Reports

09.01.09

What Drives China's Interbank Market?

Nathan Porter and TengTeng Xu
Sara Segal-Williams
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Interest rates in China comprise a mix of both market determined interest rates (interbank rates and bond yields), and regulated interest rates (lending and deposit rates), reflecting China's gradual process of interest rate liberalization. We...

Reports

07.16.09

East Asia’s Foreign Exchange Rate Policies

Michael F. Martin
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Financial authorities in East Asia have adopted a variety of foreign exchange rate policies, ranging from Hong Kong’s currency board system which links the Hong Kong dollar to the U.S. dollar, to the “independently floating” exchange rates of Japan...

Reports

07.13.09

Human Rights in China: Trends and Policy Implications

Thomas Lum, Hannah Fischer
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Human rights has been a principal area of U.S. concern in its relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), particularly since the violent government crackdown on the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989. Some policy makers contend that the U...

China’s Dictators at Work: The Secret Story

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
Prisoner of the State is the secretly recorded memoir of Zhao Ziyang, once holder of China’s two highest Party and state positions and the architect of the economic reforms that have brought the country to the edge of great-power status. The book...

Reports

07.01.09

Broad Money Demand and Asset Substitution in China

Ge Wu
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Recent changes to China's financial system, in particular ongoing interest rate liberalization, gradual movement toward a more flexible exchange rate regime, and rapid development of capital markets, have changed substantially the environment...

Reports

06.17.09

Report on the Tri-Provincial and Hubei-Xiaogan-Xiangfan Highway Projects

World Bank
This is a report on the performance of two highway projects in China which were financed by a loan from the World Bank. The Tri-Provincial Highway Project, which links Gansu, Ningxi, and Inner Mongolia, and the Hubei-Xiaogan-Xiangfan Highway Project...

Reports

06.04.09

Taiwan’s Political Status: Historical Background and Ongoing Implications

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
In 1979, official U.S. relations with Taiwan (the Republic of China) became a casualty of the American decision to recognize the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as China’s sole legitimate government. Since then, U.S. unofficial...

Reports

06.03.09

China and the Global Financial Crisis: Implications for the United States

Wayne M. Morrison
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Over the past several years, China has enjoyed one of the world’s fastest growing economies and has been a major contributor to world economic growth. However, the current global financial crisis threatens to significantly slow China’s economy...

The Mystery of Zhou Enlai

Jonathan D. Spence from New York Review of Books
Through the ups and downs of the unpredictable Chinese Revolution, Zhou Enlai’s reputation has seemed to stand untarnished. The reasons for this are in part old-fashioned ones: in a world of violent change, not noted for its finesse, Zhou Enlai...

Reports

05.01.09

China’s $1.5 Trillion Bet: Understanding China’s External Portfolio

Brad W. Setser
He Jianan
Council on Foreign Relations
China is now by far the United States’ largest creditor. Its treasury portfolio recently surpassed that of Japan’s, and it has long held more agency (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) bonds than any other country. Never before has a nation as poor as China...

Reports

04.29.09

Implementation Completion and Results Report: Health IX Project

World Bank
China's significant health gains during the 1960s and 1970s earned worldwide recognition. Following onset of economic reforms in the 1980s, however, the primary health care system was weakened, reducing access to both curative and preventive...

Reports

04.24.09

U.S.-Funded Assistance Programs in China

Thomas Lum
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
U.S. government support of rule of law and civil society programs in the People’s Republic of China constitutes a key component of its efforts to promote democratic change in China. Other related U.S. activities include participation in official...

Reports

04.17.09

China’s Growing Role in U.N. Peacekeeping

International Crisis Group
Over the past twenty years China has become an active participant in U.N. peacekeeping, a development that will benefit the international community. Beijing has the capacity to expand its contributions further and should be encouraged to do so...

Reports

04.15.09

Village-by-Village Democracy in China

Robert T. Gannett Jr.
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

‘A Hell on Earth’

Pico Iyer from New York Review of Books
“The situation inside Tibet is almost like a military occupation,” I heard the Dalai Lama tell an interviewer last November, when I spent a week traveling with him across Japan. “Everywhere. Everywhere, fear, terror. I cannot remain indifferent.”...

Reports

04.02.09

Taiwan-U.S. Relations: Developments and Policy Implications

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Policy toward and support for Taiwan are a key element in U.S. relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and an important component of U.S. policy in Asia. Recently, pessimistic observers see growing PRC-Taiwan ties eroding U.S. influence...

Reports

03.31.09

Asia Pacfic Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the 2008 Meetings in Lima, Peru

Michael F. Martin
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Congress and the Executive Branch have historically identified the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) as an important organization to help promote the U.S. goal of liberalizing international trade and investment in Asia, and possibly the rest...

The Death and Life of a Great Chinese City

Richard Bernstein from New York Review of Books
Judging from the evidence of Michael Meyer’s portrait of life in a narrow backstreet of Beijing as China prepared for the Olympic Games, old Beijing has been vanishing for a very long time. “Peking you simply would not be able to recognize except by...

Reports

03.17.09

The Tibetan Policy Act of 2002: Background and Implementation

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
U.S. policy on Tibet is governed by the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002 (TPA), enacted as part of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act of FY2003 (P.L. 107-228). In addition to establishing a number of U.S. principles with respect to human rights,...

Reports

03.11.09

Epilepsy Management at Primary Health Level in Rural China

Kennett Werner
World Health Organization
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting about 50 million people in the world, 85 percent of whom live in resource-poor countries. Epilepsy imposes an enormous physical, psychological, social and economic burden on...

Reports

03.04.09

China’s Fight Against Climate Change

Sara Segal-Williams
Natural Resources Defense Council
On March 4, 2009, Barbara Finamore, Senior Attorney and China Program Director of the National Resources Defense Council, testified before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming in the United States House of Representatives...

The China We Don’t Know

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
In the late 1990s, Chinese peasants in the village of Da Fo, many of whom between 1959 and 1961 had survived the twentieth century’s greatest famine, felt free enough to install shrines to Guangong, the traditional war god of resistance to...

Reports

02.25.09

China’s Foreign Aid Activities in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia

Thomas Lum, Hannah Fischer, Julissa Gomez Granger, Anne Leland
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
In the past several years, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has bolstered its diplomatic presence and garnered international goodwill through its financing of infrastructure and natural resource development projects, assistance in the carrying...

Reports

02.13.09

The Pivotal Relationship: How Obama Should Engage China

Liu Xuecheng Robert Oxnam
EastWest Institute
Providing their respective hopes and expectations on what they would like to see in the Obama administration’s China policy are Liu Xuecheng and Robert Oxnam, who both envision opportunities for reframing the China-U.S. relationship in a way that...

Reports

01.31.09

Strengthening US-China Climate Change and Energy Engagement

Sara Segal-Williams
Natural Resources Defense Council
The United States of America and the People's Republic of China are both key players in international efforts to address global warming and global energy security. Indeed, they are by far the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in...

China’s Charter 08

Liu Xiaobo & Perry Link from New York Review of Books
The document below, signed by more than two thousand Chinese citizens, was conceived and written in conscious admiration of the founding of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, where, in January 1977, more than two hundred Czech and Slovak intellectuals...

Reports

01.07.09

Taiwan-U.S. Relations: Recent Developments and Their Policy Implications

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
U.S.-Taiwan relations have undergone important changes, sparked in part by the increasing complexity of Taiwan’s democratic political environment and the continued insistence of Beijing that the separately ruled Taiwan is a part of the People’s...

Reports

01.01.09

Building Bridges: China’s Growing Role as Infrastructure Financier for Sub-Saharan Africa

Vivien Foster, William Butterfield, Chuan Chen, and Nataliya Pushak
World Bank
Over the last decade Chinese investment in Africa has grown considerably. This includes the financing of large infrastructural projects in many African countries. Although Chinese finance of African infrastructure is important, there is not much...

Reports

01.01.09

Yen Bloc or Yuan Bloc: An Analysis of Currency Arrangements in East Asia

Kazuko Shirono
Sara Segal-Williams
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
This paper examines the role of Japan against that of China in the exchange rate regime in East Asia in light of growing interest in forming a currency union in the region. The analysis suggests that currency unions with China tend to generate...

Reports

01.01.09

A Roadmap for US-China Cooperation on Energy and Climate Change

Asia Society
The world faces no greater challenge in the 21st century than arresting the rapidly increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that cause climate change. The two largest producers of these gases are the United States and China...

Reports

12.19.08

Sino-Japanese Relations: Issues for U.S. Policy

Emma Chanlett-Avery, Kerry Dumbaugh, William H. Cooper
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
After a period of diplomatic rancor earlier this decade, Japan and China have demonstrably improved their bilateral relationship. The emerging detente includes breakthrough agreements on territorial disputes, various high-level exchanges, and...

An Asian Star Is Born

Christian Caryl from New York Review of Books
Ian Buruma’s life would itself make a nice subject for a novel. His father was Dutch; his mother was British, from a family that emigrated from Germany in the nineteenth century; as an undergraduate in the Netherlands he focused on Chinese...

Reports

12.01.08

The Macroeconomic Impact of Healthcare Financing Alternatives: Reform Options for Hong Kong SAR

Dennis Botman and Nathan Porter
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
With much healthcare publicly funded, Hong Kong's rapidly aging population will significantly raise fiscal pressure over coming decades. The authors ask what the implications are of meeting these costs by public funding, or private funding...

Reports

12.01.08

An Unbreakable Cycle: Drug Dependency, Mandatory Confinement, and HIV/AIDS in China's Guangxi Province

Human Rights Watch
This paper focuses on issues of drug rehabilitation practices in China. Chinese law dictates mandatory rehabilitation for drug users. Every year tens of thousands of drug users are sent—without trial or due process of law—to mandatory drug treatment...

Reports

12.01.08

The Impact of Introducing a Minimum Wage on Business Cycle Volatility: A Structural Analysis for Hong Kong SAR

Nathan Porter and Francis Vitek
Sara Segal-Williams
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
We study the impact of a minimum wage on business cycle volatility, depending upon its coverage and adjustment mechanism. As with other small open economies, Hong Kong SAR is vulnerable to external shocks, with its exchange rate regime precluding...

Reports

12.01.08

Hong Kong SAR Economic Integration With the Pearl River Delta

Hongyi Chen and Olaf Unteroberdoerster
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Hong Kong SAR's economic integration with the Mainland has primarily taken place in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). Taking stock of integration trends, this paper discusses key implications for ensuring economic benefits of further integration are...

Reports

10.08.08

U.S. Foreign Aid to East and South Asia: Selected Recipients

Thomas Lum
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
Since the war on terrorism began in 2001 and the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and Global HIV/AIDS Initiative (GHAI) were launched in 2004, the United States has increased foreign aid spending dramatically in some regions, including East and...

Reports

09.17.08

Taiwan: Overall Developments and Policy Issues in the 109th Congress

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
U.S. officials saw relations with Taiwan as especially troubled during the 109th Congress in 2005-2006, beset by the increasing complexity and unpredictability of Taiwan’s democratic political environment as well as by PRC actions underscoring...

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

09.01.08

China, Space Weapons, and U.S. Security

Bruce W. MacDonald
He Jianan
Council on Foreign Relations
China’s successful test of an anti-satellite weapon in 2007, followed by the US destruction earlier this year of an out-of-control American satellite, demonstrated that space may soon no longer remain a sanctuary from military conflict. As the...

Reports

08.24.08

Energy Interests and Alliances: China, America and Africa

Angelica Austin, Danila Bochkarev, and Willem van der Geest
EastWest Institute
According to conventional wisdom, the United States and China are locked in a high-stakes competition for energy resources around the world, particularly in Africa. Against the backdrop of highly volatile oil prices, mounting concerns about global...

China: Humiliation & the Olympics

Orville Schell from New York Review of Books
The IncidentOn a snowy winter day in 1991, Lu Gang, a slightly built Chinese scholar who had recently received his Ph.D. in plasma physics, walked into a seminar room at the University of Iowa’s Van Allen Hall, raised a snub-nose .38-caliber Taurus...

The Passions of Joseph Needham

Jonathan D. Spence from New York Review of Books
It is now a little over four hundred years since a scattering of Westerners first began to try to learn the Chinese language. Across that long span, the number of scholars studying Chinese has grown, but their responses to the challenges of Chinese...

Why Didn’t Science Rise in China?

Jonathan D. Spence from New York Review of Books
In response to:The Passions of Joseph Needham from the August 14, 2008 issueTo the Editors:In his illuminating essay on Joseph Needham [ NYR, August 14], Jonathan Spence notes that early in his career Needham posed the question: “What were the...

Reports

08.05.08

Taiwan: Recent Developments and U.S. Policy Choices

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
In a large turnout on March 22, 2008, voters in Taiwan elected as president Mr. Ma Ying-jeou of the Nationalist (KMT) Party. Mr. Ma out-polled rival candidate Frank Hsieh, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), by a 2.2 million...

Reports

07.29.08

People’s Republic of China: The Olympics Countdown—Broken Promises

Amnesty International
Written less than two weeks before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, this papers assesses progress made by the Chinese authorities to improve human rights in line with their own commitments made in 2001. This report provides a final summary and updates...

Reports

07.21.08

China’s “Hot Money” Problems

Michael F. Martin, Wayne M. Morrison
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
China has experienced a sharp rise in the inflow of so-called “hot money,” foreign capital entering the country supposedly seeking short-term profits, especially in 2008. Chinese estimates of the amount of “hot money” in China vary from $500 billion...

How He Sees It Now

Jonathan Mirsky from New York Review of Books
It is open season on the Dalai Lama and not just for Beijing, for whom he is “a monk in wolf’s clothing,” or for Rupert Murdoch, who dismissed him as a “very old political monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes.” During his trip to London in May, when...

Reports

07.01.08

Appeasing China: Restricting the Rights of Tibetans in Nepal

Human Rights Watch
This report concerns human rights issues surrounding the suppression of Tibetan protesters in Nepal. Following a Chinese governmental crackdown in Tibet in 2008, many Tibetans in Nepal began to protest. Nepali authorities have harshly suppressed the...

Reports

07.01.08

China’s Forbidden Zones: Shutting the Media out of Tibet and Other “Sensitive” Stories

Human Rights Watch
This report focuses on the treatment of foreign journalists by the Chinese government. In the buildup to the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the authors contend, the Chinese government has tried to force foreign journalists to avoid sensitive issues. As a...

Reports

06.30.08

Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S. Policy

Kerry Dumbaugh
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
On March 10, 2008, a series of demonstrations began in Lhasa and other Tibetan regions of China to mark the 49th anniversary of an unsuccessful Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. The demonstrations appeared to begin peacefully with small...

Casting a Lifeline

Francine Prose from New York Review of Books
Sixty pages or so into Ma Jian’s novel Beijing Coma, the hero, Dai Wei, is troubled by the memory of a harrowing anatomy lecture that he attended as a university student. Taught by “a celebrated cardiovascular specialist,” the class observed the...

Sentimental Education in Shanghai

Pankaj Mishra from New York Review of Books
1.In April 1924 Rabindranath Tagore arrived in Shanghai for a lecture tour of China. Soon after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, Tagore had become an international literary celebrity, lecturing to packed audiences from Japan to...

Reports

06.01.08

Why Are Saving Rates of Urban Households in China Rising?

Marcos Chamon and Eswar Prasad
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
From 1995 to 2005, the average urban household saving rate in China rose by 7 percentage points, to ¼ of disposable income. The authors use household-level data to explain the postponing of consumption despite rapid income growth. Saving rates have...

Reports

06.01.08

Tibet Autonomous Region: Access Denied

Amnesty International
This report, written in the aftermath of the widespread Tibetan unrest in Tibet and Tibetan regions of China in the spring of 2008, addresses the Chinese government with immediate demands. In cracking down on unrest, the Chinese government sealed...

Thunder from Tibet

Robert Barnett from New York Review of Books
1.Every so often, between the time a book leaves its publisher and the time it reaches its readers, events occur that change the ways it can be read. Such is the case with Pico Iyer’s account of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet...

Reports

05.21.08

China’s Space Program: Options for U.S.-China Cooperation

Jeffrey Logan
Peony Lui
Congressional Research Service
China has a determined, yet still modest, program of civilian space activities planned for the next decade. The potential for U.S.-China cooperation in space—an issue of interest to Congress—has become more controversial since the January 2007...

Twelve Suggestions for Dealing with the Tibetan Situation, by Some Chinese Intellectuals

Wang Lixiong from New York Review of Books
At present the one-sided propaganda of the official Chinese media is having the effect of stirring up inter-ethnic animosity and aggravating an already tense situation. This is extremely detrimental to the long-term goal of safeguarding national...

Reports

05.14.08

China’s Protestants

Carol Lee Hamrin
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
The number of religious believers in China continues to grow almost exponentially, far outpacing population growth. Of the officially tolerated faiths, Christianity has grown at the fastest pace. As of 2005, Christians were approaching 5 percent of...

Reports

05.01.08

WHO-China Country Cooperation Strategy, 2008-2013

Kennett Werner
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization and the Government of the People’s Republic of China have been working together to improve the health of people throughout China for many decades. The first Country Cooperation Strategy (CCS) in China covered the period...