The Chinese state and political institutions

2014 ◽  
pp. 109-146
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Chinese State

The Politics of Chinese and US Foreign Direct Investment in the Developing World

Asian Survey ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 500-531
Author(s):  
Glen Biglaiser ◽  
Kelan (Lilly) Lu
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Foreign Direct Investment ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Direct Investment ◽  
Private Investment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Low Risk ◽  
Investment Strategies ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
Chinese State

In the foreign direct investment (FDI) literature, studies show that investors prefer low-risk host states. However, the research focuses on investors from developed country democracies, such as the United States, ignoring the rise of China, an authoritarian developing country that engages in public and private investment. This paper investigates Chinese state and private FDI in 127 developing countries from 2003 to 2017 to determine the effects of political risk on FDI. We find that, as with US FDI, low-risk developing countries attract more Chinese state FDI, except in the case of natural resource investment, where Chinese investors appear to disregard risk concerns. For Chinese private FDI, on the other hand, political institutions seem to play no significant role, but political affiliations matter. Our work suggests that similarities between US and Chinese state FDI are increasing, while the investment strategies of Chinese private and state firms appear to be growing farther apart.

The confidential memorial system of the Ch'ing dynasty reconsidered

1994 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-338
Author(s):  
Pei Huang
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Direct Communication ◽  
Bureaucratic Procedure ◽  
Chinese State

Students of traditional Chinese political institutions cannot afford to disregard the importance of the Ch'ing confidential memorial system. Essentially, this dynastic institution had existed for centuries, but it reached maturity only in the Ch'ing dynasty. Under this system, government officials in various positions from many regions outside the capital submitted confidential memorials which reached the imperial desk through special channels. After reading and commenting on them in vermilion ink, the ruler returned the memorials to their authors confidentially via the same channels. This system resulted in direct communication between ruler and officials, and under the vigilant Ch'ing emperors, it enhanced imperial autocratic power in several waysIn the traditional Chinese state the ruler, however enlightened or benevolent, was an autocrat. His words were law; his decisions final. Without his sanction, no state affairs or government plans could proceed. His authority could only be circumvented or manipulated within the bureaucratic procedure and for this reason he worked hard to safeguard his authority by keeping a close eye on his officials throughout the empire.

Chinese National Oil Companies in Ghana: The Cases of cnooc and Sinopec

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 588-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hardus
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
National Oil Companies ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Offshore Oil ◽  
Oil Company ◽  
China Development

This article uses the case of Ghana to provide insight into the policies and strategies used by, as well as the cooperation between, Chinese state actors in their quest for natural resources in Africa. In 2007, Ghana discovered commercial quantities of oil. While the so-called Jubilee oilfield was initially divided amongst primarily Western oil companies, in 2010 the China National Offshore Oil Corporation partnered with Ghana’s national oil company to try and purchase a stake in Jubilee. Although this bid was rejected, later that year a second Chinese state-owned oil company, Sinopec, was able to access Ghana’s oil indirectly through an offtaker agreement, linked to a $3 billion dollar loan provided by the state-owned China Development Bank. The article uses these two cases to examine the level of coordination between the strategies of Chinese state actors in their attempts to access African natural resources. It shows that China’s national oil companies and policy banks operate in increasingly autonomous ways. This goes against the developmental state thesis, which argues that the Chinese state has full control over the overseas activities of its state actors. The article also shows that national political institutions in Africa can make use of and are able to influence Chinese resource deals, countering the notion of African passivity.

scholarly journals Formation of the Traditional Chinese State Ritual System of Sacrifice to Mountain and Water Spirits

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 319
Author(s):  
Jinhua Jia
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Combined Approach ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Sacrifice to mountain and water spirits was already a state ritual in the earliest dynasties of China, which later gradually formed a system of five sacred peaks, five strongholds, four seas, and four waterways, which was mainly constructed by the Confucian ritual culture. A number of modern scholars have studied the five sacred peaks from different perspectives, yielding fruitful results, but major issues are still being debated or need to be plumbed more broadly and deeply, and the whole sacrificial system has not yet drawn sufficient attention. Applying a combined approach of religious, historical, geographical, and political studies, I provide here, with new discoveries and conclusions, the first comprehensive study of the formational process of this sacrificial system and its embodied religious-political conceptions, showing how these geographical landmarks were gradually integrated with religious beliefs and ritual-political institutions to become symbols of territorial, sacred, and political legitimacy that helped to maintain the unification and government of the traditional Chinese imperium for two thousand years. A historical map of the locations of the sacrificial temples for the eighteen mountain and water spirits is appended.

Global Restructuring, Knowledge and Learning

2004 ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
E. Hershberg
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Lower Cost ◽  
International Competitiveness ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Global Competitiveness ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
Intensive Exploitation ◽  
High Road

The influence of globalization on international competitiveness is considered in the article. Two strategies of economic growth are pointed out: the low road, that is producing more at lower cost and lower wages, with increasingly intensive exploitation of labor and environment, and the high road, that is upgrading capabilities in order to produce better basing on knowledge. Restrictions for developing countries trying to reach global competitiveness are formulated. Special attention is paid to the concept of upgrading and opportunities of joining transnational value chains. The importance of learning and forming social and political institutions for successful upgrading of the economy is stressed.

Inter-country inequality as a dynamic process and the problem of post-industrial development

2018 ◽  
pp. 5-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. M. Grigoryev ◽  
V. A. Pavlyushina
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Modern World ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Development Level ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Post Industrial

The phenomenon of economic growth is studied by economists and statisticians in various aspects for a long time. Economic theory is devoted to assessing factors of growth in the tradition of R. Solow, R. Barrow, W. Easterly and others. During the last quarter of the century, however, the institutionalists, namely D. North, D. Wallis, B. Weingast as well as D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, have shown the complexity of the problem of development on the part of socioeconomic and political institutions. As a result, solving the problem of how economic growth affects inequality between countries has proved extremely difficult. The modern world is very diverse in terms of development level, and the article offers a new approach to the formation of the idea of stylized facts using cluster analysis. The existing statistics allows to estimate on a unified basis the level of GDP production by 174 countries of the world for 1992—2016. The article presents a structured picture of the world: the distribution of countries in seven clusters, different in levels of development. During the period under review, there was a strong per capita GDP growth in PPP in the middle of the distribution, poverty in various countries declined markedly. At the same time, in 1992—2016, the difference increased not only between rich and poor groups of countries, but also between clusters.

Sinn Féin and the IRA

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Sinn Fein ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Irish Republicanism ◽  
The Republic ◽  
British State ◽  
State Responses

When Sinn Féin and the IRA emerged in Northern Ireland in 1969 they used a combination of revolutionary politics and violence to an effort to overthrow British rule. Today, the IRA is in a state of ‘retirement’, violence is a tactic of the past, and Sinn Féin is a co-ruler of Northern Ireland and an ever growing political player in the Republic of Ireland. This is one of the most startling transformations of a radical violent movement into a peaceful political one in recent times. So what exactly changed within Irish republicanism, what remains the same, and, crucially, what caused these changes? Where existing studies explain the decision to end violence as the product of stalemate or strategic interplay with the British state, this book draws on a wealth of archival material and interviews to argue that moderation was a long-term process of increasing inclusion and contact with political institutions, which gradually extracted moderate concessions from republicanism. Crucially, these concessions did not necessitate republicans forsaking their long-term ethno-national goals. The book also considers the wider implications of Irish republicanism for other cases of separatist conflict, and has significance for the future study of state responses to violent separatism and of comparative peace processes.

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