This book, first published in 1996, focuses on the possible (but problematic) emergence of a so-called ‘Greater China’ encompassing mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the economic reforms, inward investment, spatial disparities, and changes to business culture that would ensue. The similarities, differences, underpinnings, results and prospects for the future of Greater China are analysed in close detail in the chapters collected here.

We view the political process in China as trading off the social benefits of increased trade and foreign direct investment, against the losses incurred by state-owned enterprises due to such liberalization. A model drawing on Grossman and Helpman (1994, 1996) is used to derive an empirically estimable government objective function. The key structural parameters of this model are estimated using province-level data on foreign direct investment and trade flows in China, over the years 1984-1995. We find that the weight applied to consumer welfare is between one-fifth and one-twelfth of the weight applied to the output of state-owned enterprises. We find that governmental preferences have shifted over time, but even in recent periods the weight on consumer welfare is only one-half of the weight on state-owned enterprises. This suggests that China may find it politically difficult to follow through with liberalizing its trade and investment regimes, such as under its WTO accession proposal.

This book examines the processes, evolution and consequences of China’s rapid integration into the global economy. Through analyses of Beijing’s international economic engagement in areas such as trade, investment, finance, sustainable development and global economic governance, it highlights the forces shaping China’s increasingly prominent role in the global economic arena. Chapters explore China’s behavior in global economic governance, the interests and motivations underlying China’s international economic initiatives and the influence of politics, including both domestic politics and foreign relations, on the country’s global economic footprint.

In this book, Yasheng Huang makes a provocative claim: the large absorption of foreign direct investment (FDI) by China is a sign of some substantial weaknesses in the Chinese economy. The primary benefits associated with China's FDI inflows are concerned with the privatization functions supplied by foreign firms, venture capital provisions to credit-constrained private entrepreneurs, and promotion of interregional capital mobility. Huang argues that one should ask why domestic firms cannot supply the same functions. China's partial reforms, while successful in increasing the scope of the market, have so far failed to address many allocative inefficiencies in the Chinese economy.

This investigation uses state-mobilized globalization as a framework to understand China's capitalism and emergence as a global power.

China is the largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) among developing countries. This study compares China's FDI performance with a number of other Asian countries and focuses on the policy and institutional factors that lead to a large demand for FDI in China. The policy and institutional factors include import substitution, excess investment demand and features of China's FDI regulatory system. The study shows that there are costs associated with such a high demand for FDI, including overbidding for FDI and the associated loss of Chinese bargaining power, large import demand, and the structure of the FDI at variance with Chinese official policies. This study also briefly discusses the foreign economic policy implications of China's FDI absorption and suggests some future research possibilities.

“The authors make some very critical interventions in this debate and scholars engaged in the environmental ‘pollution haven’ and ‘race to the bottom’ debates will need to take the arguments made here seriously, re-evaluating their own preferred theories to respond to the insightful theorizing and empirically rigorous testing that Zeng and Eastin present in the book.” —Ronald Mitchell, University of Oregon China has earned a reputation for lax environmental standards that allegedly attract corporations more interested in profit than in moral responsibility and, consequently, further negate incentives to raise environmental standards. Surprisingly, Ka Zeng and Joshua Eastin find that international economic integration with nation-states that have stringent environmental regulations facilitates the diffusion of corporate environmental norms and standards to Chinese provinces. At the same time, concerns about “green” tariffs imposed by importing countries encourage Chinese export-oriented firms to ratchet up their own environmental standards. The authors present systematic quantitative and qualitative analyses and data that not only demonstrate the ways in which external market pressure influences domestic environmental policy but also lend credence to arguments for the ameliorative effect of trade and foreign direct investment on the global environment.

This book explores the characteristics of China's outward foreign investment, its motivation, its sector distribution, and its geographical distribution in order to illustrate the current pattern of 'merchant-state dualism' in China's overseas foreign direct investment. Merchant-state dualism is a hybrid relationship between the state and society that maintains state control over merchants, while giving them some autonomy. By investigating the interactions between business and government elites to determine Chinese outward foreign investment, and by exploring the reasons for selecting certain foreign investments in light of internal political and economic concerns and the external effect of investing in politically sensitive countries, the book highlights the political underpinnings and calculations of China's foreign investment. It thus sheds light on current merchant-state dualism by concluding that merchant-state dualism is the most suitable model for explaining contemporary Chinese government-business relations.