Growth, trade, currency, labour and the structural shifts driving China's economy. 70 articles from 2003 to 2022.
The early 1980s saw the first glimpses of China's domestic reforms and interactions with people and economies outside China. This loosening was dangerous territory for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which...
This is an edited version of the original book review published in the U.S. China Perception Monitor , November 15, 2021. https://uscnpm.org/2021/11/15/review-desmond-shums-red-roulette/ Book Review: Desmond...
This article is based on a presentation given to the International Club of Atlanta on December 7, 2021. Putting aside the political noise (as much as possible), both China and the U.S. face similar threats and...
The security and economic landscape in the Indo-Pacific is increasingly difficult to navigate. While trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the...
Every year since the death of Mao, it has become increasingly clear that China is on the rise and likely – though never certain – to emerge as a superpower. These four-and-a-half decades were not without...
On September 3, 2015, the Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and The World Anti-Fascist War military parade was underway...
Introduction Business Angels (BAs) are typically high net worth businessmen and women who invest both their personal money and time in high-growth potential, unlisted, early-stage ventures. The BA investment...
1. Introduction Although the relationship between China and Myanmar goes far back in history, the energy relationship between two countries is quite new. Myanmar became the first non-Communist country to...
Two years ago, I flew back to a small town in Minnesota, the unlikely place that sparked my interest in China more than two decades ago. I went to see friends and former professors, and learn about the...
Editor’s note: Dr. Barry Naughton, the China Research Center’s 2020 annual lecturer, sat down for a wide-ranging interview with China Currents Managing Editor Penelope Prime and Center associates John Garver...
Introduction Ethiopia has emerged as one of China’s closest political and economic partners in China’s wider engagement in Africa. In exchange for infrastructure development and support in its ambitions for...
Introduction COVID-19 has proven to be a great disruptor. First it caused the national shutdown of China as factory after factory turned the lights off, sending Western firms scrambling for goods of all kinds...
The COVID-19 pandemic has done more than cause the Chinese economy to contract. It also raised the real possibility of China decoupling economically from other parts of the world and dealt a blow to the China...
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He after signing the trade agreement. AP Photo/Evan Vucci Penelope B. Prime , Georgia State University U.S. President Donald Trump signed a...
This essay is a reflection of what I wrote five years ago on the Decisions of the 11th Party Congress’ 3rd Plenum of China’s Communist Party in 2013 (Liu, 2014). In the original essay, I pointed out that the...
Centuries before President Donald Trump began withdrawing from multilateral trade agreements and retreating from international leadership roles, while promising to build a “big, beautiful wall,” there was...
Imagine this: Sitting in your living room in Shanghai or Beijing, you realize that the final Game of Thrones season is a week away. You decide to splurge on upgrading your entertainment system so you can host...
China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative is perhaps the most ambitious development plan ever devised by any nation-state. Plans call for trillions of dollars to be invested in roads, railways, and ports to...
Introduction Metersbonwe is a company with humble beginnings. In true rags-to-riches form, founder Zhou Chengjian created a brand that is now a household name across the country. Now, he is looking outward...
This piece was first published by All China Review . The history of Chinese advertising in the broad sense can be traced back to the Song dynasty when stores used signs and words to advertise services (Wang...
Dr. Penelope Prime, Director of the China Research Center, interviewed Dr. Lei Fang on October 18, 2016, about intellectual property right (IPR) protection in China, and the new trend of Chinese companies...
Penelope B. Prime , Georgia State University Chinese goods seem to be everywhere these days. Consider this: At the Olympics in Rio this summer, Chinese companies supplied the mascot dolls, much of the sports...
A review of China’s Future? David Shambaugh, London: Polity Press, 2016. John W. Garver, Emeritus Professor Georgia Institute of Technology A leading U.S. authority on China’s politics, David Shambaugh of...
Chinese Companies Invest in the U.S.: Cross-Cultural Challenges from a Tax Consulting Perspective Center Director, Penelope Prime, spoke with Mitchell Kopelman, Tax Practice Group Director, and Wendy Lu, Tax...
China has amazed the world once again, not with economic growth, but with the closing of its education gap. There has been tremendous transformation in Chinese education over the past three decades. With the...
Macau, first established in 1557 and the oldest former European colony in East Asia, is again facing challenges to its recently established status as the world’s largest gambling center. Enormous revenues...
The Fall of Chinese Courtyard Houses China’s rapid economic growth coupled with an unprecedented level of real estate development have resulted in an almost wholesale destruction of traditional siheyuan (四合院)...
The allegation of child labor did not exactly fit the picture I was looking at — a photo of a toddler sitting next to a box with my client’s logo on it. Accompanying the photo, a whistleblowing email from the...
The new documentary film “The Land of Many Palaces” examines planned urbanization in China from the vantage point of Ordos in Inner Mongolia. Ordos is a vast, newly built city populated by people who have...
“Unrealistic Expectations” On September 29, 2013, China officially opened the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, or FTZ, an outwardly ambitious project to bring a new wave of foreign investment and reduction in...
One issue that stands out in the Decision concerns the relationship between market forces and the power of government in the Chinese economy. In previous government statements or reports, the market was...
Reforming the Financial Industry The Eighteenth Party Congress’ Third Plenary Session’s Decision of November 2013 lists a new round of financial reforms aimed at introducing more market forces into the...
China’s Currency Reforms from a Banker’s Perspective: A Conversation with Henry Yu, Managing Director of Fifth Third Bank, Atlanta, Georgia. Introduction As China’s economy moves ever closer to surpassing the...
The South China Morning Post headline jumped out at me: Steel Princess ’ s trading company in liquidation . I leaned a little closer to my neighbor on Hong Kong’s Star Ferry to read over his shoulder. The...
China’s political leaders are grasping for ways to clean up a notoriously polluted environment without sidetracking economic growth plans. For longtime observers of the East Asia scene, this evokes a sense of...
China’s accomplishments in economic modernization, urbanization, industrialization, and science and technology are legion. The question to which China watchers, as well as the Chinese state, have now turned is...
Urbanization has been the new buzzword in China ever since the opening of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (NCCPC) in November 2012. Former President Hu Jintao’s report outlined the...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being currently negotiated by eleven economies from both sides of the Pacific is an exceptional trade agreement in its ambitious coverage of issues and the emphasis on new...
Introduction Chinese policymakers are considering reforms to open China’s equity markets to foreign capital. A proposed International Board would allow both foreign firms and China’s domestic private firms to...
The rhetoric about China’s faults vis-à-vis the challenges facing the U.S. continues to escalate. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama chose to lead the attack, blaming China for some portion of our...
Introduction As the U.S. presidential election draws nearer and the People’s Republic of China also faces a year of leadership change, the issue of Chinese currency revaluation has garnered an increasing...
China has achieved remarkable economic success since Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reforms in the late 1970s. For more than three decades, China’s GDP growth rate averaged 10% per year, accompanied by...
Introduction One of the most controversial macroeconomic issues of this decade is the question of how China has run such massive trade surpluses and has accumulated so much in foreign reserves over the past 20...
In the waning days of their colonial existence, Hong Kong and Macau were like mismatched cousins. Hong Kong was a roaring entrepôt of commerce while Macau was a sleepy backwater sustained mainly by gambling...
China’s successes have created new demands on its political culture, economy, and global role. The five articles in this issue each touch on some aspect of these new demands. Liang Yao argues that China’s...
Introduction China's vast rural areas and lesser known cities have become a focus of attention both for China's banking industry and foreign banks. A major signal of this trend came in 2010, when AgBank of...
Introduction Since the advent of economic reform in China, the Chinese government has channeled most of its resources to the development of its coastal provinces. Northwestern China has lagged behind in...
Education reform in China has reached a new and crucial stage. The driving force is the need to produce an increasingly knowledgeable workforce equipped to handle the challenges of an economy that is not only...
Xi'an, famed for its Terracotta Warriors of ancient times and as a strategic interior location in Maoist China, is rising again, as a provider of producer services. Historic Roots Xi'an's importance as the...
Shanghai Spatial Development Shanghai, the giant “Head of the Dragon” at the mouth of the Yangtze River Delta, supports a population of over 20 million that more than doubled over the previous 20 years. Its...
China’s stunning economic growth since 1978 has resulted in a ten-fold increase in real GDP per capita, with an average annual growth rate of 8.6% in the past three decades (China Statistical Yearbook, 2008)...
China is both a partner and a rival depending on the venue and issue. Both the U.S. and China have benefited from their economic interactions via trade and investment--probably China has benefited more simply...
Within walking distance of the Beijing community where I live is a strip of road brightly lined with seasonal flowers and plants from late March to October - the outdoor plant market. I have purchased my...
China saves, the U.S. consumes-or so the headlines say. Many analysts (including this author) have written about China’s high savings rates and therefore low consumption, which reinforces China’s dependence on...
As China celebrates 30 years since the starting point of Deng Xiaoping’s economic and political reforms, the Southern Center for International Studies and the China Research Center held a joint program to...
In recent years, but especially since the 1990s, the U.S. and China have become increasingly economically interdependent. For most of that time, both economies have been doing well, and for much of it, growing...
China’s new labor contract law, adopted by the National People’s Congress in June 2007 and put into force in January 2008, is a landmark in the effort to achieve better labor standards in the country. It can...
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games offered a spectacular demonstration of the success and prosperity achieved by Chinese reform policies that opened the door to the outside world. However, as China enjoys...
China's Economy & Financial Market Context In 1980, as Chinese reforms were just getting under way, the country's gross national income amounted to 9% of the figure reported by the United States. Last year...
Local-central government relations are a hot issue in China today. Many problems result from fuzzy division of responsibilities and the difficulty of designing incentives to achieve multiple goals. These...
With world leaders acknowledging that innovation will be the well-spring of economic development in the 21st Century, over one hundred participants from places as distant as New Delhi, Beijing, and Jerusalem...
On 27 February 2007, Chinese equity markets fell almost 9%. Hours later other global markets plunged far and fast, including those in Europe and the U.S. Such a link between China’s equity markets and others...
It seems axiomatic that vibrant economies are driven by innovation and that innovation can be taught and nurtured in schools and colleges. Certainly, world leaders have embraced these notions. Early in 2006...
Two weeks of travel by hired vehicle in Xinjiang during June-July 2006 left a deep impression of rapid development underway in China’s westernmost region. Very large amounts of money are clearly being poured...
In 1979, China initiated a landmark economic reform and opening-up policy with the aim of transforming a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy. Since then the nation has sustained a high economic...
A major part of China’s current reform efforts involves strengthening the financial system and re-structuring and re-capitalizing, or selling, most of the companies still owned by various levels of government...
Proclamation of China’s “Great Western Development” policy ( Xi Bu Da Kaifa ) in June 1999 signaled a major escalation in resources and attention focused on decreasing the development gap between the east...
In the summer of 2004 and now almost two years after the 16 th Communist Party Congress of November, 2002 affirmed a succession of leadership in China with a new team drawn from the younger fourth generation...
As first proclaimed in 1999, China’s policy of encouraging development in its western provinces continues to receive attention from analysts to assess the impact of central government economic incentives to...
One of the great challenges facing China in its drive for sustained economic growth is the question of how to integrate the assets and employees of state-owned enterprises into a liberalizing economy. The...
Quarterly essays on greater China by scholars who study the region closely, plus notice of our Atlanta events. Published continuously since 2002.