After 13 rounds of on again, off again trade negotiations that began last year, the U.S. and China agreed this month (October, 2019) to a partial truce in their trade war of tariffs and counter-tariffs. But distrust remains high, and tensions over technology, investment, and economic ties have become increasingly entangled in ideological divisions. Are the tensions between the U.S. and China really about trade dominance, or is this a great power competition for economic and strategic supremacy?
The Chinese political-economy is a sui generis entity of remarkable definitional complexity. The scale of its growth is unparalleled. It is run by an authoritarian government which nonetheless leaves most sectors mostly free to make profits. Its state-owned enterprises are lumbering behemoths, inefficient but largely profitable. The banking industry is huge and run for the good of the state, rather than for financial imperative. And the whole system is underpinned by a Communist party structure.
China is an "abnormal" economic power, for sure. Media coverage has soared because China's rise is now challenging the world's geopolitical balance of power. Yet one is likely to read about its possible financial collapse as its emergence as the world's largest economy.
To understand why there is such extreme variation in perceptions about China's economy is the goal of this SDG. Understanding these differences is critical to forging more constructive relations between China and the rest of the world.
To this end, we will use Yukon Huang's Cracking the China Conundrum as our core book, supplemented by a course packet containing up-to-date topical materials from news media and think tanks. Yukon Huang is an American economist of Chinese origin. He worked at the World Bank for years and at the end of the 1990s was the World Bank's first country director for China. He currently is a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. and a frequent featured commentator on China for the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.
Week 1. Overview
Week 2. Global public perceptions of China's economy and the contrasting views shaped by economic and political considerations
Week 3. Origins of China's growth model: How Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up of the economy more than three decades ago laid the basis for China's growth model which underpins the current debate about its economic challenges
Week 4. China's unbalanced growth
Week 5. China's debt dilemma
Week 6. Emergent economic, social, and political tensions facing China and their relationship to economic developments
Week 7. China's trade and capital flows
Week 8. China's foreign investment in the U.S. and European Union
Week 9. China's impact on the global balance of power
Week 10. Conclusion
Huang, Yukon. Cracking the China Conundrum. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Course packet containing up-to-date topical material from news media and think tanks.