Not Cooperating with Water (Cultural Conflict Between Modernization and Pseudo-Modernization)

Author: Zhu Jianguo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-01-01
Features: The seventh issue of Comparative Studies discusses three themes related to China's reform and development through three groups of articles. The first group focuses on healthcare system reform, featuring Li Jiangge's Some Opinions on Rural Employment, Rural Finance, and Healthcare and Wang Shaoguang, a professor at the Department of Political Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong's Crisis and Turning Point in China's Public Health. The second group examines the roots of Japan's bad debt problem, particularly the severe consequences of fiscal and public sector investment and financing plans. We provide three articles for readers: Qing Luo Xinhong's Japan's Recent Bad Debt Problem, Hoshi Takeo et al.'s Paying for Japan's Investment and Financing Plans, and Kashyap's Analysis of Japan's Financial Crisis. The third group presents contrasting views on China's exchange rate policy. McKinnon and Schnabl argue that China should peg the RMB to the USD at 8.3 RMB per dollar in the long term instead of appreciating it; Guan Zhixiong, a senior researcher at the Institute of Industrial Economics, Japan, believes that the RMB should appreciate due to the increased competitiveness of Chinese products. Readers can draw their own conclusions. The themes of these three groups are closely linked to the administrative efficiency and capabilities of government institutions and officials. Therefore, this issue opens with the article Theories of Bureaucratic System Reform to discuss what kind of incentives can be used to reform the bureaucratic system to improve its efficiency and quality. Our front-page feature Why Some Countries Are Poor and Others Are Rich provides further theoretical background for the opening, explaining the crucial role of a country's institutions and economic policies in economic development.