VoxChina

Omnia Juncta in Uno: Foreign Powers and Trademark Protection in Shanghai’s Concession Era

Laura Alfaro, Cathy Ge Bao, Maggie X. Chen, Junjie Hong, Claudia Steinwender, Jul 20, 2022

Trademarks, which identify the source of goods and services, account for the majority of intellectual property filings worldwide. We investigate how firms adapt to the introduction of trademark institutions by exploring a historical precedent: China’s trademark law of 1923, an unanticipated and disapproved response to end foreign privileges in China.

Invisible China: Hundreds of Millions of Rural Underemployed May Slow China’s Growth

Scott Rozelle, Natalie Hell, Jun 02, 2021

Ｎo assessment of China's growth is complete without considering the implications of having hundreds of millions of underemployed people in China's economy for the foreseeable future. The bottom line is that China needs to build on its recent efforts to boost rural education, health and nutrition, and early childhood development, and do so at a pace and intensity that recognizes these are potentially among the biggest problems the nation faces.

The Clash of Capitalisms? Chinese Companies in the United States

Ji Li, Oct 31, 2018

Chinese companies in the United States are generally adaptive to their host country’s legal and regulatory institutions. However, the adaptation varies in accordance with the companies’ ownership structure and the institutional distance between the two countries across different subject matter areas.

How Reform Worked in China: The Transition from Plan to Market

Yingyi Qian, May 02, 2018

The general lesson from this book is this: for a reform to be successful, it is important to use the universal principles, even if they are not enough by themselves, and it is equally important to find specific ways to implement the reform by fully incorporating the initial historical conditions as well as contemporary constraints. The perspective of reform provided by this book’s analysis on China can also be useful beyond China, precisely because it emphasizes that to make reform work, it is not enough to understand why reform works, but also how reform works.

The Future of Cities: The Shanghai Model of Migrant Children’s Education

Yuanyuan Chen, Shuaizhang Feng, Nov 15, 2017

Using a longitudinal survey conducted by the authors in Shanghai since 2010, we empirically examine the differences between migrant schools and public schools. We find that migrant students in migrant schools performed substantially worse than their counterparts in public schools in 2010, but the difference decreased by half in 2012, thanks to financial subsidies to migrant schools. We also show that even fortunate migrant students who are able to enroll in public schools tend to go to poorer quality schools; however, there is no evidence on negative peer effects of migrant children in public schools.

New Cycle or Old (Guaranteed) Bubble?

Ning Zhu, Oct 04, 2017

It seems necessary that one gains some deeper understanding of the sources of China’s phenomenal economic growth. Apart from all well-founded extant explanations, my recent book Guaranteed Bubble argues for another important yet previously overlooked source: the guarantees provided by the Chinese government.

The Making of an Economic Superpower: Unlocking China’s Secret of Rapid Industrialization

Yi Wen, Sep 27, 2017

This book argues that China’s rapid industrialization since 1978 can be attributed to its rediscovery of the secret recipe of the original Industrial Revolution. The secret recipe is not based on institutional changes per se but rather the sequential creation of mass markets to support mass production. Market creation requires a strong state and appropriate industrial policies because mass markets are a public good that is extremely costly to create and can only be created through stages and under enormous political stability and social trust.

Why Does China Need a New Breed of Companies?

Qiao Liu, Sep 06, 2017

Understanding corporate China and its future dynamics is the key to understanding the Chinese economy and its undergoing transformation. The intellectual framework proposed in this work can be summarized by a simple identity: Growth Rate = Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) X Investment Rate. To successfully achieve China’s economic transition without losing a lot of growth at the same time, China needs to improve ROIC at the aggregate level.

Book Synopsis