The consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI) are interrelated but significantly different concepts. Relationships between the two indices may be that of causality or non-causality. The paper conducts a Granger-causality test on China’s CPI and PPI data for the period from...

As China enters the stage of economic and social reform, some people think that the introduction of markets will somehow weaken or reduce the power of government over society. Popular indeed is the view that the market equals "anarchism" (iwuzhengfu/i). Establishing the market mechanism does...

In recent years, as China’s reform of state–owned enterprises (SOEs) has gathered momentum, the number of workers made redundant has been rising. Until now, the dismissals have affected only a fraction of the “surplus labour”, which has been estimated at 20–25 per cent of total...

The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of China's financial situation. The main conclusion is that the financial risk of the Chinese economy is less serious than one might have predicted based on the level of the banks' nonperforming loans (NPLs), which is equivalent to 40 percent of...

The primary purpose of this paper is not to seek some better road to reform, but to arrive at a systematic understanding of the various problems and phenomena that have emerged in the process of reform. In theory, to analyze and understand something involves nothing more or less than stripping...

A characteristic of China's "gradualistic" reform is that it starts first by trying not to confront many vested interests or to undertake any fundamental, radical restructuring of the old system, but rather to develop a new system alongside (or on the "margins" of) the old system. Therefore,...

The recent slowdown in the Chinese economy is interpreted in two dimensions: a long-run, structural shift toward a moderation in China’s earlier high growth pace, and a short-run, mainly cyclical, adjustment to the earlier economic overheating. Main causes of the long-run shift are export...