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Unirule
The Unirule Institute of Economics (Unirule) is an independent, nonprofit, non governmental (NGO) think tank, which was jointly initiated in July of 1993 by five prominent economists, Prof. Mao Yushi, Prof. Zhang Shuguang, Prof. Sheng Hong, Prof. Fan Gang, and Prof. Tang Shouning. Unirule is dedicated to the open exchange of ideas in economics in general, with a particular focus on institutional economics, and maintains a highly prestigious status within academic circles.

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Tel. 8610-52988127
Fax. 8610-52988127

Books


 

The Natural Law is the Gentlemen's Mission
By SHENG Hong


Rules and Prosperity
By FENG Xingyuan


 

A History of China
By YAO Zhongqiu

 


On Hayek
By YAO Zhongqiu


The Limits of Government ⅡI
By YAO Zhongqiu


Capital Freedom of China
2011 Annual Report

By FENG Xingyuan and
MAO Shoulong


Coase and China
Edit by ZHANG Shuguang and SHENG Hong

Where the Chinese Anxieties Come From
By MAO Yushi


Humanistic Economics
By MAO Yushi


Food Security and Farm Land Protection in China
By MAO Yushi ,ZHAO Nong and YANG Xiaojing


Report on the Living Enviroment of China's Private Enterprises
By FENG xingyuan and
HE Guangwen


Game: Subdivision, Implementation and Protection of Ownership of Land
By ZHANG Shuguang


The Nature, Performance and Reform of State-owned Enterprises
By Unirule Institute of Economics


Rediscovering Confucianism
By YAO Zhongqiu



Virtue, Gentleman and Custom
By YAO Zhongqiu


China's Path to Change
By YAO Zhongqiu




The Great Wall and the Coase Theorem
By SHENG Hong



Innovating at the Margin of Traditions
By SHENG Hong





Economics That I Understand
By MAO Yushi





Why Are There No Decent Enterprisers in China?
By ZHANG Shuguang



What Should China Rely On for Food Security?
By MAO Yushi and ZHAO Nong





Case Studies in China’s Institutional Change (Volume IV)





Unirule Working Paper (2011)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Highlights

From Pursuit of Wealth to Pursuit of Security: China Needs a Shift of Goals

by MAO Yushi, Honorary President, Unirule Institute of Economics
Translated by MA Junjie, Researcher, Unirule Institute of Economics

China’s reform has achieved much so far. It started with Deng Xiaoping correcting the mistakes of the past, and the shift from class struggles to economic development. China’s image has been greatly changed after over 30 years’ economic construction. There is barely any resemblance between China’s past and its present. It has really become a “New China”.

It is fair to say that China has fulfilled Deng Xiaoping’s shift of goals. However, is there any other goal besides economic construction? It is a question of grave significance. This question concerns all operations of the Chinese people.
 
Deng’s roadmap of economic construction has neared completion. China has developed rapidly from its past. Before the reform and opening-up, the tallest building in Beijing was the 18-storey Beijing Restaurant, and now there are more than 500 buildings with a story height above twenty floors. There were only two bridges over the Changjiang River, and by the end of last year, there have been 65 bridges. There were barely any highways, and now, China has built over 110,000 kilometres of highways. Overall, China has achieved a lot in terms of economic construction.
 
What is odd is that although China has made huge progress in construction and wealth creation, the Chinese people feel more and more discontent with their lives. Discontent towards the society and conflicts between people and the government grow everywhere in China. This indicates that the efforts by the government were not made to fulfil the right goals. The issue here is not a matter of construction, but a matter of concern over citizens’ happiness. Therefore, it is necessary for the government to shift its focus from economic construction to the citizens’ happiness.
 
How to increase people’s happiness, then? To study this issue, many scholars have tried various quantifiable methods to measure happiness by wealth. From the perspective of wealth distribution, the conclusion they normally come to is that unequal distribution of wealth leads to unhappiness. However, this method is controversial.

Apparently, happiness has something to do with material wealth. Nevertheless, there is more to happiness than material wealth, and physical possessions are not even the most important factor to happiness, since they are only the visible part of happiness. Happiness is a feeling, and it is invisible. Due to this very reason, it is very difficult to study happiness. Scholars’ answers to this issue are, therefore, differing.
 
We might as well consider this issue from the opposite side, and ask what impedes happiness? Instead of pursuing happiness, we might as well eradicate the factors that impede happiness.
 
According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, security is a fundamental need without which other needs are out of the question. In this regard, security is still an unresolved issue in the Chinese society. For the moment, security is at issue for different groups of people. The haves feel insecure with their life and property, and they are migrating to more secure countries; the have-nots are not able to defend themselves other than with violence when their safety is compromised, which leads to mass incidents. These two social phenomena are unique in China, which clearly highlights that the Chinese society is not safe. In order to make the Chinese people feel safe, more needs to be done to improve the security of the Chinese people’s lives and property.

How to guarantee the safety of people’s lives and property? We rely on the police, i.e., the public security authority, to guard us against thieves and robbers. Moreover, we should rely on laws, especially the constitution, to defend our life and property against the abuse of power by the government. However, it is in this regard that China needs to take more efforts. The privileged class abuse their power without being punished by law, which is commonly seen in China. For example, Mr. BO Xilai was a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China with many privileges, and his wife committed a felony of murdering a foreigner. This crime was covered up for several months and the final disclosure of this case was not by China’s own procuratorate or police, but by the interference of the US. It can be seen that even foreigners with special identity lack a sense of security in China, let alone common Chinese citizens.

Therefore, after the country has achieved tremendous progress in economic terms, the citizens’ security should be a priority for the government. The key to solving this issue is rule of law and constitutionalism. To our pity, the publicly campaigned goal of the government is still a well-off society, a goal of material wealth, instead of security. It is fair that having a well-off life out of poverty was a priority when the basic need of food and clothing was at issue. However, those who are in extreme poverty now are very few, while the majority of the population is the middle class who cares more about security rather than wealth or income. Therefore, it is time for the Chinese society to strive for security instead of generating more wealth.

Apr. 19th, 2016.


 


 

Current Events

Seminar on “Risks and Opportunities of Online Finance” Held in Beijing

April 23rd, UCERC held a thematic seminar on “Risks and Opportunities of Online Finance” in Beijing, along with 58jr.cn.  Present at the seminar included Professor MAO Yushi, Professor Ningyue, and Dr. YANG Yong from Peking University. This seminar dealt with the trend of the financial market, the reform of online finance, and the compliance of online finance, P2P, and online loans platforms. Experts and audience from around China joined the seminar. Three sets of MAO Yushi’s books were put on bidding, and the highest bidders got the books at RMB 9800, and RMB 8800. The proceeds is directed to Unirule’s research projects. (To read more)

 

 

 

 

Second Session of Unirule Western Classics Reading Club 2016 Held

April 23rd, the second session of Unirule Western Classics Reading Club 2016 was held at Unirule Beijing Office. The topic of this session was “Liberty and Rule of Law.” The speakers are Professor WANG Jianxun, Professor Ningyue, and Professor XU Xin and Mr. WU Si joined the discussion.

Professor WANG Jianxun distinguished private law and public law, and he claimed that “agreement” in the private law equaled to laws in general terms. This is the principle of self-governing of private law. In this area, agreements are not constrained by public law. When it comes to promoting self-governing in a more general sense, Professor WANG said, “it should be done from the bottom up, from the small communities, to advocate for the self-governing.”

In the morning, discussion was held on Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty, Bruno Braccioni’s Freedom and the Law, and Lon L. Fuller’s The Morality of Law. Professor Ningyue pointed out that Hayek thought law was general and abstract, and it applies to everyone. Rule of law is also considered the rule of regulations. Hayek thought law is the decent conduct code that regulates human interaction. Professor Ningyue also mentioned the two kinds of moralities:”One as the expected morality, and the other as the obligatory morality.” Professor Ningyue also referred to Confucianism and claimed that if it requested everyone to be morally perfect, there may be a lot of hypocrites.

In the afternoon conversations, Mr. WU Si and Professor XU Xin joined the audience in discussing “The Hidden Rules and the Society of Rule of Law” and “How to Promote the Rule of Law with Legal Practices.” Several topics are raised around these two subjects, such as the freedom and rights, the freedom of speech.

At last, Professor Ningyue summarised and said that, the hidden rules regulate the behaviours of surrogates. When they represent the interest of their clients, such hidden rules, or unarticulated rules may vary and amount to big numbers. Douglas North’s book on institutions and regulations are quite relevant in understanding this issue.(To read more

 

 

News

Unirule 10-D Spatial Simulation Planning Model (SSPM)

The Unirule 10-D Spatial Simulation Planning Model (SSPM) is a mathematical and computational model based on economics. It is developed by a Unirule research team led by Professor SHENG Hong. SSPM is designed to simulate the development scale, economic density, industry distribution, resource constraints, ecological preservation, institutional influence, policy effect, and the evolution process in the next ten to twenty years or even longer period for a region. SSPM provides reference for the regional economic development strategy making, which can be directly adopted in the planning on regional economic development, population, land use, industry development, townships, water and ecology.

So far, SSPM has been adopted in the industry planning of Qianhai Area, Shenzhen, and the economic development planning of Yangcheng County, Shanxi Province.

Learn more about the SSPM

 


Current Researches/ Consulting

Improving China’s Implimentation and Supervision Institution of the Constitution

At present, research on the implimentation and supervision institution of China’s constitution is insufficient. Multiple problems exist in the current studies, such as the lack of a cultural perspective, and empathetic understanding of China’s political tradition; a lack of authentic Chinese perspective and an indulgence of Westernized framework of analysis; and a lack of reflection of the reality and the existing political framework.

 

The research on China’s constitution review institution should put the protection of civil rights and constitutional construction first, with a reflection of China’s reality and take in the advantages of external researches. A plausible research approach is as follows: 1. This research ought to provide a right relief mechanism; 2. It should take into account that China is a vast country with imbalanced regional development realities which foster unique and differentiated conceptions of the law and politics in general; 3. It should be built upon the current constitutional structure and take into account the interactive system of the power of the party, the National People’s Congress, etc. in order to make it a progressive research, which can enable the elements of constitutionalism to supplement the current constitutional framework; 4. Scrupulous examination should be given to constitutional practices in other regions and cultures, especially those influenced by the Chinese culture or with a similar institutional set-up, such as Taiwan and France; 5. Observations should be made in regard to the traditional Chinese institutions, such as the institution of the expostulation system (“谏议制度”, or giving advice),  supervision system, and the institutions established in this light, e.g., Taiwan’s Control Yuan.

 

Improving Entrepreneurs' Survival Environment: Abolishing Death Penalties in Relation to Fund-Raising Cases in China

In recent years, environment for private enterprises has been taking a deteriorating turn, which attracts attention from the media and the academia. The causes are complex and multi-faceted, including: 1, the abuse of powers by government officials as the government powers expand; 2, “the private-owned deteriorating with the state-owned advancing” (guojin mintui) worsens the picture where the survival environment for private enterprises gets more and more squeezed; 3, external demands of enterprises decrease while internal cost increases; 4, financial suppression escalates with the industrial restructuring and updating lagging behind; and 5, the fluctuation of macroeconomic policies by the government poses uncertainty for production and investment. Moreover, many innocent entrepreneurs were labeled and persecuted for their “gangster behaviors” by the policy and law enforcements in Chongqing city, which was just a glimpse of similar occasional “gangster crashing” movements in the country. Many entrepreneurs are suppressed and sanctioned in the name of “illegal fund-raising”. According to active law, the court can sentence entrepreneurs to death penalty with this charge.

 

Unirule Institute of Economics is planning to undertake research on the problems of the crime of “illegal fund-raising” and specific methods to abolish this charge.

 

It is fit for Unirule to carry out this research project. Unirule Institute of Economics is a non-profit, non-governmental organization, which focuses on institutional economics with expertise in economics, laws, and politics. It has been dedicated to independent research on China’s institutional reforms and public policies as well as the reform of private finance. In 2003, 2011, and 2013, Unirule held seminars on the cases of Mr. SUN Dawu, Ms. WU Ying, and Mr. ZENG Chengjie. These seminars have been very influential before and after the close of the cases.


Unirule Institute of Economics has undertaken research projects in corporate finance and private finance in recent years. Over the years, Professor FENG Xingyuan has been carrying out pioneering research on private finance and private enterprises. He has gained rich experience and published many publications and papers on relevant topics, including “Report on the Freedom of China’s Corporate Capitals”, “Report on the Survival Environment of China’s Private Enterprises 2012”, research on the risks of private finance, etc. In August 2013, Professor FENG Xingyuan and his research team completed and released the “Report on Private Enterprise Fund-Raiding in West Hunan and the Case of Mr. ZENG Chengjie”, which analyzed and assessed the process, nature, problems, and causes of a series of events and proposed policy recommendations concerning the fund-raising activities in West Hunan and the case of Mr. ZENG Chengjie.

 

Business Ethics Declaration of Chinese Entrepreneurs

Over the last three decades, China’s economy has been embracing rapid growth with entrepreneurs being a key drive. The biggest and most significant structural change is the rise of entrepreneurs who constitute the pillar of the society nowadays. Today, the biggest, and the youngest group of entrepreneurs are going international, bridging China and the world.

However, because of the abnormal political, social and ideological environment of China for the last five decades, Chinese entrepreneurs happen to be widely confused and for the last thirty years, the emerging group of entrepreneurs has been suffering from severe anxiety over identity:

Firstly, due to the long time anti-market ideological propaganda by the authorities, many entrepreneurs believe they have the “original sin”. They are led to believe that their profits are based on exploiting the workers, which further leads to their confusion and anxiety over the ethical justification of their fortune and profits.

Secondly, this anti-market ideology also affects the public; leading the public to envy the fortune of entrepreneurs while disrespect them since their deeds are “unethical” and “dishonest”. This public opinion, in return, affects entrepreneurs’ self-identity. They, therefore, can’t convince themselves of the contributions they make to the society, or identify themselves within the social hierarchy.

Thirdly, Chinese entrepreneurs, especially those whose enterprises have gone international, are bothered with this severe identification anxiety. Chinese people stand out in entrepreneurship, so do Chinese enterprises. But what are the driving forces behind? Thanks to the long time culture break-up from the traditions, and the anti-tradition propaganda, Chinese entrepreneurs find it hard to comprehend and identify their cultural and social roles. This leads to the chaotic and restless mental state of entrepreneurs. This also results in the lack of a cultural supportive pillar for enterprise management in China.

“Business Ethics Declaration of Chinese Entrepreneurs” aims to provide answers to the anxiety over identity for Chinese entrepreneurs, to re-identify them by providing authentic and orthodoxical conceptions, to help them mature their thoughts and corporate social responsibilities.

This research project is committed to establishing a value system for Chinese entrepreneurs. To confront the anxiety over identity for Chinese entrepreneurs, this project provides answers to the three questions below:

1.Do Chinese entrepreneurs have the “original sin”?
2.What do Chinese entrepreneurs contribute to the society?
3.How do Chinese entrepreneurs gain respect?

 

An Economic Research of Chinese Urban Smog Management

The issue of smog has been on the spotlight in China that no matter government officials, ordinary citizens, or journalists and the press have expressed serious concern and anxiety towards it. Unirule Institute of Economics takes on this research topic and is conducting an economic research on China’s urban smog management.


The urban smog is attributed to multiple factors with many interest parties involved, which also makes it an economic issue. Unirule seeks to find a solution to the management of smog by the design of institutions from an economic point of view.

 

 

Fairness and Efficiency of Financial Resource Allocation

The first scale problem of the fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation is whether the overall tax bearing standard falls within the optimal interval, whether the design of tax kinds and the mechanism will harm the development of the economy. The second scale problem is whether the expenditure structure of the existing financial resource allocation, especially transfer payment, obeys the principal of justice, and the efficiency of financial expenditure especially the general administrative costs.


Unirule Institute of Economics is going to undertake research on the fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation with the emphasis on the second scale problem. In order to fulfill the ideal of justice in a society, the involvement of financial resource allocation is one of the methods, and a universal one. A state can promote justice by implying financial expenditure in two ways: the direct and the indirect way. When applying the direct way of implying financial expenditure measures to promote justice, financial expenditure is directly distributed to individuals to fill the gap of incomes between individuals.

 

Among the financial expenditure items of China are pensions and relief funds for social welfare, rural relief funds as well as social insurance funds. The indirect way is by governments' increase in expenditure used for supporting agriculture and villagers, construction of infrastructure, education and medical treatments. This research is on the justice of financial resource allocation and it deals mainly with whether the transfer payment of financial resources obeys the second rule of Rawls's theory of justice, which states that when violation to the first rule has to be made, resource allocation can be towards the poorest group of people. Besides the justice issue, efficiency is also involved in the financial resource allocation. The administrative costs of China have long been above the average standard of other countries in the world, therefore, a big amount of public financial resources are wasted (trillions of RMB per year as estimated). In regard with the efficiency issue of the financial resource allocation, this research deals mainly with the change of ratio of administrative costs by government agencies (in addition to other costs, such as medical treatments of government officials covered by public budgets, and housing subsidies) of financial income. The reform of the fiscal and taxation system is one of the core issues in China's on-going reforms. This research aims not at a comprehensive examination of the fiscal and taxation system, but a specific aspect which is the "fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation", and evaluating the status quo of China's financial resource allocation.

Research on China's Urbanization on the Local Level

Urbanization is one of the most essential economic and social policies of the new administration. The emphasis of this policy is posed on medium and small cities as well as townships. As noticed, there are thousands of industrialized townships in China with their social governance lagging far behind their economic development.


Firstly, a big population is located in between the urban and rural level, which can't transform into citizens. Hundreds of millions of people have left their villages and moved to commercialized and industrialized towns. They are in industrial and commercial occupations and it is highly unlikely that they would go back to their villages. However, they are not entitled to local Hukou registration, which further leads to the deprivation of various rights, for example, the right of education.

Secondly, public governance in such industrialized and commercialized towns, in general, is at a rudimentary level. The number of officially budgeted posts is asymmetric with the population governed, which leads to the employment of a large number of unofficially budgeted staff and unjustified power to govern. There is a lack of financial resources for the local government to carry out infrastructure construction or to provide public goods sufficiently. Thirdly, the urbanization results in imbalanced development of the structure of society. Since the industrialized and commercialized townships are unable to complete urbanization, urbanization in China has basically become mega-urbanization which is dominated by administrative power. Local governments centralize periphery resources with administrative power and construct cities artificially, which impedes townships and villages from evolving into cities by spontaneous order. Fourthly, industry upgrading can't be undertaken in those industrialized and commercialized townships and the capacity for future economic development is greatly limited. The industry upgrading is, in essence, the upgrading of people. Enterprises ought to draw and maintain technicians, researchers, and investors, to meet their needs for living standards, which cannot be satisfied by townships. Similarly, the lagging urbanization reversely sets back the cultivation and development of the service industry, especially the medium and high-end services.


Unirule Institute of Economics is going to carry out research on urbanization of China on the local level, aiming at improving public governance of the industrialized townships, optimizing the urbanization methodologies, and improving the "citizenization" of migrant workers, therefore further pushing social governance towards self-governance and democracy.

 

Research on the Public Governance Index of Provincial Capitals

At the beginning of the year 2013, Unirule conducted field survey, including more than 10 thousands of households in 30 local capital cities. According to the field survey, the Public Governance Index was derived. The main conclusions of the PGI report as below:


Three statements summarize the status quo of public governance in provincial capitals. Firstly, public services have generally just gotten a pass. Secondly, protection to civil rights is disturbing. Finally, governance methodologies need improvements. These statements point out the solution: the structure of the society needs to be altered from that with a government monopoly to a civil society with diverse governance subjects. The ranking of provincial capitals in the public governance assessment from the top to the bottom is as follows: Hangzhou, Nanjing, Urumqi, Tianjin, Chengdu, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanchang, Xi'an, Xining, Shijiazhuang, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Yinchuan, Hohhot, Chongqing, Shenyang, Changsha, Jinan, Kunming, Nanning, Haikou, Fuzhou, Guiyang, Harbin, Hefei, Changchun, Zhengzhou, Taiyuan and Lanzhou.

Generally speaking, all provincial capitals are graded comparatively low in the three public governance assessments from 2008 to 2012. Even those that ranked the highest in performance have just barely passed the bar of 60 points. Few provincial capitals with poor public governance got over 50 points.


There is a certain amount of correlation between the changes of ranking and improvements in public governance in provincial capitals. In the short term, should the capital cities be willing to raise their rankings, they can achieve this by increasing transparency in government information and civil servants selection, encouraging local non-governmental organizations, or promoting wider participation in local affairs. There is but a weak correlation between public governance and the local GDP level. However, a strong correlation exists between the rankings and the equity of local fiscal transfer payment. That is to say, a region gets a higher ranking in public governance if subsidies to local social security, medical care, education and housing are distributed more to the poorest residents in that region. On the contrary, a region's ranking falls if such resources are distributed with prejudice to the groups with high incomes. This phenomenon shows that equity is of significance in the assessment of the government by the people.


When residents are not satisfied with medical care, elderly support system, water supply and electricity supply, the situation can be improved when they complain to the government. But when similar situations take place in public transportation, environment greening, heating systems, and garbage management, whether by collective actions or filing complaints to government agencies, residents can hardly be satisfied with what the government does.


According to the three public governance assessments carried out from 2008 to2012, we discovered that the Gini coefficient of residents in provincial capitals was decreasing and the income fluidity was improving. From 2010 to 2012, citizens' comments on protection of civil rights are deteriorating, especially in terms of property and personal security. The request for freedom of speech is also increasing. For the moment, citizens in provincial capitals have a low evaluation on the cleanness and honesty of local governments.

 

Research on Disclosure of Government Information


Room for reforms is getting narrower as the opening-up and reforms deepen. It also leads to a more stabilized vertical mobilization of the demographic structure with the conflicts in the distribution of interests exacerbating. A collaborative system centering the political and law system and involving close cooperation between the police, courts, petition offices, and the city guards (Chengguan) is developed to deal with social unrest. This system is operated by local governments and finalized as a system of maintaining stability (Weiwen). There have been Internet spats over the amount of Weiwen funds. It is unsustainable to maintain such a Weiwen system, and the disclosure of government information is the most significant approach for this end. The essence of public governance is to dissolute conflicts instead of hiding and neglecting them. And one way to achieve this is by sufficient communication. Public and transparent appraisement and supervision cannot be achieved without transparent government information, otherwise the result will be the exclusion of citizens from public governance.


Unirule Institute of Economics has been undertaking research on the disclosure of government information since 2011. This research is carried out not only from the perspective of the regulations for the disclosure of government information which evaluates whether governments of various levels are obeying the regulations and their performances, but also by examining information disclosure laws in developed countries while looking at the status quo in China. There are seven aspects where government information disclosure can be improved, namely, information disclosure of government officials, transparency of finance, transparency in the decision-making mechanism, transparency in administration, transparency in public services, transparency of enterprises owned by local governments, and transparency in civil rights protection.

 

Upcoming Events

Unirule Biweekly Symposiums

Unirule's Biweekly Symposiums are known in China and throughout the world for their long history of open and in-depth discussions and exchanges of ideas in economics and other social sciences. Over 380 sessions have been held and over 15,000 scholars, policy makers, and students, as well as countless readers on the web, have directly and indirectly, and participated in the Biweekly Symposium for close to 20 years.

Biweekly Symposiums begin at 2 p.m. every other Friday and are free and open to the public.

Schedule
Biweekly Symposium No. 547: 22nd Apr., 2016
Biweekly Symposium No. 548: 6th May., 2016

 

Previous Biweekly Symposiums

Biweekly Symposium No. 545: Local Urbanization Based on the Equal Status of the City and the Villages(A Case Study of Zhanglou Village in Qingzhou, Shandong Province) .


Lecturer: LI Zenggang

Host: QIN Sidao

Commentators: SU Hongjian, CHEN Chuanbo, XIONG Jinwu, LU Qian, XU Jianming, HAN Chaohua, SHENG Hong


It is a historical task to promote the urbanisation process of China. However, what kind of urbanisation suits China best, and which path should be taken, have always been controversial in the Chinese academia.

Professor LI Zenggang from Shandong University presented a case study of Zhanglou Village in Qingzhou, Shandong Province. He thought it was impossible for the rural labour to enter cities. The case study provides a different route for urbanisation.

Professor LI introduced that the key to the success of Zhanglou Village was the concept of “Equal Rural Urban Values” that understate the differences between cities and rural areas while stressing the values created in both areas in order to keep the local residents where they are.

The research project was sponsored by Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, a German foundation, and the results were carefully assessed. Professor LI also reflected on the concept of urbanisation in the research. Strictly speaking, urbanisation means transferring rural residents to cities. As China adopts the household registration system that differentiates the rural and urban residents, the onsite urbanisation process, therefore, refers to those who are still living in rural areas while registered as urban residents. What’s key to this process is the construction and betterment of the rural areas.


 

 

Biweekly Symposium No. 546: Macroeconomics and Regional Economics from a Demographic Perspective.


Lecturer: YI Fuxian

Host: SHENG Hong, Director of Unirule Institute of Economics

Commentators:MU Guangzong, LI Jianxin, ZHANG Zhanxin

Professor YI Fuxian presented at this session the issue of population. He compared the fertility rate  of the US, Europe, South Korea, and Japan, and its correlation with economic growth. He concluded that the population and proportion of the elderlies are positively correlated to economic growth. He said that the centre of the economy of a country is constrained by its population. And the centre moves from areas of low fertility rate to that of high fertility rate. The international data supported this hypothesis, and China’s economic centre has moved westward over the years. Provinces such as Guangdong, Shandong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang have all peaked and taken a downturn since 2006. Whereas, provinces such as Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Sichuan, and Chongqing has hit the bottom in 2006 and begun recovery ever since.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Editor: MA Junjie
Revisor: Hannah Luftensteiner

 

Comments? Questions? Email us at unirule@unirule.org.cn




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