This study reviews the context of and prospects for China's only Special Economic Zone (SEZs) that covers an entire province. When Hainan became a province in 1988, the central government wanted to make it a special zone that would go far beyond even the other (SEZs in system reform. It was to have a small government and large society, implying very little state-operated enterprise and minimal government. Despite its essential backwardness, pockets of absolute poverty, inadequate infrastructure and other difficulties, Hainan has made progress in economic development, attracting investment from both the mainland and overseas. Its economy, previously dominated by state-owned rubber and iron ore industries, has diversified through substantial growth in services and small-scale enterprise, including export-oriented joint ventures. However, the pace of reform and investment slowed during the national austerity program from early 1989 to late 1991, calling into question the ambitiousness of some of Hainan's plans to lead the way in reform experiments in agriculture, industry and human resource development. Recently, though, the reform agenda seems to have regained momentum, as Hainan deals in greater depth with the trade, investment and fiscal modernization that could propel it into prosperity. This study also suggests ways in which the province's reform agenda might be accelerated as the next key steps are identified and opportunities seized by both Beijing and Haikou.

This book examines the complex relationship between the state, society and business in China, focusing on the experience of the island province of Hainan. This island, for many years a provincial backwater, was given provincial rank in 1988 and became the testing ground for experiments of an economic, political, and social nature that have received great attention from Beijing, in particular the "small government, big society" project. This book provides a full account of this transition, showing how Hainan casts important light on a number of highly topical issues in contemporary China studies: central-local relations, institutional reform, state-society relations, and economic development strategies. It provides detailed evidence of how relations between party cadres, state bureaucrats, businesses, foreign investors and civil society play out in practice in China today. It argues that despite the liberalization of recent years, especially in the economic sphere, the party state remains the most powerful actor in Chinese society, and that path-breaking reform experiments such as in Hainan remain highly vulnerable due to the central government’s hesitation to commit the resources and unequivocal political support needed for the experiments to be successfully realized.

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 and 2003 challenged the global public health community to confront a novel epidemic that spread rapidly from its origins in southern China until it had reached more than 25 other countries within a matter of months. In addition to the number of patients infected with the SARS virus, the disease had profound economic and political repercussions in many of the affected regions. Recent reports of isolated new SARS cases and a fear that the disease could reemerge and spread have put public health officials on high alert for any indications of possible new outbreaks. This report examines the response to SARS by public health systems in individual countries, the biology of the SARS coronavirus and related coronaviruses in animals, the economic and political fallout of the SARS epidemic, quarantine law and other public health measures that apply to combating infectious diseases, and the role of international organizations and scientific cooperation in halting the spread of SARS. The report provides an illuminating survey of findings from the epidemic, along with an assessment of what might be needed in order to contain any future outbreaks of SARS or other emerging infections.

Since China's reform and opening-up in 1978, Zhejiang province has been one of the country's forerunners in economic, social and political transformation. This book focuses on Zhejiang's rural development and rural governance innovation over the past few decades. The provincial government has formulated favorable policies to facilitate the development of Zhejiang's rural areas since 1978. Zhejiang's farmers, endowed with the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, have created a rural development model with farmers as the center of marketization, industrialization and urbanization. This book provides systematic analysis of the reform and development in Zhejiang's rural area as a case study of China's reform and opening-up. It offers some of the best economic and governance practices developed over the past few decades in China's rural areas. It also provides invaluable insights into the future development of China's rural areas.

An award-winning Hong Kong–based architect with decades of experience designing buildings and planning cities in the People’s Republic of China takes us to the Pearl River delta and into the heart of China’s iconic Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen. Shenzhen is ground zero for the economic transformation China has seen in recent decades. In 1979, driven by China’s widespread poverty, Deng Xiaoping supported a bold proposal to experiment with economic policies in a rural borderland next to Hong Kong. The site was designated as the City of Shenzhen and soon after became China’s first Special Economic Zone (SEZ). Four decades later, Shenzhen is a megacity of twenty million, an internationally recognized digital technology hub, and the world’s most successful economic zone. Some see it as a modern miracle city that seemingly came from nowhere, attributing its success solely to centralized planning and Shenzhen’s proximity to Hong Kong. The Chinese government has built hundreds of new towns using the Shenzhen model, yet none has come close to replicating the city’s level of economic success. But is it true that Shenzhen has no meaningful history? That the city was planned on a tabula rasa? That the region’s rural past has had no significant impact on the urban present? Juan Du unravels the myth of Shenzhen and shows us how this world-famous “instant city” has a surprising history—filled with oyster fishermen, villages that remain encased within city blocks, a secret informal housing system—and how it has been catapulted to success as much by the ingenuity of its original farmers as by Beijing’s policy makers. The Shenzhen Experiment is an important story for all rapidly urbanizing and industrializing nations around the world seeking to replicate China’s economic success in the twenty-first century.

Rapid growth in the Chinese economy over the past three decades poses puzzles and challenges to neo-classical economic theory, as policies implemented during the reform process were often unorthodox. Although the Chinese experience has been widely studied, myths and questions about these reforms remain. To fill in the knowledge gap, and to inform a process of learning from China's development successes, this book features a series of case studies on the policy process of different initiatives, including rural industrialization, dual-track price reform, migration policy, village elections and fiscal reform. Uniquely, many of the authors of the case studies were deeply involved in these reforms, either through direct policymaking or through providing analytical and technical support that led to these policy changes. They provide a first-hand account of how the political processes occurred, how social and political entrepreneurs shaped the choices and sequences of various reforms, and how the rigidities and sometimes erroneous beliefs were overcome.