Suchergebnisse

Ch'en I-tzu (Chen Yizi) is one of the major architects of mainland China's reform in the 1980s. He played an extremely important role in restructuring the dynamics of life in mainland China, particularly in villages. After the Tiananmen incident, Chen went into exile at Princeton, New Jersey. The article looks at his political career and how he became a dissident. (DÜI-Sen)

The Three Gorges project, one of the largest construction plans in Chinese history, is once again on the agenda of mainland China's state council. In July 1990, more than seventy scientists and experts met at a conference supported by the State Council to appraise the plan to build the world's largest dam in the Three Gorges area. The author outlines the differences of opinion over the major technical issues of the Three Gorges plan and looks at the post-1986 development of the project. (DÜI-Sen)

The importance of international trade to the Chinese economy has been growing since the formal approval of the open-door policy at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1978. However, trade expansion in China faces three constraints. First, there is the theoretical problem that orthodox ideology makes it illegitimate for a socialist country to have a large foreign trade sector. Secondly, there is the institutional problem that the Soviet-type foreign trade mechanism, characterized by a state monopoly of foreign trade, a centralized foreign trade plan, and insulation of domestic from foreign prices, is incapable of handling trade expansion in an efficient manner. Thirdly, there is the economic problem that the lack of competitiveness of domestic goods in the international market limits the country's export and thus import capacity. While the new Chinese leaders are making immense efforts to remove these constraints, this article will focus only on the first. The anti-trade attitude of Communist China is the combined result of China's historical heritage and Marxist ideology. The long history of self-sufficiency in "feudal" China meant that trade was never an imperative economic need. When contact with the west increased in the 19th century, international trade was associated with an influx of opium, an outflow of silver, and a series of unequal treaties. Such an unhappy, early experience of contact with the west has left China sensitive to any increase in international trade.

The paper deals with following topics: early conceptions of trade in Communist China and the need for theoretical changes, self-reliance as the guiding principle in China's foreign trade during Mao's era, controversies in the country over unequal trade, comparison between the Chinese and the Eastern European debates concerning foreign trade etc. According to the author, the current debate among Chinese international trade theorists seems to have reached the conclusion that mutual gains are obtainable from trade. (DÜI-Sen)

Since the 1980s, there has been a global wave of transfer of state assets to private hands. China is a relatively late participant of this worldwide trend, yet, in the last decade it has emerged as one of the largest privatizing countries. Shu-Yun Ma argues that China's privatization is not based on any grand blueprint; rather, it is privatization by "groping for stones to cross the river", a well-known metaphor often attributed to Deng Xiaoping, meaning that the reform simply proceeds on a trial-and-error basis without being guided by any theory

In 1995, relics of the royal palace of the ancient Nanyue Kingdom were, for the first time, excavated in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong in southern People's Republic of China. As the site is situated at the very business center of the city, preservation of the relics at the original location would be highly costly. Conflict thus emerged between archaeological consideration & economic calculation. In the end, the Guangzhou Municipal Government decided to preserve the relics, though at huge compensation & displacement cost. The case leads us to the question of how could an intergenerational, non-factor-attracting public good (relic preservation) be provided by an economic-oriented local government (Guangzhou)? This article will tackle the question using public choice's individualistic approach. It will explain the political logic of the case in terms of the emergence of a new civil service system in the People's Republic of China. Some theoretical implications of such approach will be considered. 1 Table, 1 Map, 58 References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractAn enduring question with regard to the voluntary sector is how it can nurture civic engagement and provide public goods. A World Heritage listing for Penang highlights this question by revealing a vibrant civil society network that has made heritage conservation an issue for public discourse and policy agenda. This paper discusses how the marginalized trajectory of Penang is related to the development of its civic realm, social cohesion and local identity, which are sources of Penang's voluntarism. It then examines the engagement pattern of the Penang Heritage Trust, a leading association, which has mounted resistance against the state's failure in heritage provision. This bottom-up approach has preserved Penang's cultural heritage and associated identity, and reveals the distinct nature and capacity of Penang's voluntary sector that goes against the general pattern in Malaysia.