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2. When Dragons and Kangaroos Trade: China's Rapid Economic Growth and Its Implications for China and Australia
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Jun Yang, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 02-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- China's economy has experienced remarkable growth since economic reforms were initiated in the late 1970s and pushed forward by a number of complementary policies. Since the mid-1980s, rural township and village-owned enterprises (TVEs) development; measures to provide a better market environment through domestic market reform; fiscal and financial expansions; the devaluation of exchange rate; trade liberalisation; the expansion of special economic zones to attract foreign direct investment (FDI); the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform; agricultural market liberalisation, and many other reforms have all contributed to China's economic growth. In response, the annual growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) was about nearly 10% in 1979–2004 (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2005).
- Topic:
- Agriculture and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, Australia, and Australia/Pacific
3. Village Elections, Public Goods Investments and Pork Barrel Politics, Chinese-style
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Renfru Luo, Linxiu Zhang, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- A key issue in political economy concerns the accountability that governance structures impose on public officials and how elections and representative democracy influences the allocation of public resources. In this paper we exploit a unique survey data set from nearly 2450 randomly selected villages describing China's recent progress in village governance reforms and its relationship to the provision of public goods in rural China between 1998 and 2004. Two sets of questions are investigated using an empirical framework based on a theoretical model in which local governments must decide to allocate fiscal resources between public goods investments and other expenditures. First, we find evidence—both in descriptive and econometric analyses—that when the village leader is elected, ceteris paribus, the provision of public goods rises (compared to the case when the leader is appointed by upper level officials). Thus, in this way it is possible to conclude that democratization—at least at the village level in rural China—appears to increase the quantity of public goods investment. Second, we seek to understand the mechanism that is driving the results. Also based on survey data, we find that when village leaders (who had been elected) are able to implement more public projects during their terms of office, they, as the incumbent, are more likely to be reelected. In this way, we argue that the link between elections and investment may be a rural China version of pork barrel politics.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Government, Political Economy, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- China
4. The Role of Agriculture in China's Development: Past Failures, Present Successes and Future Challenges
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Keijiro Otsuka, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- The view toward agricultural and rural development in the modern world has changed dramatically in the past several decades. Traditionally, agriculture was thought of an inferior partner in development. Since the size of the sector falls during development, it was logically considered that it could be ignored. Why is that leaders would ever want to invest in a sector that shrinking? Some academics urged policy makers to treat agriculture like a black box from which resources could be costlessly extracted (Lewis, 1954). All investment was supposed to be targeted at the industry and the cities. As a low productivity sector, it did not deserve investment.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
5. Irrigation Water Pricing Policy in China
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Richard Howitt, and Jinxia Wang
- Publication Date:
- 02-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- As water becomes scarcer in northern China, designing policies that can induce water users to save water has become one of the most important tasks facing China's leader. Past water policies may not be a solution for the water scarcity problem in the long run. This paper looks at a new water policy: increasing water prices so as to provide water users with direct incentives to save water. Using a methodology that allows us to incorporate the resource constraints, we are able to recover the true price of water with a set of plot level data. Our results show that farmers are quite responsive if the correct price signal is used, unlike estimates of price elasticities that are based on traditional methods. Our estimation results show that water is severely under priced in our sample areas in China. As a result, water users are not likely to respond to increases in water prices. Thus as the first step to establishing an effective water pricing policy, policy makers must increase water price to the level of VMP so that water price reflects the true value of water, the correct price signal. Increases in water prices once they are set at the level of VMP, however, can lead to significant water savings. However, our analysis also shows that higher water prices also affect other aspects of the rural sector. Higher irrigation costs will lower the production of all crops, in general, and that of grain crops, in particular. Furthermore, when facing higher irrigation costs, households suffer income losses. Crop income distribution also worsens with increases in water prices.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, and Environment
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
6. Water User Associations and the Evolution and Determinants of Management Reform: A Representative Look at Northern China
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 02-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- Increasing demand for China's limited water resources (across China, but mostly in northern China) from rapidly growing industry, urban populations and agriculture implies potentially dire consequences for the sustainability of water use and drastic changes in cultivation patterns (Zhang, 2001). Problems in the water sector also have significant implications for China's future trade position in key crops and may affect the income of the farming sector (Huang et al., 1999).
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
7. Information, Incentives and Institutions: Experimenting with Private-Public Partnerships to Link the Poor with Modern Supply Chains
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Johan Swinnen, Marcel Fafchamps, Tom Reardon, Bart Minten, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 03-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- To lift more than 10,000 farmers directly out of poverty by developing new Best-Practice Models for linking the poor to modern supply chains and after scaling up by our private and public partners to lift more than 1 million farmers out of poverty.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Non-Governmental Organization, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa, China, India, Asia, Senegal, and Madagascar
8. Water price policy analysis in China:An experimental approach
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, Jun Xia, Scott Rozelle, and Dean Karlan
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- Water scarcity is one of the key problems that affect northern China, an area that covers 40 percent of the nation's cultivated area and houses almost half of the population. The water availability per capita in North China is only around 300 m per capita, which is less than one seventh of the national average (Ministry of Water Resources, 2002). At the same time, expanding irrigated cultivated area, the rapidly growing industrial sector and an increasingly wealthy urban population demand rising volumes of water (Crook, 2000, Wang, et al., 2005). As a result, groundwater resources are diminishing in large areas of northern China (Wang, et al., 2005). For example, between 1958 and 1998, groundwater levels in the Hai River Basin fell by up to 50 meters in some shallow aquifers and by more than 95 meters in some deep aquifers (Ministry of Water Resource, et al., 2001).
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Environment, Government, and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- China