Fiscal federalism has provided the institutional basis for the rapid highway boom in China for three decades, creating a close linkage between subnational investment and revenue claims on tolled roads. This model of capitalization is financially unsustainable and undermines the standardization of taxation and contracting of public–private partnership projects.
The dual pressures of the global economic crisis in 2008 and high crude prices through the subsequent recovery period have prompted oil-producing countries to adopt a wide range of protectionist measures including subsidies in all forms and trade and investment restrictions. Focusing on fiscal and industrial policy adjustments in the UK and the People's Republic of China since 2008, this paper argues that both governments have sought an increase in tax contributions from the corporate sector in exchange for intensified, targeted support for specific capital investments that will address the challenges of overall decline in domestic oil production and new field exploration and oil recovery opportunities. These novel "rent-sharing" schemes – inadequately captured in recent academic debates over precise measurements of fuel subsidies – raise concerns for fair competition in the upstream market and politicians' long-term commitment to the transitioning of energy mix toward green and renewable sources.
The four volumes reviewed in this article examine the common theme of the sustainability of China's authoritarian regime as it faces tremendous centripetal forces of market expansion, increased administrative complexity, and social differentiation brought about by the post-Mao Zedong reforms. I argue that the shared focus of several authors on the Chinese Communist party's exercise of individual-level controls – either through internal disciplinary and reward mechanisms or through the strategic co-optation of private interests and civil society groups – provides valuable insights into the organisational basis of authority and exchange emanating from the party-state. At the same time, this perspective manifests inherent biases in accurately assessing the authoritarian government's adaptive capacities under changing circumstances. Further research is needed on local structures where state power encounters social resistance, producing as yet un-institutionalised processes of insecure compromise.
In 1993 and 1998, plummeting global crude oil prices threatened macroeconomic stability and the commercial viability of domestic oil and petrochemical industries in China. Interestingly, Chinese central economic planners responded differently over time - in 1993, Zhu Rongji adopted a decentralized approach of relaxing the ministerial division of labor and devolving strategic and financial decisions to individual SOEs, while leaning on pricing and tax mechanisms to balance the conflicting interests of the oil and petrochemical producers. In contrast, in 1998 Zhu pushed for the recentralization of control over state assets through Western forms of corporate organization and the consolidation of SOEs' share of the national market, coupled with significant liberalization of the pricing and trade regimes. I argue that the differences in reform outcomes stemmed from the intervening impacts of the general macroeconomic and industry-specific aggregate supply and demand imbalances. These "disequilibria" altered the relative interests and capabilities of Chinese central bureaucrats, local states and industrial entities to adjust to global price shocks, such that by 1998, the broad coalition in support of decentralized reform paradigm had neither the interest nor the resources to continue defending the status quo. Seizing this political opportunity, the central government leveraged its enhanced financial and organizational capacities to bailout producers on the condition of adopting radical enterprise and sectoral restructuring. This paper suggests a problematic legacy of periodic central state intervention in industrial governance. (China J/GIGA)
This article takes a new look at the institutional core of China's economic planning - the State Development and Planning Commission (SDPC, 1998-2003) - focusing on its role in approving and fundraising for major capital investment projects. The primary objective of this inquiry is to identify changes in the network structure and procedures of inter-agency relations and central planners' interactions with national legislators, which have produced a diversity of 'organizational microclimates' that shape the coherence of the national economic bureaucracy and central-local fiscal relations. Based on interviews of high-level officials and case studies of investment projects in energy, information technology, and transport sectors, it is argued that administrative reforms aiming to improve SDPC's regulatory capacity have been predicated on a concerted effort by key agencies and ministries under the State Council to reduce the window of opportunity for local and industrial interests to politicize capital allocation decisions. This finding suggests caution in interpreting contemporary China through the comparative lenses of a developmental state, a regulatory state, or a fiscal federalist system. (Asian J Polit Sci/NIAS)
