China’s High Savings Rate Puzzle:Role of Precautionary Saving

Academics have yet to agree on the effectiveness of the precautionary saving theory in explaining Chinese households’saving behavior.With the Wenchuan megaearthquake of 2008 as an uncertain event to overcome the endogeneity problem of income volatility,this paper puts forward a brand-new hypothesis that"an earthquake influences household saving rate through its effects on expected income and the variance of expected income."Then,we employ propensity score matching-difference-in-differences(PSMDID)method,the systematic GMM methods,the synthetic control method,together with instrumental variable method,for an analysis of Chinese Household Income Project(CHIP)and inter-provincial data at the micro and macro levels,respectively.We find that the Wenchuan mega-earthquake was followed by an increase in the variance of household expected income in Sichuan and a significant rise in the household saving rate.Second,social protection is negatively correlated with expected income,and has a significant substitutive relationship with saving rate.This finding indirectly proves that the earthquake’s impact on the household saving rate is subject to the variance of expected income,shedding light on how the precautionary saving motivation works in the real world.

Rural Land Rights in China: Evolution and Case Studies

Constant divisions of rural land rights and contract renegotiations are the hallmark of China’s collective ownership system.Rural land ownership,property and operation systems in China have experienced four stages of evolution:(i)The People’s Communes,which served administrative and economic functions,exercised integrated collective land ownership,property,and operation rights.(ii)Under the system of“threetier ownership with production teams as basic accounting units,”production teams exercised the ownership right over land plots with greater autonomy and were responsible for organizing farm work.(iii)The household contract system has entitled farmers to claim surplus products and turned farm households into the basic unit of agricultural production.Subsequently,the reform of collective ownership has further enhanced farmers’contract rights and separated their operation rights from contract rights.The separation of rural land ownership,contract and operation rights marks a top-down design of the structure of China’s rural land rights after the collective ownership system and the reform of household contract system.By recognizing separate contract and operation rights without changing collective ownership,the separation aims to protect rural land contract and operation rights in accordance with the law.As in the four case studies,Chongzhou,Songjiang,Meitan and Liupanshui have experienced a restructuring of collective ownership,contract and operation rights.Their experience foretells complexities in the future evolution of rural land rights in China.

China Should Learn from Other Nations in Safeguarding Industrial Security

The article examines the current conditions of China’s industrial safety issues from four different perspectives,which include the overall openness of the micro-economy,industrial competitiveness, merger and acquisition by foreign capital and industrial upgrade.It points out six important issues in the process of improving China’s industrial safety.

FORGING A NEW FTA MODEL China and Singapore sign a protocol to upgrade their free trade deal

On November 12,Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong witnessed representatives of their respective governments sign Protocol to Upgrade the Free Trade Agreement in Singapore.The signing of the protocol heralds deepening of economic and trade relations between the two countries-the most important and substantial achievement China has made in the construction of free trade areas.This is also the third upgraded bilateral free trade agreement(FTA)China has signed with foreign partners after agreements with ASEAN and Chile.

Meta-synthetic Strategies for Digital Recordkeeping and Knowledge Utilization： International Trends

With the increasing number of applications and services online, more and more business processes are carried out in a fully integrated digital working environment. To ensure the success of a business and the smart capture and reuse of organizational knowledge, adequate recordkeeping is essential. A review of the related literature indicates that international trends and future directions of recordkeeping awareness, recordkeeping processes and regimes, recordkeeping systems and technologies are moving towards meta-synthetic support in a digital environment at strategic level. However, little has been discussed about specific strategies of meta-synthetic support for digital recordkeeping, and in turn, organizational knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to propose the adoption and adaptation of the ISO/TC 46/SC 11 series of standards and the integrated use of ISO management systems standards （MSSs） as enablers of meta-synthetic strategies to enhance organizational performance and accountability through sustainable digital recordkeeping. The integrated use of ISO MSSs provides ever increasing opportunities for integrated product, process, service, and compliance control. The mechanisms of the above meta-synthetic strategies are collaboration, optimization, innovation, and compliance. The theoretical foundations are the integrated use of life-cycle, continuum and ecosystem theories with multidisciplinary perspectives. The practical outcomes are the support of varied evidence-based collaborations at multiple levels, such as national strategies and plans for digital continuity, knowledge sharing and reuse, open government initiatives, e-government information architecture and services competence building, and enterprise information governance.

Ensuring Both Development and Security: Evolutionary Logic and Contemporary Values

China has always placed great importance on the relationship between development and security. Since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, China has been modifying its approach to security and development to keep pace with domestic and international changes. It has gone through three periods in terms of its approach to development and security—prioritizing security before the launch of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978, prioritizing development between 1978 and the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China(CPC), and gradually enhancing both these two imperatives after the 18th CPC National Congress. Currently, with the once-in-a-century global changes and the increase in traditional and non-traditional security threats, China is confronted with unprecedented external challenges. However, its capability to preserve national security still needs improvement. Based on a clear understanding of the situation, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has proposed a holistic approach to national security, highlighting “ensuring both development and security” as a guideline for China’s socio-economic development and a major principle underlying the CPC’s governance. Thus, it provides guidance, both in theory and in practice, for pursuing the path of national security with Chinese characteristics.

Institutional Quality,Foreign Aid and Economic Growth in Recipient Countries

Foreign aid is an important aspect of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)for enhancing two-way cooperation with BRI countries. Based on the panel data of China’sforeign aid over the period 2000-2014, this paper employs the Worldwide GovernanceIndicators (WGI) to conduct an empirical study on the economic growth effects of China’sforeign aid and recipient countries’ institutional quality with the endogeneity of aid takeninto account. Results of our empirical study suggest that (i) China’s foreign aid, especiallyinfrastructure aid, can effectively promote economic growth in recipient countries;(ii)sound institutional development offers an important assurance for economic growth inrecipient countries;(iii) sample-specific regression reveals that the institutional quality ofrecipient countries can significantly influence the economic growth effects of China’s foreignaid, especially economic infrastructure aid for recipient countries in Asia and Europe.To improve aid effectiveness and quality, China needs to improve aid structure, superviseaid program implementation, and mitigate the impact of institutional risks in recipientcountries.

A Global Family

The 2019 World Economic Forum (WEF)Annual Meeting,'convened in Davos,Switzerland,on January 22-25 under the theme of Globali zation 4.0:Shaping a New Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, brdught together senior government officials,executives from major global com- panies,leaders of international organizations and non-governmental organizations, and other prominent figures for intensive deliberations.

Internationalization of the RMB:An Evaluation Framework

As the Chinese economy continues to develop,China is becoming a more active player in the world economy,and the RMB is being more widely used in international markets.In this paper we use indicators representing the RMB’s functions of pricing,settlement and reserve to create an RMB Internationalization Index(RII)to evaluate the degree of the internationalization of the currency.We calculate the RII levels in 2010 and 2011,and find that the RII increased dramatically during these two years.However,when compared to the currencies of developed countries,the RMB is far from achieving complete internationalization.We propose a"three-step development"strategy for the RMB to be internationalized.

Are foreign monks better at chanting? The effect of ‘airborne’ SDICs on anti-corruption

The independence of supervision agency is of great importance for anti-corruption.After the leadership transition of the provincial Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2006,Secretaries of Discipline Inspection Commission(SDICs)were suddenly dispatched from the centre or transferred from another province in China(‘airborne’SDICs)to enhance their independence in inspecting corruption cases.To investigate the effect of this policy reform,we collect data of SDICs and anti-corruption in 31 provinces from 2003 to 2014,and evaluate this policy using the difference-in-differences econometrics method.We find that there is no significant effect of these‘airborne’SDICs whether from the centre or another province on anti-corruption.This result is robust to different measurements of anti-corruption and subsamples.We argue that the dispatch of external SDICs is not enough to ensure the independence of supervision agency,because local discipline inspection commissions(DICs)are still subject to local Chinese Communist Party committees in terms of personnel,funds and property.This paper has important policy implications for the current anti-corruption campaign in China.

THE STATE OF THE ECONOMY

With China’s political season approaching,how is the economy performing?When China’s top lawmakers and political advisers convene their annual sessions in Beijing in March,the economy will be at the top of their agenda.

Evolution of the Land System between 1921 and 2021

L and is a basic resource for human survival and devel­opment.A country’s land system is a fundamental and comprehensive system that serves as an important founda­tion for production and economic relations.The nature and characteristics of Chinese society mean that the Chinese rev­olution led by the Communist Party of China(CPC),which includes the new democratic revolution and socialist revolu­tion and construction,must rely on the majority of peasants as its driving force.An important way for China to achieve a great development is to win the support of peasants,and the fundamental way to win their support is to solve the land problem.From the very beginning,the CPC made solving peasants’land problem the central issue of the Chinese revo­lution,and it successfully achieved this goal.As Mao Zedong said when answering American journalist Edgar Snow’s ques­tions in Yan’an in 1936,whoever won the farmers would win China and in order to win the support of the peasants for the national cause.

Cultural similarities and housing market linkage： evidence from OECD countries

The subprime crisis provoked a growing study on international housing market linkage. Nevertheless, the extant literature fails to explore housing price co-movements in terms of culture and a country＇s responses （e.g. housing market conditions and government participation）. Employing the databases on cultural similarities, housing market conditions and government participation in 18 OECD countries over 1970-2016, this article suggests that culture similarities affect house price co-movements via information dissemination efficiency and investment conduct consistency. In addition, housing supply elasticity and government participation are able to mitigate house price contagion. Hence, to withstand external shocks, countries should pay attention to the role of cultural similarities in housing price interdependence. Moreover, it is necessary to ensure that housing supply is resilient and improve government participation.

Global Opportunities

The 2019 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting,convened in Davos, Switzerland,on January 21-24 under the theme of Globalization 4.0:Shaping a New Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,brought together senior government officials,executives from major global companies,leaders of international organizations and non-governmental organizations, and other prominent figures for intensive deliberations.

Promoting the Economic Growth through Technological Innovation

Industrialization has fueled China’s economic boom over four decades and set the stage for urbanization.All of its achievements-industrialization,economic growth,and urbanization-should be attributed to China’s reform and opening up.After its launch in 1978,the share of the secondary industry in GDP has been trending down since peaking at 47.56%in 2006(Figure 1),sliding to 39.69%in late 2018.In stark contrast,the urbanization rate chalked up to 59.58%.China is transitioning to a post-industrial stage relative to Western developed economies(industrialized countries).

Development Strategy for Digital Financial Inclusion after COVID-19

Implications of COVID-19 At present,China has achieved a phased victory in its prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic.A review of the entire process reveals that the digital economy made a huge,irreplaceable contribution to the victory against the COVID-19 pandemic,a clear difference from the period of the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in 2003.