Institutional Change In China Research Articles

The Convergence of the Chinese and Western Takeover Markets

The evolution of the Chinese takeover market and its integration with the international takeover market are analysed in three ways. First, the paper charts the legal and institutional changes in China in the last two decades to develop a decentralised “Anglo-Saxon” takeover market. Second, the paper provides statistical and case material on the extent to which the Chinese takeover market has in practice become aligned with that of the US and UK. And, third, it presents case evidence on early failure and success in attempts to integrate the domestic with the world takeover market.

Management development in China: a policy analysis

This study analyzes the current structure of Chinese management development (MD) policy. It identifies three critical challenges facing Chinese managers and reviews related MD policies. It considers the evolution of major MD‐related policies in the context of broader social, economic and institutional changes in China. Five principal findings inform the conclusion that with the experience accumulated in three decades of reform practices, MD policy in China should no longer be based on the principle of ‘groping for stones to cross the river’. Rather, there should be established an accountability and evaluation mechanism for a well‐defined MD policy implementation process. This should accelerate the management learning process in China and overcome the country's shortage of management skills.

Dancing with the Wolf: Institutional Changes and Industrial Development of China’s Automobile Sector after WTO Accession (2001-2008)

With a special focus on China’s passenger car sector, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the complex process of institutional changes in China’s automobile industry in the post-WTO era (2001-2008), and in particular to understand the interactions of international commitment and domestic reform as well as politics behind the new institutional changes domestically.

Manufacturing productivity in China and India: The role of institutional changes

In this paper we undertake a comparative study of productivity in the manufacturing sector for China and India using data from survey of manufacturing industries for the two countries. We find that productivity of manufacturing industries in China relative to that in India improved substantially over the 1998–2003 period. Specifically, the average total factor productivity (TFP) growth for the manufacturing sector over this period was about 11% higher in China than in India. We document two substantial changes in government policies in China that were not witnessed in India. First, the late 1990s saw an enormous wave of ownership restructuring due to the formal endorsement of private property rights by the Chinese central government. Second, in 1997 a large scale labour retrenchment program was launched to address the long standing problem of labour redundancy in the public sector. Using data from the Chinese survey of manufacturing industries, we quantify the impact of these large scale institutional changes on TFP of Chinese manufacturing industries. We find that these policy changes can explain about 30% of the growth in TFP of manufacturing industries. Hence we conclude that these institutional changes in China can account for a significant part of the gains in productivity of manufacturing industries in China relative to that in India over the 1998–2003 period.

Global-market building as state building: China’s entry into the WTO and market reforms of China’s tobacco industry

This article analyzes how China’s increasing engagement in the global market induced significant institution-building in China’s tobacco industry and enabled a power shift from the local authorities to the central authority in controlling this market. During this process of “getting onto the international track,” the central government reorganized the industrial tobacco system and broke up the “monopolies” set up by local governments in order to enhance the competitive capacities of China’s tobacco industry in the global market. Given such a concrete institutional change in China’s tobacco industry, I propose the theory of “global-market building as state building” to explain the interactions among the global market, the nation-states, and the domestic market-building projects. I suggest that nation-states strategically seek to engage themselves in the global market and that, under certain circumstances by taking advantage of their global market engagement, the nation-states can enhance their abilities to govern the domestic market.

Social Change in Contemporary China: C. K. Yang and the Concept of Institutional Diffusion (review)

Reviewed by: Social Change in Contemporary China: C. K. Yang and the Concept of Institutional Diffusion Czeslaw Tubilewicz (bio) Wenfang Tang and Burkart Holzner, editors. Social Change in Contemporary China: C. K. Yang and the Concept of Institutional Diffusion. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. 342 pp. Hardcover $60.00, ISBN 0–8229–4297–6. Softcover $26.95, 0–8229–5933–X. Edited books often suffer from a variation in the quality of the contributions, weak or missing conceptual/theoretical frameworks, and the absence of a clear focus or coherence. Wenfang Tang and Burkart Holzner seem determined to avoid at least some of these common pitfalls when editing Social Change in Contemporary China: C. K. Yang and the Concept of Institutional Diffusion by providing the contributors with a broad theme (social change in contemporary China) and a conceptual framework (institutional diffusion theory). At the same time, the book is intended as a tribute to C. K. Yang, a noted Chinese sociologist, whose publications (most notably North China Local Market Economy [1944] and Religion in Chinese Society [1961]) have long been considered classics in the study of contemporary Chinese society. To demonstrate the enduring influence of Yang's scholarship, the contributors have been encouraged to build upon Yang's ideas and conceptual frameworks when generating insights in understanding institutional change in contemporary China. At the first glance, Social Change in Contemporary China holds to its promise to deliver a focused and extensive analysis of social institutions and institutional change in China, as well as to highlight the continued relevance of Yang's scholarship. Divided into three parts and fourteen chapters, this edited volume directs readers' attention to Yang's scholarly work and his theory of institutions (part 1), the evolution of public institutions in China (part 2), and Chinese family and community (part 3). In Part 1, Burkart Holzner traces Yang's academic career (chapter 2), while Chong Chor Lau introduces key concepts and findings from Yang's scholarly publications (chapter 3), and Ambrose King and Lizhu Fan focus exclusively on Yang's study of religion in Chinese society (chapter 4). In part 2, Isabelle Thireau and Hua Linshan examine the responses of migrant workers in Shenzhen to the Labor Law (chapter 5); Thomas Rawski looks at the entrepreneurial culture in China (chapter 6); Zhanxin Zhang, Wang Feng, and Tianfu Wang analyze income inequality in urban China (chapters 7 and 8); Ka-Ho Mok investigates the marketization of higher education in China (chapter 9); and Rancee Lee writes about Chinese medicine in Hong Kong (chapter 10). Finally, in part 3, Deborah Davis considers male and female claims to domestic space and property (chapter 11); Yanjie Bian, Deborah Davis, and Shaoguang Wang measure the Chinese family's guanxi networks (chapter 12); Jieming Chen examines intergenerational transfer of resources in urban Chinese families (chapter 13); and Cho-yun Hsu analyzes ritual circles in Taiwan (chapter 14). [End Page 566] Even a cursory glance at the themes of particular chapters suffices to conclude that for a book that purports to reveal "social change in contemporary China," the choice of topics examined is puzzling. Far from attempting to reflect upon an evolution of key dimensions of Chinese society during the post-1978 reform era, the contributors follow their own research agendas, which lead them to scrutinize only selected elements of larger social phenomena. The odd inclusion of analyses of Chinese medicine in Hong Kong and religious circles in Taiwan—at best peripheral to the broad theme of this book—reinforces the impression that these are conference proceedings, rather than a project conceived to deliver a coherent and comprehensive examination of social change in present-day China. It could be argued that the editors—the title notwithstanding—have never intended to present a collection of essays analyzing broad social change in China. This has been done effectively by others (e.g., Stockman 2000, Gamer 2003). Tang's introductory chapter indicates that the book's objective is to extend Yang's concept of institutional diffusion to examine institutional (not social) change in contemporary China as a complex interaction among culture, market, bureaucracy, and modernization (hence the subtitle). Although, as Thireau and Hua pointedly note, the concept of...

Legitimacy and Institutional Change

What explains the nature of institutional change in post-1989 China? Dominant theories of institutional change focus on economic-rationalist, sociopolitical, or historical causes. Yet they have trouble explaining the pattern of institutional change in China. An alternative legitimacy-based perspective is proposed here that provides a more parsimonious and general theory of institutional change for China and potentially for other cases as well.

Adaptive Informal Institutions and Endogenous Institutional Change in China

Under certain circumstances, the etiology of endogenous institutional change lies in the informal coping strategies devised by local actors to evade the restrictions of formal institutions. With repetition and diffusion, these informal coping strategies may take on an institutional reality of their own. The author calls the resulting norms and practicesadaptiveinformal institutions because they represent creative responses to formal institutional environments that actors find too constraining. Adaptive informal institutions may then motivate elites to reform the original formal institutions. This contention is illustrated by three major institutional changes that have occurred in the course of China's private sector development since the late 1970s—the legalization of private enterprise, the admission of capitalists into the Chinese Communist Party, and the amendment of the state constitution to promote the private economy.

Cultural Species and Institutional Change in China

(2006). Cultural Species and Institutional Change in China. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 539-574.

The Puzzle of China's Township–Village Enterprises The Paradox of Local Corporatism in a Dual-Track Economic Transition

This paper seeks to reconcile and synthesize the diverse views about the township–village enterprises (TVEs) and local corporatism in the context of ongoing institutional changes in China as a transition economy. Specifically, I attempt to integrate the economic, political, cultural, and social explanations for TVEs, especially the two competing views of market competition and political corruption. I focus on the puzzle of TVE efficiency as well as the paradox of local corporatism as a government–business partnership with both a positive function of public alliance for wealth creation and a negative function of private collusion for wealth transfer. I argue that the key to both the puzzle of TVEs and the paradox of local corporatism lies in China's dual-track reform paradigm (i.e. a market-for-mass track and a state-for-élite track). Lastly, I discuss the critical implications for theory building and policymaking regarding economic transition in general.

From Land Use Right to Land Development Right: Institutional Change in China's Urban Development

There has been a fundamental institutional change during the transformation from the centrally controlled system to a market-oriented economy in China since the early 1980s. The socialist land use right as an institution of the out-going central planning system became an obstacle to the emerging land market for urban redevelopment, although land leasing as a new institution had created a real estate market primarily for the development of greenfield sites. From a case study of a district in Shanghai, it is discovered that rapid urban land redevelopment since 1992 has been greatly facilitated by the informal institution of a land development right. The land development right unlocks the process of land redevelopment in the central city, while the existing land users' land use right is taken care of during the gradual transition. Land use efficiency is improved to a great extent through land redevelopment to uses of higher productivity. However, the informal and insecure institution of the land development right induces hasty land redevelopment. Assisted by a capricious land use planning regime, the land development right yields sub-optimal development. Clarification of property rights is the goal for further institutional change.

A Study on the Outline History of the Household Responsibility System in Rural China Since 1949: The Organizations, Institutions, and Their Changes

AbstractThe Household Responsibility System has been accepted as the basic institution in rural China since the 1980's and some researchers have proved it more efficient compared with that of the People's Commune System. Unfortunately, few researchers paid attention to the institutional changes that happened before the People's Commune and fewer researchers tried to find the relationship between the Household Responsibility System and the problems that have emerged in recent years. To grasp the whole picture of rural economic institutional changes in China, this paper will focus on the history of the Household Responsibility System before the People's Commune and after the 1980's, and the study tries to prove that: (1) a public property right really needs an appropriate mechanism institution to enforce and fulfill its efficiency, (2) the China Rural Reform based on the Household Responsibility System is the deep-laid reason of the problems which have emerged recently,

Labour Market Reform in China (review)

Reviewed by: Labour Market Reform in China Sarah Cook (bio) Xin Meng. Labour Market Reform in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 238 pp. Hardcover £45.00/$69.95, ISBN 0-521-77126-9. This book examines the main institutional changes in China's labor market during the first two decades of economic reform. It presents a series of analyses of key components of China's segmented labor market—the rural, urban, and migrant- labor sectors. It also examines related issues of enterprise and social-security reform that are essential for a well-functioning labor market. The central thesis of the book is that economic growth has not been accompanied by adequate labor market reforms, particularly within the urban state sector, and that a more systematic restructuring of China's labor arrangements is essential if high growth rates are to be sustained. In developing her argument, the author draws on a series of empirical studies undertaken during the 1990s, using several data sources from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Many of the studies have already been published in some form, mainly as journal articles. A short introductory chapter lays out the pre-reform labor arrangements that produced extreme immobility of labor and disincentives to productivity, and provides the context for assessing how far China has moved in each sector toward a competitive labor market characterized by mobility of labor and rewards to productivity. A "conventional" neoclassical model thus provides the basis for evaluating the extent of China's labor market reforms and the areas where further change is required. Through each piece of analysis the author builds up a picture of different degrees of convergence with the neoclassical model, showing variation from the more competitive labor markets found in the rural agricultural sector to constrained and imperfect urban labor arrangements. The key findings of each chapter are as follows. First, rural agricultural labor markets are reasonably competitive, with evidence of rewards to human capital and with labor supply becoming responsive to changes in wage rates—which was not the case in the pre-reform era. Second, in the rural nonagricultural (Township and Village Enterprise— TVE) sector, wages are related to experience and firm tenure, although the results are less clear for education. For those finding jobs through market channels, however, education is rewarded. Overall, then, the TVE sector retains features that diverge from the expectations of a neoclassical model but with some movement toward greater rewards to productivity. Third, despite the apparent ease of labor mobility between the rural agricultural and nonagricultural sectors, we do not see a convergence of wages between them, a result that is explained by institutional factors and technological dualism. [End Page 216] Turning to the urban labor market, the main problem identified is the constraint on labor mobility, which in turn is posited to reflect more fundamental problems with the state-sector ownership structure. Reforms over the period examined in this book had not led to a productivity-related wage-determination system; instead, overstaffing continued, with wages determined by the profitability of the enterprise rather than labor productivity. The enterprise-linked social-security system was a major barrier to mobility. In terms of rural-urban migration, a significant rural-urban wage gap remains, although with regional variations, and migration remains constrained by institutional factors, including poor information flows. Relaxing these constraints would, in the author's view, lead to significant economic gains. While the findings tell a credible story of a labor market undergoing an uneven transition process, it is perhaps unfortunate that the completion of the book coincided with some major policy changes—to which the author's arguments point. From around 1998, new efforts were initiated to grapple with state-sector restructuring and social-security reform; workers were laid off in much larger numbers; efforts to provide labor-market information and training for alternative forms of employment were dramatically expanded; and there has been a gradual and ongoing dismantling of some of the institutional barriers to migration. While the reforms are far from resolving all the problems highlighted in this volume, China's labor market looks significantly different in 2003 from when many of these analyses were undertaken. At the same...

From propaganda to public relations: Evolutionary change in the Chinese government

With recent institutional changes in China, the Chinese government at all levels seems to attach increasing importance to communicating with publics via public relations. How, then, has public relations been adopted as a governmental communication practice? This study attempts to address this issue through a survey of 68 Chinese government officials from three groups: one from Jiangsu Province, one from Henan Province, and one from the Federations for Women at both central and local governments. The respondents, mostly young and well educated, described their understanding, perception, and application of government public relations in their work within the context of recent transformations in public administration in China. The survey results show an evolutionary change: the Chinese government has moved slowly but surely away from propaganda to public relations. However, whilst these respondents tended to define government public relations as an ideal in terms of relationship building associated with the two‐way symmetric model, in practice, they often handled the media relations by following only the one‐way or asymmetric model.

Spatial configuration in institutional change

This paper examines the institutional changes in China's journalism reforms. These reforms involve the introduction of market forces into news operations without a fundamental change in the communist political system. Situated in this macro environment, journalists, as entrepreneurial actors, transform the internal tensions in the existing journalism institution into resources for carrying out their improvised and innovative practices. By doing so, they reconfigure the institutional space of the party-press system and create a unique dynamic of center versus periphery and front versus back regions in China's party press. Although the paper is based on an observational field study in China, it is written to present a more general argument on the institutional significance of journalistic practices.

The Road to Capitalism: Competition and Institutional Change in China

Wedevelop a theory of institutional change and apply it to analyze China's transition toward capitalism. We focus on how product market competition induces institutional change through the interaction between bureaucrats and managers in regional government-controlled economies. When cross-regional competition is sufficiently intense, each region has to cut production costs. Given that the efforts of managers are not verifiable, local governments may have to grant total or partial residual shares to the managers. In general, intense product competition stimulates the rise of a private property system. We submit our theory to a vigorous empirical test using China's industrial census data of more than 400,000 firms. The test supports strongly our postulation that cross-regional competition is the driving force behind China's transition toward capitalism.J. Comp. Econom., June 2000, 28(2), pp. 269–292. City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong; and Peking University, Beijing, China.

Institutions and Institutional Change in China: Premodernity and Modernization. By Fei-Ling Wang. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. 227p. $65.00.

Institutions and Institutional Change in China: Premodernity and Modernization. By Fei-Ling Wang. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. 227p. $65.00.

Institutions and Institutional Change in China: Premodernity and Modernization (review)

List of Tables and Figures Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Institutions, Institutional Changes and Modernization: A Conceptual Framework Modernization: The Arguments Human Needs, Behaviours and Institutions: An Institutional Approach to the Study of Modernization An Institutional Understanding of Modernity and Modernization Timing and Other Remaining Methodological Issues Summary Notes A Theory on the Patterns of Labour Allocation Labour Allocation Patterns: The Notion The Ideal Types of LAP Summary Notes A Historical Review of the Chinese Domestic Organizational Structure: A Peculiar Premodernity Labour Allocation in China: From Qin to Qing (Third Century B.C.- Nineteenth Century A.D.) The Era of Changes (1840-1949) Leaping Forward to the Past (1949-1978) The Chinese Premodernity: Messages from the Reading of History Summary Notes Institutional Reconfiguration: Labour Allocation Patterns and Chinese Modernization To Observer Chinese Modernization: Assertions and Hypotheses Mixed LAPs in the 1990s: Institutional Continuities and Changes Summary Notes Conclusion: the Dragon Enters the Nets Institutions and Institutional Changes: To Understand Modernization To Emerge from Premodernity: China and the Chinese Modernization The Dragon in the Nets: An Epilogue Notes Appendix. A Methodological Discussion on Chinese Statistical Data Bibliography Index

Reforming state‐market relations in rural China1

AbstractBecause of the political importance of stable and affordable food prices, governments in transitional economies in Europe and Asia fkequently struggle to balance the desire to maintain state controls in the rural sector with the goal of promoting market development and privatizing or commercializing state agencies involved in rural trade or finance. This paper examines institutional change in China's rural state agencies during the reform period, focusing on the conflict between managerial incentives to maximize profits, on the one hand, and implement policy, on the other. We explain the reasons for changing contractual incentives and authority arrangements over time, assess the effects of new institutional forms on economic performance and policy implementation, and consider reform options.

Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine (review)

592 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 seeking to Christianize, modernize, or Westernize China. No, Lian's "converted" missionaries were fundamentalist Christians ofstrong religious convictions. They were also Christians who were liberal and intellectually honest. More importantly, they were open and sensitive people who immersed themselves in Chinese life and drank ofits culture and ways. They respected and reciprocated with Chinese traditions, which became an integral part of themselves. In their years in China they learned and received as well as taught and gave; their horizons were infinitely broadened and their God was inclusively enlarged to embrace all peoples and all cultures. Franklin J. Woo Franklin J. Woo was the director ofthe China Program for the National Council of Churchesfrom 1976 to 1993. DaIi L. Yang. Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. xv, 351 pp. Hardcover $49.50, isbn 0-8047-2557-8. Although China's reforms have already been intensively researched, DaIi L. Yang's study has brought new light to the origin of the institutional changes in China since 1978. Differing from the prevailing interpretation, which associates the rise of rural reform with the Cultural Revolution or with liberal leadership, Yang states that "it was the complex interactions between state and rural society in the context of the Great Leap Famine that determined die patterns of reform" (p. 9). According to Yang, the major components of rural society involve peasants and local cadres (p. 177), and he assumes diat die peasants and basic-level cadres pursue the common interests of a "corporate body." Unlike anthropologists who examine traditional rural society based on a lineage or family-centered community, Yang describes the peasant-cadre society as a society created by the communist state but which challenged the state control. The author thus provides us with a new theoretical framework for studying the mechanism of rural institutional change. y iversi y jj^ Qj1Jj165C government has never published official reports on the "Great Leap Famine," and therefore, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge or confirm the accounts ofa few witnesses, Yang has pulled together different sources. Since some primary materials are still not available, our work of synthesis on this hisofHawai 'i Press Reviews 593 tory cannot be definitive. But Yang's description ofthe calamity and his analysis ofpatterns offamine severity are most valuable. The strongest part ofYang's book is where he writes on the legacies ofthe Great Leap Famine: (1) The Great Leap Famine caused die state to retreat from the extraction ofagricultural products. Here Yang points out that "the major strands ofrural policy during die Cultural Revolution were the legacy ofthe Great Leap Famine rather then the outcome of agrarian radicalism" (p. 119). This pardy explains why the Cultural Revolution had less of an effect on agricultural production in China. (2) The Great Leap Famine furnished the structural incentives for political innovation or reform. After the Famine, peasants practiced different forms ofproduction, and one ofthese, "the household responsibility system, constituted a major component ofthe rural reforms" (p. 97). (3) To promote China's "open door policy" and his economic reforms, Deng Xiaoping insisted diat people should "seek truth from facts." This approach originated with his slogan ofdie 1960s diat "the color of the cat made no difference as long as it catches mice" (p. 89). Yang asserts that the rational-choice method is die best tool that the social sciences have acquired, and he uses it to seek die cause of rural reform in the beliefs and cognitive biases ofleaders and peasants in that period. He offers a powerful argument that "in precipitating the reform, the Great Leap Famine thus served a role for China that is similar to Japan and Germany's defeat in war" (p. 240). Consequently, it could be said that a reform is the reconstruction of rural society after the devastation of "war." The author points out that movements from cognitive change to institutional change, as in the transition from collective agriculture to household farming, "frequentiy involve political struggles, sometimes of a life-and-deadi nature" (pp. 243-244). On the one hand, as...