China has undergone a dramatic economic and social transformation over the past three decades. Moreover, it started to implement the one-child policy in 1978 and resulted in dramatic changes in family and demographic structures. Consequently, interactions among parents, teachers, and children that impact social capital have been transformed and new patterns of investment in children have emerged.
Drawing upon the literature on the definition and measurement of social capital, this study developed a survey instrument and applied it to a stratified random sample of 1306 sixth-grade primary school children and their parents in Nanshan district, Shenzhen, China. The rate of return for children survey was 99.62% and that of parents was 80.86%. Based on the primary data, this paper focused on children and executed the following four exercises. First, family backgrounds and investments in children were compared against household registration and single child status to make sense of inequality in educational resources and social exclusion in the context of the rapid industrialization and urbanization in China. Secondly, a factor analysis method was applied to the indicators on social capital for children and grouped them into the following four scales: at home, with friends, in school and in society. Then the possession of social capital was measured for each participant child using the above four scales and further compared by gender, single child status, and household registration. Finally, the internal consistency of the scales was investigated and validity of the scales was tested against possible outcomes exemplified by the following two groups of variables: (1) relational assets including with siblings, father, mother and friends; and (2) subjective wellbeing including perceived worth of oneself, self-perceived ranking in school performance, felt pressure to study hard, and self-perceived happiness, health and being able to put things under control.
This paper examines the effects of the six components of good governance on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in 15 Asian economies for the period 1996–2007 using a fixed effect model for panel data with heteroskedasticity corrected standard errors. The study also employs the feasible general least square (FGLS) and Prais-Winstein panel estimation methods in order to check the consistency of the results with the fixed effect model. The empirical results reveal that of the six components of good governance, only government effectiveness, political stability and absence of violence, rule of law, and control of corruption are the key determinants of FDI inflow, as they exhibit consistent results under the different estimation techniques. However, the study finds no significant evidence for voice and accountability and regulatory quality to affect FDI inflows. The study reveals that human capital, infrastructure, lending interest rate, and GDP growth also have a significant influence on FDI inflows. We conclude that a country which can enhance its governance environment in general is likely to attract more foreign direct investment despite offsetting deficiencies in other dimensions of good governance such as voice and accountability and regulatory quality.
China’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) has recently gained media and academic attention because of concerns about its large size (USD 200 billion), possible political motives, and lack of transparency. Despite the fact that the global financial crisis has generated more caution in many countries towards overseas investment, China’s SWF’s new round of investment in foreign countries has been impressive. While acknowledging uncertainties, China seems to see many opportunities for its SWF in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
This paper seeks to address this question: what has been the impact of the global financial crisis on China’s SWF investment? I attempt to investigate China’s SWF investment strategies after the onslaught of the global financial crisis and to examine their potential impact on the international political economic system in the post-recession era. This question has not been systematically explored and thus this paper should be of great interest to both market players and policy makers as well as the academic community.
I plan to answer this research question by examining the domestic debate in China with regard to how different policy makers and sectors perceived the opportunities and challenges for China’s SWF in the wake of the financial crisis. Related to this, I also examine how the Chinese decision makers eventually made their policy choice and how they reformed the management of China’s SWF in response to the financial crisis.
This paper examines the underlying basis for the rapid East Asian regional trade integration as well as China’s role by analyzing China’s trade with the countries in the region in the last couple of decades.
China’s trade profile with the East Asian economies differs significantly from its trade profile with the rest of the world. While China’s total trade has an increasing surplus since the early nineties, its trade with East Asia began to experience substantial deficit since 2002. Capital goods and chemicals dominate China’s imports from the East Asian economies while from the rest of the world, fuels and natural resources are China’s main imports. China as a net-exporter of finished goods is more significant in its trade with the world as a whole than with the East Asian region.
China’s industrialization pace and structure has strong effect on intraregional trade. The pattern of China’s trade with the East Asian economies has developed essentially from the upsurge in production network phenomenon in the region. China imports office and telecommunication capital goods from the region and exports the same to the rest of the world. The intra-regional trade structure also follows the flying geese pattern of industrialization development of the countries in the region. China can be seen moving up the flying geese hierarchy in the region through its trade in intermediate goods with the East Asian economies.
Korea started to implement an outward-looking development strategy through the free trade agreement (FTA) after the economic crisis in 1998. In 2006, the European Commission implemented ‘The EU New Global Europe Strategy’ which the European Union (EU) will pursue bilateral FTAs with the major economies. The negotiation of the EU-Korea FTA has been launched in 2007 and the agreement was signed on 15 October 2009. This is the most comprehensive FTA ever negotiated by the EU. The agreement covers both tariffs (TBs) and non-tariffs (NTBs) issues in agricultural, manufacturing and services sectors. The economic impacts of the EU-Korea FTA have been studied on both qualitative (Andreosso O’Callaghan 2009; Nicolas 2009; Guerin et al. 2007), and quantitative analysis (Kim, 2009; Francois 2007; Ko, 2008). The studies found that both economies stand to gain economically and Korea tends to obtain the higher gains relative to the EU. In addition, there are some potential increases in volume of trade between two regions according to the analysis on trade complementarity and degree of comparative advantage.
However, when patterns of merchandise trade between the EU27 and Korea are scrutinised, the major trade partners of Korea are the EU15, not the New Member States (NMBs). The statistics from EUROSTAT illustrate that the NMBs account for only 20 to 25 per cent of the EU27’s total imports from Korea, between 1995 and 2009. The NMBs states also hold less than one per cent of the EU27’s total exports to Korea. In addition, the statistics show that the patterns of trade between a pair of EU15-Korea and a pair of EU15-NMBs are similar, i.e. both Korea and the NMBs export heavily on machinery and transports equipments (SITC 7) to the EU15 destination. Given that the EU15 is the largest export market of NMBs and it’s also a second largest export market of Korea (behind China), the above figures seem to imply that the EU-Korea FTA tends to generate export threat from the NMBs to the EU15 rather than create the export opportunity from the NMBs to Korea.
Therefore, this research aims at analysing the potential export threats and the potential increases in volume of trade on NMBs due to the EU-Korea FTA by using a qualitative approach. The studies will be conducted at four digits (SITC) of industry level. The various trade indices, for example, the RCA index, GL index, K-F index and the Rivalry Threat Index will be used in the analysis. The research is expected to contribute on understanding the impact of the EU-Korea FTA on the NMBs at a very disaggregated industry level and also the potential changes in patterns of trade of the NMBs.
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