China's capital market has continued to open up to the world despite disruptions. In the stock market, opening up involves the Shanghai-Hong Kong and the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect schemes. In the exchange rate market, renminbi joined the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights basket in 2015. In July 2017, China and Hong Kong launched the "Bond Connect" programme. In the near future the focus of capital account liberalisation is likely on the bonds market.
After the 2008 financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund realises that reforms are needed to reduce the reliance on the US dollar as the only international reserve currency. It began to nurture super-sovereign reserve money where SDR (Special Drawing Rights) is the most favourable candidate. Joining SDR will push forward China's exchange rate reform to meet the standard of a real international reserve currency, which requires more skilful domestic and international policy coordination.
Several factors contributed to China's market crash in 2015. One was the use of leverage trading. This includes both official margin trading as well as trading through various unofficial channels. The other was the introduction of the stock index future. Commercial banks were heavily involved in stock trading in this crash, mainly through providing leverages. The latest stock market fluctuations have taught the Chinese government several valuable lessons.
The Stock Connect scheme launched on 17 November 2014 was the first mutual market access between mainland China and Hong Kong stock markets. It is the biggest move ever in the opening up of the capital market. Experiences accumulated will be of great value to mainland regulators who will decide on how these experiences could be utilised for China's future opening up of its capital markets and for accelerating renminbi internationalisation.
China's shadow banking is intimately related to commercial banks, local government debt and real estate development. The major expansion in local government debt is the result of a boom in shadow banking and worsened by real estate developers. The growth of the Chinese economy largely lies on the continuous rise of land prices. The imposition of proper regulation is for shadow banking to serve the function of supplementing the current financial sector.
Purpose Trade-offs that involve secular values of money and sacred human values are often seen as taboo. This paper aims to examine how consumers avoid making taboo trade-offs with anthropomorphized products, by choosing options that ensure the well-being of the humanized products, even at a financial cost to themselves.
Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted five experiments, across different marketplace contexts (i.e. repairing, buying and selling), to test the broad generalizability of the extent to which consumers are willing to incur a financial cost due to concern for the well-being of anthropomorphized products.
Findings The results reveal that consumers are willing to accept financially inferior options to protect the humanness endowed upon anthropomorphized products. The effect is mediated by consumers' concern for the treatment of the anthropomorphized product. The effect is moderated by consumers' trait empathy level, such that those low in empathy are willing to sacrifice human value for the sake of greater financial gain.
Research limitations/implications Future research could examine, in the context of anthropomorphized products, if there are types of human values that are less inviolable, leading consumers to be more willing to trade them off for monetary gains.
Practical implications The findings have direct implications for second-hand markets. For potential buyers of anthropomorphized products, they should signal concern for the product; for sellers, anthropomorphizing their products can reduce haggling behavior. From a sustainability perspective, consumers may be more motivated to repair or recycle their products if it is framed as "infusing new life" into their products.
Originality/value This work highlights a novel effect of anthropomorphism: when marketplace decisions are involved, anthropomorphizing a product can introduce a tension between secular monetary values and sacred human values. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this work is the first to show that consumers are willing to incur a monetary loss to protect the humanness of anthropomorphized product, driven by their concern for the proper treatment of such humanized products.
Purpose Natural environments and imagery are known to have a myriad of effects on people's physical and psychological states. However, little is known about how exposure to nature-related imagery can influence consumers' motivational states. This research investigates the effect of exposure to nature on consumers' regulatory focus. More specifically, this paper proposes that consumers exposed to nature will exhibit stronger promotion-oriented focus and weaker prevention-oriented focus, and as such, these consumers will prefer promotion-framed marketing messages over prevention-framed ones. This paper aims to explore a mediating mechanism and a boundary condition for this effect.
Design/methodology/approach A series of six experiments, including an Implicit Association Test, examined the effect of exposure to images of natural objects and scenes (in contrast with non-nature imagery) on consumers' regulatory focus and whether they experienced regulatory fit when encountering promotion-framed (vs prevention-framed) advertising messages.
Findings The results revealed that consumers exhibited lower prevention-focused and higher promotion-focused motivational orientation after exposure to nature. Furthermore, exposure to nature led consumers to experience more regulatory fit with promotion-oriented marketing messages than prevention-oriented ones. This study found that natural environments offer urban consumers a reprieve from their day-to-day life, which mediates the effect of exposure to nature on regulatory focus. This study investigated the boundary condition of engaging in maintenance of nature (e.g. mow the grass) in which the effects of nature on regulatory focus were attenuated.
Research limitations/implications This study used text and pictures related to nature as a way to expose the online participants to nature. Future research may use field studies with participants in real natural settings, with expectation of stronger effects. Second, this study examined mostly urban American participants. There may be cultural differences or living situations (e.g. living "off the grid" and in the "wild") that influence people's relationship with nature. Future research may examine how these differences can affect the influence of exposure to nature on motivational orientation.
Practical implications The findings have direct implications for marketing managers and other related stakeholders. Exposing urban consumers to nature – even images of nature – they become more receptive to promotion-framed advertisements and marketing communications (vs prevention-framed messaging).
Originality/value Little is currently known about how exposure to nature can influence psychological processes such as motivational orientation. This research contributes to the understanding of consumers' responses to nature-related imagery in advertising and the effect that nature imagery has on consumers' motivational orientation. This research also contributes to the body of work on regulatory focus by identifying a novel context in which consumers' motivational orientation can be influenced.
The Chinese government reiterated its commitment to proactive fiscal and prudent monetary policies. Since 2014, the central bank has taken measures to loosen money supply as the economy faces growing downward pressure. The leadership strives to maintain modest growth while facilitating economic restructuring. For the central bank, besides maintaining an accommodating monetary environment, it is asked to achieve better credit allocation among sectors. Numerous new innovative policy tools have been experimented.
China has taken a series of proactive measures to prevent and control air pollution. The Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (2013) includes main policy initiatives to improve national and regional air quality. Fiscal reforms are needed to fund clean-air technology and incentivise firms and households to reduce pollution and economise energy use. The War on Smog requires high-level coordination of governments at different levels and various local jurisdictions.
"This book examines the recent development and prospect of the Chinese economy as the country adapts to changing domestic and external settings. After more than three decades of near double-digit annual expansion, the country's growth decelerated considerably to enter a new era of the so-called New Normal. At the macro level, considerable amount of overhaul is required to improve governance and enhance regulatory effectiveness. These include monetary policy adjustment, financial sector development and taxation reforms. As the Chinese government at both the central and local levels plays an important role in promoting growth, issues such as the role of local government and the reform of state-owned enterprises are examined in this book. Topics such as the development of private consumption and industrial upgrading are also assessed. The book discusses several matters considered important to China's social and economic cohesion including the management of agricultural product reserves, the development of a functioning social security system and regional development. To help project a long-term view of China's economic strength, the book also examines such factors as development in population and the labour market. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of China's economy and identifies the recent developments that matter to China's economic future."--Publisher's website.
There are two monetary puzzles in post-2008 China—the money multiplier had risen considerably in magnitude and the rapidly expanding money supply, M2, has not led to a surge in consumer price index (CPI). To untangle the puzzles, the authors relaxed some of the assumptions in the conventional quantity theory of money (QTM) and introduced endogeneity into the money multiplier, taking into account the rapid expansion of shadow banking. This unveils a mechanism that links monetary authority and credit allocation among sectors. An important policy implication is that controlling the relative size of shadow banking can help improve the effectiveness of China's monetary policies. (CIJ/GIGA)
