Chinese Economy
2018 Spring

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Course Info:

  • Hours (Credit): 48 (3)
  • Lectures: Every Monday 18:00-20:20, Xin Shang Yuan S409
  • Instructor: Junhui Qian
  • Office Hour: Wednesday 13:00-14:00pm or by appointment
  • Office: Baotu #1706, Xuhui Campus
  • Phone: 021-52301191
  • jhqian At sjtu.edu.cn

What The Course Is About:

This course offers a relatively comprehensive introduction to the Chinese economy for international undergraduate students. We begin with the background of Chinese economic growth, including history and geography. Then we spend a lecture on the planned-economy and discuss its legacies. Then we study a variety of topics such as macroeconomic cycles, the land and real estate market, the capital market, and so on. Finally we conclude with a discussion on the future of the Chinese economy.

How We Learn:

The course include lectures, after-class readings, and research projects. It is very important to finish readings after class. Starting from mid-semester, every student will develop a research project and write a term paper.

How I Grade:

Class Participation 10%, In-class Presentation 40 %, Term Paper 50%.

The grade on class participation is measured by attendance, performance on raising and answering questions, participation of discussions.

Students can form research teams, each of which should not exceed 2 students. Both the in-class presentation and the term paper are based on the same project, the topic of which is subject to the instructor's approval. Each presentation lasts about 15 minutes. The term paper should be no less than 2000 words and no more than 5000 words. A good paper should be both rich and concise.

Textbooks and Other Learning Materials

Recommended Books:

•  The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, Barry Naughton, MIT Press 2007.

•  China's Great Economic Transformation, Brandt and Rawski (eds.), Cambridge University Press 2008.

•  Demystifying the Chinese Economy, Justin Yifu Lin, Cambridge University Press 2011.

•  China, A New History, Fairbank & Goldman, Harvard University Press, 2006

•  The Politics of China: Sixty Years of The People's Republic of China, Roderick MacFarquhar, Cambridge University Press, 2011

Chinese Books:

•  中国经济，蔡昉、林毅夫著，中国财政经济出版社， 2003 年

•  当代中国经济改革教程，吴敬琏著，上海远东出版社， 2010 年

Recommended Documentaries:

•  China: A Century of Revolution Part 1, 2 and 3 (2002) by PBS

•  China in the Red (2003) by PBS

•  Morning Sun (2003) by Carmen Hinton et al.

•  China on the Rise (2005) by PBS

•  China Rises (2006) by CBC

•  China from the Inside (2007) by PBS

Class Schedule:

  1. History and geography
  2. The planned economy and its legacies
  3. Reform and open-up (part 1)
  4. Reform and open-up (part 2)
  5. Reform and open-up (part 3)
  6. RMB exchange rate and internationalization
  7. Financial system (part 1, banking)
  8. Financial system (part 2, stock market)
  9. Financial system (part 3, private equity, bond market)
  10. Monetary policy
  11. International trade and investment
  12. Population and employment
  13. Taxation and expenditure
  14. Presentation of papers
  15. The future of Chinese economy

Reading Assignment (*: required)

Week 1:

  • *Chapter 8 of Fairbank & Goldman (2006)
  • Justin Yifu Lin, 1995, The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp. 269-292
  • Dwight H. Perkins, 1967, Government as an Obstacle to Industrialization: The Case of Nineteenth-Century China, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 27, No. 4, The Tasks of Economic History, pp. 478-492

Week 2:

  • *Chapter 4 of Lin (2011)
  • Chapter 19 and 20 of Fairbank & Goldman (2006)

Week 3:

  • * Wing T. Woo (1999), The real reasons for China's growth, The China Journal 41, 115-137.
  • Chapter 7 of Lin (2011)

Week 4:

  • * Chapter 8 of Lin (2011)
  • Laixiang Sun, 2000, Anticipatory Ownership Reform Driven by Competition: China's Township-Village and Private Enterprises in the 1990s, Comparative Economic Studies XLII (3), 49-75.

Week 5:

  • * Wei Liang, 2002, China's WTO Negotiation Process and its Implications, Journal of Contemporary China, 11:33, 683-719
  • Chapter 16 of China's Great Economic Transformation: China's Embrace of Globalization.

Week 6:

  • * Zhang, L., and K. Tao. 2014. The Benefits and Costs of Renminbi Internationalization. ADBI Working Paper 481. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute. Available: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/156336/adbi-wp481.pdf

Week 7:

  • *Kumiko Okazaki, 2007, Banking System Reform in China: The Challenges of Moving Toward a Market-Oriented Economy, Rand report. Available: https://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/OP194.html

Week 8:

  • *Junhui Qian, 2016, The 2015 Stock Panic of China: A Narrative. Available: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2795543
  • Chapter 19 of The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth.

Week 9:

  • *Franklin Allen, Jun Qian, and Meijun Qian, 2005. “Law, Finance, and Economic Growth in China,” Journal of Financial Economics 77, 57-116.

Week 10:

  • *Junhui Qian, Wing Thye Woo, 2014, The great accommodation: Chinese central banking in the new millennium, In: Financial Systems at the Crossroads: Lessons for China, World Scientific Publishing. Available: http://jhqian.org/research/ChineseCB.pdf

Week 12:

  • *Robert C. Johnson, 2014, Five Facts about Value-Added Exports and Implications for Macroeconomics and Trade Research, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28 (2),119–142.

Week 13:

  • *HuafengZhang, 2017,Opportunity or new poverty trap: Rural-urban education disparity and internal migration in China, China Economic Review, 44,112–124.

Week 14:

  • *Christine P. W. Wong and Richard M. Bird, China’s Fiscal System: A Work in Progress, the 12th Chapter of China's Great Economic Transformation, Brandt and Rawski (eds.), Cambridge University Press 2008.
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Last updated: Feb 26, 2018