quarrel About China’s Housing Market Bubbles Over on Chinese Internet

Ouyang Bin & Luo Xiaoyuan
China’s real estate prices continue to skyrocket despite government efforts to rein them in to prevent a dangerous housing bubble. On March 5, American television network CNBC invited two analysts to debate the state of the sector. But when Peter...

Reports

02.27.13

China’s Central Asia Problem

International Crisis Group
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, China and its Central Asian neighbors have developed a close relationship, initially economic but increasingly also political and security. Energy, precious metals, and other natural resources flow into China...

Books

01.31.13

Tombstone

Yang Jisheng
An estimated 36 million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China’s Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early ’60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is still euphemistically referred to as the “three years of natural disaster.”As a journalist with privileged access to official and unofficial sources, Yang Jisheng spent twenty years piecing together the events that led to mass nationwide starvation, including the death of his own father. Finding no natural causes, Yang lays the deaths at the feet of China’s totalitarian Communist system and the refusal of officials at every level to value human life over ideology and self-interest.Tombstone is a testament to inhumanity and occasional heroism that pits collective memory against the historical amnesia imposed by those in power. Stunning in scale and arresting in its detailed account of the staggering human cost of this tragedy, Tombstone is written both as a memorial to the lives lost—an enduring tombstone in memory of the dead—and in hopeful anticipation of the final demise of the totalitarian system. —Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Sinica Podcast

01.25.13

The Call-in Show

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
So our show this week isn’t technically a call-in show, given the lack of phones in our studio, but it is as close as we can get it, so thanks to everyone who sent us a pre-recorded question. We had a lot more responses than we expected, and the...

China’s Xi May Unveil Plan for Change Late 2013, CICC Head Says

Zhou Xin
Bloomberg
China’s new leadership, headed by Xi Jinping, will probably unveil new market-oriented changes in late 2013, according to Li Jiange, head of the country’s biggest investment bank.Li, chairman of China International Capital Corp. and a vice...

China's Consumer-led Growth

S.C.
Economist
Official data show that consumption contributed over half of China's growth so far this year, more than investment's contribution.

U.S. Presidential Debate Sees Candidates Flex China Muscle

Liu Jie
Xinhua
Although the yuan rose nearly 30 percent since 2005, U.S. politicians are still taking jabs at China's currency regime.

Books

06.12.12

Sustaining China’s Economic Growth After the Global Financial Crisis

Nicholas R. Lardy
The global financial crisis and ensuing economic downturn have raised many questions concerning the future of global economic growth. Prior to the financial crisis, global growth was characterized by growing imbalances, reflected primarily in large trade surpluses in China, Japan, Germany, and the oil exporting countries and rapidly growing deficits, primarily in the United States. The global crisis raises the question of whether the previous growth model of low consumption, high saving countries such as China is obsolete. Although a strong and rapid policy response beginning in the early fall of 2008 made China the first globally significant economy to come off the bottom and begin to grow more rapidly, critics charged that China's recovery was based on the old growth model, relying primarily on burgeoning investment in the short run and the expectation of a revival of expanding net exports once global recovery gained traction.This study examines China's response to the global crisis, the prospects for altering the model of economic growth that dominated the first decade of this century, and the implications for the United States and the global economy of successful Chinese rebalancing.   —Peterson Institute for International Economics

Reports

09.01.08

Creating Financial Harmony: Lessons for China 

James A. Dorn
Cato Institute
The current turmoil in global financial markets, which began with the American subprime crisis in 2007, has put market liberalism in a bad light. But it was the socialization of risk—not private free markets—that precipitated the crisis. This...

Reports

05.01.06

Do Financing Biases Matter for the Chinese Economy?

Yasheng Huang
Cato Institute
It is widely acknowledged that China’s financial system is deeply troubled. Its banks have very high nonperforming loan ratios and its stock market has lost 50 percent of its value since 2001 amidst a GDP growth rate averaging some 9 percent a year...

Reports

04.01.06

Capital Flows, Overheating, and the Nominal Exchange Rate Regime in China

Fred Hu
Cato Institute
The evidence of “hot money” clearly shows that China’s cumbersome system of capital controls is not as effective as officials claim. There is no doubt that the greater openness of China’s economy will certainly generate growing tensions with the...

Reports

01.26.06

Ending Financial Repression in China

James A. Dorn
Cato Institute
Chinese economic liberalization largely stopped at the gates of the financial sector. Investment funds are channeled through state-owned banks to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), there are few investment alternatives, stock markets are dominated by...

Reports

11.02.05

U.S.-China Relations in the Wake of CNOOC

James A. Dorn
Cato Institute
CNOOC, a subsidiary of state-owned China National Offshore Oil Company, lost to Chevron in a bid to acquire Unocal. This loss did not occur because of Chevron's lower bid, but rather because of U.S. Congressional intervention that blocked the...

Reports

03.01.05

Japan, China, and the U. S. Current Account Deficit

Richard H. Clarida
Cato Institute
Exchange rate protectionism is a subject much in the news these days, especially in regard to the actions of Japan and China in foreign exchange markets and in the financing of the U.S. current account deficit.

Reports

01.01.05

Exchange Rate and Monetary Policy in China

Nicholas R. Lardy
Cato Institute
China's account surplus has increased sharply as a product of economic growth and manipulation of its undervalued currency. This paper argues that China's account surplus is actually higher than reports indicate. China’s monetary...

Reports

09.01.03

A Simple Solution to China's Pension Crisis

David D. Li and Ling Li
Cato Institute
China’s rapidly aging population, strong economic growth, and high return on capital mean that a funded pension system would be more efficient than a state-directed system. Yet, there are many problems in implementing a new privatized pension system...

Viewpoint

12.14.92

China Plays the Market

Orville Schell & Todd Lappin from Nation
With the Chinese stock market in turmoil earlier this month, Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations, wrote about the dramatic crash for The Guardian: “Why China’s Stock Market Bubble Was Always Bound To Burst.”...