Modernizing China

China is at a critical juncture in its economic transformation as it tries to rebalance what is generally seen as an exhausted growth model. A unifying theme across the reforms that will deliver this transformation is that it can no longer be achieved by raising the amount of physical investment and government direction of resource allocation. Instead China is building a new set of policy frameworks that will allow markets to function more effectively—not unfettered markets, but markets that work efficiently, in line with broad social and other policy goals, and in a sustainable way. Hence, China is now building a new soft infrastructure, that is, the institutional plumbing that underpins and guides the functioning of markets as the key organizing principle toward achieving sustained economic and social progress. Against this background, this volume provides policymakers, academics, and the public with valuable information about policies and institutions in China today. It also looks at the road ahead and key principles that can help China in navigating it. The book focuses on issues crucial in the country’s transformation, such as tax policy and administration, social security, state-owned enterprise reform, medium-term expenditure frameworks, the role of local government finances, capital account liberalization, and renminbi internationalization. As China moves toward a more price-based allocation of resources, strengthening monetary policy frameworks and financial sector regulation will be particularly important in channeling resources to the most productive sectors and minimizing the risks of financial sector stress. Also, upgrading statistical frameworks will be critical for macroeconomic policymaking and investors. Visit : http://www.elibrary.imf.org/page/modernizing-china

Amid early twentieth-century China’s epochal shifts, a vital and prolific commercial publishing industry emerged. Recruiting late Qing literati, foreign-trained academics, and recent graduates of the modernized school system to work as authors and editors, publishers produced textbooks, reference books, book series, and reprints of classical texts in large quantities at a significant profit. Work for major publishers provided a living to many Chinese intellectuals and offered them a platform to transform Chinese cultural life. In The Power of Print in Modern China, Robert Culp explores the world of commercial publishing to offer a new perspective on modern China’s cultural transformations. Culp examines China’s largest and most influential publishing companies—Commercial Press, Zhonghua Book Company, and World Book Company—during the late Qing and Republican periods and into the early years of the People’s Republic. He reconstructs editors’ cultural activities and work lives as a lens onto the role of intellectuals in cultural change. Examining China’s distinct modes of industrial publishing, Culp explains the emergence of the modern Chinese intellectual through commercial and industrial processes rather than solely through political revolution and social movements. An original account of Chinese intellectual and cultural history as well as global book history, The Power of Print in Modern China illuminates the production of new forms of knowledge and culture in the twentieth century.

This volume of ten essays on Modernizing China discusses crucial issues on: China's economic policies, State-Church relationship, environmental problems, the Four Modernizations, the role of new economic zones, China's perception of external threats, the role of intellectuals, the status of art policy, and the rights of women in society. These essays examine changes taking place in modern China. Will these changes lead to a pluralistic, less-oppressive open society or will they strengthen the hardliners in consolidating their power? What about the future of China after Deng? The volume attempts to generate intellectual debate on these issues. Contributors are Cheryl L. Brown, Paul Chao, Chu-Yuan Cheng, NarNarayan Das, Steven Haverkamp, Ouyang Kang, Arthur Mu-sen Kao, James T. Myers, Dhirendra K. Vajpeyi, Ranbir Vohra, and Taifa Yu.

A widespread conviction in the need to rescue China’s children took hold in the early twentieth century. Amid political upheaval and natural disasters, neglected or abandoned children became a humanitarian focal point for Sino-Western cooperation and intervention in family life. Chinese academics and officials sought new scientific measures, educational institutions, and social reforms to improve children’s welfare. Successive regimes encouraged teachers to shape children into Qing subjects, Nationalist citizens, or Communist comrades. In Raising China’s Revolutionaries, Margaret Mih Tillman offers a novel perspective on the political and scientific dimensions of experiments with early childhood education from the early Republican period through the first decade of the People’s Republic. She traces transnational advocacy for child welfare and education, examining Christian missionaries, philanthropists, and the role of international relief during World War II. Tillman provides in-depth analysis of similarities and differences between Nationalist and Communist policy and cultural notions of childhood. While both Nationalist and Communist regimes drew on preschool institutions to mobilize the workforce and shape children’s political subjectivity, the Communist regime rejected the Nationalists’ commitment to the modern, bourgeois family. With new insights into the roles of experts, the cultural politics of fundraising, and child welfare as a form of international exchange, Raising China’s Revolutionaries is an important work of institutional and transnational history that illuminates the evolution of modern concepts of childhood in China.

China’s emergence as a global economic superpower, and as a major regional military power in Asia and the Pacific, has had a major impact on its relations with the United States and its neighbors. China was the driving factor in the new strategy the United States announced in 2012 that called for a “rebalance” of U.S. forces to the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, China’s actions on its borders, in the East China Sea, and in the South China Sea have shown that it is steadily expanding its geopolitical role in the Pacific and having a steadily increasing impact on the strategy and military developments in other Asian powers.

Written by one of the most distinguished experts on China's economic and business history, China and Capitalism provides a highly original and at the same time clear and readable approach to understanding the development of business in China from 1500 to the 1990s. David Faure then uses the picture he has assembled to shed new light on the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese business today. The book is written to be accessible to people with little background in China or Chinese business practice. Dr Faure describes three phases in the development of Chinese business from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. In the traditional phase, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Chinese business relied on contracts as well as on ritual propriety. In the modernizing phase, from the second half of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese business had to adapt to the introduction of company law and legal standards of accounting. In the contemporary phase, from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day, China emerged from a control economy to a vibrant market by embracing once again the changes introduced in the modernizing phase. General readers, including students and teachers in courses touching on but not primarily devoted to the Chinese experience, will find in this book the most comprehensive account of China's business development in the last five centuries and many insights into the workings of China's modern business scene. Specialist readers will find a highly original approach to the history of business in China.

Annotation The most thorough overview of the Chinese defense programs and Sino-American military relations by a leading authority.

Since the death of Mao, China has entered a new period in its development. Turning away from the all-encompassing emphasis on revolutionary struggle and ideological transformation that characterized the last years of the Maoist era, China's leaders under Deng Xiaoping have initiated dramatic new reform and development policies. In original essays, the contributors, all senior specialists on contemporary China, analyze the reasons for the new policies, the nature and impact of the changes now occurring, and the prospects for a continuation of these policies in the future. Specifically, they examine the Chinese polity as a "consultative authoritarian" system, the farreaching changes in China's agriculture, important shifts in foreign economic relations, the gradual modernization policy pursued by its military leaders, the relaxation of controls on cultural life, and the possibility that current social policies may well increase equality rather than inequality in Chinese society. The authors conclude that it is too early to judge the eventual, long-term outcome of current reforms, which they believe grew out of the political crises and chronic economic problems that afflicted China in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although they see some opposition and built-in limits to reform, on balance they foresee strong support for continued reform and believe it will be difficult for future leaders to reverse course.

A wide-ranging and accessibly written guide to the key aspects of elite and popular culture in contemporary China.

This book is a richly textured social and cultural study exploring the profound effects and lasting repercussions of superimposing Western-derived models of repentance and rehabilitation on traditional categories of crime and punishment.