Property rights and economic reform in China / edited by Jean C. Oi and Andrew G. Walder.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Oi, Jean C. (Jean Chun)

Walder, Andrew G. (Andrew George), 1953-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Right of property--China.

Right of property.

China.

Government ownership--China.

Government ownership.

Privatization--China.

Privatization.

Physical Description:

xiv, 354 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1999.

Summary:

China's rapid economic growth during the past two decades has occurred without the systematic privatization programs once urged upon the former Communist regimes of Europe and the USSR. Some observers have argued that this shows that changes in property rights are not important in reforming a command economy; others insist that in China a facade of public ownership hides a variety of ownership forms that are essentially private in nature. This volume seeks to adjudicate these opposing views by clarifying conceptually and factually the pattern of property rights changes in the contemporary Chinese economy.

The contributors to this volume, from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology, have all conducted fieldwork in China on specific economic sectors or enterprise types. Working with a common definitional framework derived from the work of the institutional economist Harold Demsetz, they seek to establish which actors exercise what kinds of rights in practice over what kinds of economic assets, documenting changes through time.Most of the essays examine the rural industrial economy -- the fastest-growing sector -- or the "spin-off" economic enterprises and activities of public enterprises and institutions.

The research presented in this volume supports several specific conclusions. First, industrializing rural regions have emerged with diametrically opposed property rights regimes: in one kind of region public ownership only marginally different in form from that of the Mao years has predominated; in other regions wholly new forms of private household and foreign-funded enterprise have arisen. Second, the regimes of all the examined regions and sectorshave evolved continually since the outset of reform, and in recent years change has accelerated because of the increased pressures of competitive markets. Third, in the evolution of property rights the distinction between public and private is not crucial in differentiating the key arrangements; instead, a more finely differentiated set of gradations from "public" to "private" prove central to the story of the Chinese economy.

Contents:

1. Property Rights in the Chinese Economy: Contours of the Process of Change / Andrew G. Walder, Jean C. Oi 1

Part 1. Enterprise Ownership in Village Communities

2. Collective Enterprise and Property Rights in a Sichuan Village: The Rise and Decline of Managerial Corporatism / Gregory A. Ruf 27

3. Local Institutions and the Transformation of Property Rights in Southern Fujian / Chih-Jou Jay Chen 49

4. The Role of Local Government in Creating Property Rights: A Comparison of Two Townships in Northwest Yunnan / Xiaolin Guo 71

5. The Evolution of Property Rights in Village Enterprises: The Case of Wuxi County / James Kai-Sing Kung 95

Part 2. Rural Shareholding Reforms and Their Impact

6. Shareholding Cooperatives: A Property Rights Analysis / Eduard B. Vermeer 123

7. Local Elites as Officials and Owners: Shareholding and Property Rights in Daqiuzhuang / Nan Lin, Chih-Jou Jay Chen 145

8. The Regional Evolution of Ownership Forms: Shareholding Cooperatives and Rural Industry in Shanghai and Wenzhou / Susan H. Whiting 171

Part 3. The Transformation of Public Property in the Urban Economy

9. Backyard Profit Centers: The Private Assets of Public Agencies / Yi-Min Lin, Zhanxin Zhang 203

10. Bargained Property Rights: The Case of China's High-Technology Sector / Corinna-Barbara Francis 226

11. Producing Property Rights: Strategies, Networks, and Efficiency in Urban China's Nonstate Firms / David L. Wank 248.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [275]-337) and index.

ISBN:

0804734569

0804737886

OCLC:

40610555