This open access book explores one of the most fiercely debated issues in China: if and how China will surpass the middle income trap that has plagued many developing countries for years. This book gives readers a clear picture of China today and acts as a reference for other developing countries. China is facing many setbacks and experiencing an economic slowdown in recent years due to some serious issues, and income inequality is one such issue deferring China’s development potential by creating a middle income trap. This book thoroughly investigates both the unpromising factors and favorable conditions for China to overcome the trap. It illustrates that traps may be encountered at any stage of development and argues that political stability is the prerequisite to creating a favorable environment for economic development and addressing this “middle income trap”. Written by one of China's central planners, this book offers precious insights into the industrial policies that are transforming China and the world and will be of interest to China scholars, economists and political scientists.

After the miraculous economic growth known as the Beijing Consensus, China is now facing a slowdown. The attention has moved to the issue of the middle income trap. This book deals with this interesting issue in the context of China.

This book argues that China must become an innovation-based economy to avoid the middle-income traps, and examines both the opportunities and challenges in meeting this goal.

Since many policymakers aspire to pull their countries out of the middle-income trap and into the ranks of high-income countries, they must understand the factors that hinder or support the transition. This book defines the middle-income trap and examines the roles of manufacturing, finance, and trade openness in achieving sustainable development. The book also explores the role of government policy in fostering growth in the People's Republic of China. A common theme is that such policies may have unforeseen side effects that undermine their effectiveness, including how the hukou registration system and land-use policy control the pace of urbanization.

This book proposes a new, pragmatic way of approaching economic development which features policy learning based on a comparison of international best policy practices. While the important role of government in promoting private sector development is being recognized, policy discussion often remains general without details as to what exactly to do and how to avoid common pitfalls. This book fills the gap by showing concrete policy contents, procedures, and organizations adopted in high-performing East Asian economies. Natural resources and foreign aid and investment can take a country to a certain income level, but growth stalls when given advantages are exhausted. Economies will be caught in middle income traps if growth impetus is not internally generated. Meanwhile, countries that have soared to high income introduced mindset, policies, and institutions that encouraged, or even forced, accumulation of human capital – skills, technology, and knowledge. How this can be done systematically is the main topic of policy learning. However, government should not randomly adopt what Singapore or Taiwan did in the past. A continued march to prosperity is possible only when policy makers acquire capability to formulate policy suitable for local context after studying a number of international experiences. Developing countries wanting to adopt effective industrial strategies but not knowing where to start will benefit greatly by the ideas and hands-on examples presented by the author. Students of development economics will find a new methodological perspective which can supplement the ongoing industrial policy debate. The book also gives an excellent account of national pride and pragmatism exhibited by officials in East Asia who produced remarkable economic growth, as well as serious effort by an African country to emulate this miracle. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/doi/view/10.4324/9780203085530 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The term ‘Middle-Income Trap’ refers to countries which stagnate economically after reaching a certain level of per capita income on the basis of labour- and capital-intensive growth, and are struggling to transition towards more skill-intensive and technology-driven development. It has resonance for the increasing number of countries in Asia who have either languished in middle-income status for extended periods of time, or are worried about growth slow-downs. This book sets outs the conceptual underpinnings of the Middle-Income Trap and explores the various ways it can be defined. It also focuses on the debate surrounding the Middle-Income Trap which questions the appropriate institutional and policy settings for middle-income countries to enable them to continue past the easy phase of economic growth. The book engages with this debate by investigating the role of institutions, human capital, and trade policy in helping countries increase their income levels and by highlighting factors which enable the shift to higher and qualitatively better growth. It questions how the large emerging economies in Asia such as China, Indonesia, and India are currently grappling with the challenges of transitioning from labour-intensive to technology- and knowledge-intensive production, and discusses what can be learnt from the countries that have been able to escape the trap to attain high-income status. Providing a conceptual framework for the Middle-Income Trap, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Economics, Comparative Economics and Asian Studies.

An East Asian Renaissance, by a World Bank team led by Chief Economist for East Asia & Pacific, Dr Homi Kharas and Economic Adviser, Dr Indermit Gill is the first comprehensive analysis of the new forces and challenges at play in the region since the Bank's seminal report of 1993, The East Asian Miracle. The report argues that regional flows of goods, finance and technology are helping even smaller East Asian countries reap the benefits of economies of scale and that this regional integration must be encouraged. But it also points out that these measures have to be supported by actions at the domestic level to ease the stresses and strains that rapid economic growth leaves in its wake. East Asia must now turn to the urgent domestic challenges of inequality, social cohesion, corruption and environmental degradation arising from its economic success.