Geopolitics and Economics of China's Ascendance
Publication Year: 2012
Published by: Hong Kong University Press, HKU
Title Page, Copyright
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This volume is a collection of academic articles and commissioned research monographs completed at different critical junctures of China’s opening up to the West. Taken together, the various chapters trace the major policy measures adopted for the country’s integration with the global system of free trade and investment flows, and her accelerated...
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My gratitude is due to the following journals, publishers and research institutions for permission to use their materials: The China Quarterly, The Pacific Review, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong University Press, St. Martin’s Press, The World Bank, United Nations University-Institute of Advanced Studies (Tokyo), International Development...
Acronyms and Glossaries
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1: Introduction: Economic Imperatives versus Geopolitics
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In a way, China’s opening-up strategy started already as early as the launch of the “ping-pong diplomacy” in April 1971 and the following “whirlwind” visit to Beijing by Richard Nixon, President of the United States, in February 1972. Both events took place well ahead of the promulgation of the gaige kaifang (reform and opening up) strategy...
2: The Emergence of the Greater China Economic Circle
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Economic integration is essentially a process of unification—the means whereby coherence is imposed upon previously separate, even disparate, geographical regions. It may be pursued as a domestic or international goal, although the simultaneous attainment of both may prove elusive. Recent efforts towards the creation of...
3: Hong Kong Surviving the Open-Door, Reforming Chinese Economy
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With scarcely four years to go before sovereignty reverts to China, the British enclave of Hong Kong on the South China coast has greatly benefitted from the open-door policy of China and its celebrated move from a centrally planned Soviet-style system to a market-type economy. Trade, investment, and financial flows across the 18-mile land border...
4: Guangdong Province Ascending as the “Fifth Dragon”
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Guangdong’s economic aspiration is to catch up with the “four dragons” of East Asia within fifteen to twenty years.1 Many theoretical simulations purport to show how export promotion or other strategies might enable the province to achieve this goal and attain the income and consumption standards prevailing in these regions. Such exercises...
5: The US Connection of Hong Kongin China’s “One Country, Two Economies” System
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Hong Kong has traditionally been a very important source of China’s foreign exchange earnings. Prior to the 1980s, generally about one-quarter to one-third of the country’s hard foreign currency earnings were generated from exports to Hong Kong. Tiny as the British enclave may be in geographic terms, and with a population of only six million...
6: Hong Kong Weathering the Asian Financial Storm
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Hardly had Hong Kong wound up the fanfare of celebrating its re turn to Chinese sovereignty, on 1 July 1997, than the Asian financial crisis erupted. The next day, in a sudden collapse, the Thai baht fell precipitously in value against the US dollar. Within months, the financial disaster claimed several major “dominos” in Southeast...
7: The Greater China Growth Triangle in the Asian Financial Crisis
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This chapter focuses on the economic cooperation between Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China to examine (a) the impact of the Asian financial crisis on trade and investment flows among the three entities and (b) their longer-term implications for China as a whole in the context of economic integration among nations. Throughout...
8: Financial Restructuring for Economic Recovery in China and the Hong Kong SAR
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China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) are two disparate economic entities, but ones that have been linked through increased capital and trade flows over the past fifteen years or so. They form an economic nexus that, upon closer scrutiny, defies any textbook definition of regional economic integration. There...
9: The “China Factor” vs. the “US Dollar Peg” in the Success Story of Hong Kong
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The Hong Kong dollar was pegged to the US dollar at the rate of HK$7.8 in October 1983. Not long afterwards, commencing in April 1984, China made a decisive move to court more foreign investment by opening fourteen cities along the eastern seaboard.1 Launched with entirely different objectives, these two important policy...
10: China and the Prospects for Economic Integration within APEC
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In the last few years, it has been widely argued that the world’s centre of gravity for economic activities will inevitably shift from the Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific region in the twenty-first century. This popular perception has clearly been prompted by the spectacular economic growth of China in the past fifteen years, following accelerated...
11: China’s New Industries and Regional Economic Realignment in the Asia Pacific
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The main purpose of this study is to examine the pace and pattern of development of China’s new industries, as they may bear on the regional production networks in East Asia. Two new industries are selected for the study. First is the electronics and information technology (IT) industry, and second is the automobile industry. Both industries...
12: China’s WTO Accession, ASEAN 10 1, and ECFA: “Open Regionalism” at Work
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A distinction may be made between the “full APEC” and “APEC Proper”; the latter should just cover member countries/regions of the Asia-Pacific rim, thus excluding the North and South American member countries. Within APEC proper, however, we may distinguish between North APEC and South APEC, using Hong Kong as...
13: Conclusion: Pax Sinica Looming on the Asia-Pacific Horizon
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Looking back, the far-flung regional realignment of the production network and the ensuing forceful trends of economic integration within APEC—whether APEC proper or encompassing the American-Pacific member states across the Pacific—have obviously all been triggered by China’s economic reform and opening up to...
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Page Count: 400
Illustrations: 16 b/w
Publication Year: 2012