China is shaping the global economy as never before. An insatiable demand for commodities, energy resources and capital, and deepening integration to the world economy has won China acclaim. Yet 25 years of rapid industrial development, far-reaching economic reforms and increasing international competition have also created an array of challenging domestic policy demands. The China Boom and its Discontents discusses the financial and social challenges that have emerged in the wake of rapid economic growth. Recent research on demographic trends, labour movements, financial development, social security, urbanisation and trade agreements highlight the unfinished progress of reforms in China.

China's economic growth has been revolutionary, and is the foundation of its increasingly prominent role in world affairs. It is the world's second biggest economy, the largest manufacturing and trading nation, the consumer of half the world's steel and coal, the biggest source of international tourists, and one of the most influential investors in developing countries from southeast Asia to Africa to Latin America. Multinational companies make billions of dollars in profits in China each year, while traders around the world shudder at every gyration of the country's unruly stock markets. Perhaps paradoxically, its capitalist economy is governed by an authoritarian Communist Party that shows no sign of loosening its grip. China is frequently in the news, whether because of trade disputes, the challenges of its Belt and Road initiative for global infrastructure, or its increasing military strength. China's political and technological challenges, created by a country whose political system and values differ dramatically from most of the other major world economies, creates uncertainty and even fear. China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know® is a concise introduction to the most astonishing economic and political story of the last three decades. Arthur Kroeber enhances our understanding of China's changes and their implications. Among the essential questions he answers are: How did China grow so fast for so long? Can it keep growing and still solve its problems of environmental damage, fast-rising debt and rampant corruption? How long can its vibrant economy co-exist with the repressive one-party state? How do China's changes affect the rest of the world? This thoroughly revised and updated second edition includes a comprehensive discussion of the origins and development of the US-China strategic rivalry, including Trump's trade war and the race for technological supremacy. It also explores the recent changes in China's political system, reflecting Xi Jinping's emergence as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. It includes insights on changes in China's financial sector, covering the rise and fall of the shadow banking sector, and China's increasing integration with global financial markets. And it covers China's rapid technological development and the rise of its global Internet champions such as Alibaba and Tencent.

China’s future development is likely to have a huge impact on twenty-first century global outcomes. It is therefore surprising that, thus far, so little attention has been given to comparing and evaluating expert forecasts of China’s future in the post-Mao era. This book presents an illuminating and comprehensive summary record of contrasting and competing expert forecasts and judgements about the major issues confronting China within four principal domains – political, economic, environmental, and international. After considering the principal forecasting methods available to experts, the author comments critically on the degree of success achieved in using those methods and emphasises the confusion created by the polarisation of opinion and by the failure of many experts to accept the high degree of uncertainty that characterises most of the key issues. The book recommends a new approach based on the study of a hierarchy of critical uncertainties and on continuing analysis of opposing expert opinions about these uncertainties. It emphasises the potential for both positive and negative outcomes for these critical uncertainties, and the importance of maximising the potential for positive outcomes through improved analytical and policy frameworks. Providing insights for specialists and non-specialists into the most critical issues that will determine China’s future direction, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political, economic, environmental, and international relations issues in China and Asia, as well as to readers in business and government.

China's prosperity is at the core of the emerging Platinum Age of global economic growth. Rapid economic growth has been underpinned by expansion in its domestic markets, and the integration of domestic and international markets in goods, services, capital, labour and foreign exchange. Global commodity prices have reached historic highs, while Chinas capital outflows have helped to hold down interest rates worldwide. Linking markets, both domestic and international, has been key to Chinas success. In sustaining its strong economic growth, China has become one of the worlds most voracious consumers of energy. The challenge now facing the government and people of China is in achieving cooperation with the international community to avert the costs - both economic and environmental - of accelerating energy consumption. CHINA: LINKING MARKETS FOR GROWTH gathers together leading scholars on Chinas economic success and its effect on the world economy into the next few decades.

This yearbook is a collection of important articles by demographers and economists from CASS and other top research and policy institutes in China. Several of the articles in this volume are based on major labor and population surveys carried out in recent years.

The ideas contained in Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies—one of the most important tracts in political philosophy in the twentieth century—are relevant to anyone seeking to understand the recent history of the East Asian economies. Even though Popper wrote his tract to provide an explanation for both the rise and objectionable nature of totalitarian regimes in Europe in the twentieth century, many of the arguments that he advanced in this European context also explain the social, political and economic relationships that are seen in modern South Eastern Asian economies. The narrative of this book is driven by a research agenda that is inter-disciplinary in nature, since to make the link between the Popperian framework and East Asian socio-economic relationships the contributing authors needed to draw upon research fields as far apart as political philosophy and East-Asian studies. With one or two exceptions, however, nearly all of the contributing authors have a background in economics, and this background is reflected in the way that they have sought to tackle the research question. This book is, in short, an inter-disciplinary exercise undertaken from an economics perspective, and hence it may best be described as an exercise in political economy rather than pure analytical economics. The novelty of juxtaposing Popperian ideas with a discussion of social, political and economic development in South East Asia makes this narrative of interest to both political philosophers and specialists in South East Asian economies. The key insight drawn from the analysis is that although Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies was a product of a European time and place, it is also relevant to anyone seeking to understand the recent history of the East Asian economies.

Why India's problems won't be solved by rapid economic growth alone When India became independent in 1947 after two centuries of colonial rule, it immediately adopted a firmly democratic political system, with multiple parties, freedom of speech, and extensive political rights. The famines of the British era disappeared, and steady economic growth replaced the economic stagnation of the Raj. The growth of the Indian economy quickened further over the last three decades and became the second fastest among large economies. Despite a recent dip, it is still one of the highest in the world. Maintaining rapid as well as environmentally sustainable growth remains an important and achievable goal for India. In An Uncertain Glory, two of India's leading economists argue that the country's main problems lie in the lack of attention paid to the essential needs of the people, especially of the poor, and often of women. There have been major failures both to foster participatory growth and to make good use of the public resources generated by economic growth to enhance people's living conditions. There is also a continued inadequacy of social services such as schooling and medical care as well as of physical services such as safe water, electricity, drainage, transportation, and sanitation. In the long run, even the feasibility of high economic growth is threatened by the underdevelopment of social and physical infrastructure and the neglect of human capabilities, in contrast with the Asian approach of simultaneous pursuit of economic growth and human development, as pioneered by Japan, South Korea, and China. In a democratic system, which India has great reason to value, addressing these failures requires not only significant policy rethinking by the government, but also a clearer public understanding of the abysmal extent of social and economic deprivations in the country. The deep inequalities in Indian society tend to constrict public discussion, confining it largely to the lives and concerns of the relatively affluent. Drèze and Sen present a powerful analysis of these deprivations and inequalities as well as the possibility of change through democratic practice.