IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/csa/wpaper/2012-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

China as a Developmental State

Author

Listed:
  • John Knight

Abstract

The paper examines the notion of a ‘developmental state’ and shows that China possesses the characteristics of a developmental state. It explains the political economy which generated such a state in China and in some other economies. It analyses the methods and mechanisms that were introduced to create a developmental state, in particular the incentive structures that the leadership used to solve the principal-agent problem. These include personnel policies, fiscal decentralization, and patronage relationships. That leads to a review of its successes, limitations and adverse consequences, and to the question: can China’s developmental state be sustained? Conclusions are drawn for both China and other developing countries.

Suggested Citation

  • John Knight, 2012. "China as a Developmental State," CSAE Working Paper Series 2012-13, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2012-13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:70f4bfce-d560-4985-a6d7-667c8aeb8618
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shi, Jinchuan & Zhang, Xiaoqian, 2018. "How to explain corporate investment heterogeneity in China's new normal: Structural models with state-owned property rights," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-16.
    2. Weimin Zhang & Wangrong Ma & Qiwei Chen, 2022. "Does Regional Development Policy Promote Industrial Structure Upgrading? Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-21, July.
    3. Boddewyn, Jean J., 2016. "International business–government relations research 1945–2015: Concepts, typologies, theories and methodologies," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 10-22.
    4. John Knight, 2021. "A Tale of Two Countries and Two Stages: South Africa, China and the Lewis Model," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 89(2), pages 143-172, June.
    5. Jiancai Pi, 2017. "An economic analysis of the political promotion system in China," Zbornik radova Ekonomskog fakulteta u Rijeci/Proceedings of Rijeka Faculty of Economics, University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, vol. 35(2), pages 375-390.
    6. Marson, Marta & Savin, Ivan, 2022. "Complementary or adverse? Comparing development results of official funding from China and traditional donors in Africa," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 189-206.
    7. Andrew Flynn & Li Yu, 2020. "The Protean Environmental State in Dongguan: Reconceptualising the local state and ecological development in China," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(3), pages 443-463, May.
    8. Wagner, Helmut, 2017. "On the (non-)sustainability of China’s development strategies," CEAMeS Discussion Paper Series 6/2017, University of Hagen, Center for East Asia Macro-economic Studies (CEAMeS).
    9. Han, Enze & Paik, Christopher, 2017. "Ethnic Integration and Development in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 31-42.
    10. Mária Csanádi, 2017. "Chinese Power Structure and Its Transformation in Comparative Perspective," Financial and Economic Review, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary), vol. 16(Sepcial I), pages 7-20.
    11. Tan, Hao & Thurbon, Elizabeth & Kim, Sung-Young & Mathews, John A., 2021. "Overcoming incumbent resistance to the clean energy shift: How local governments act as change agents in coal power station closures in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    12. Bolesta, Andrzej, 2015. "Creating a Post-Socialist Developmental State: The Political Economy of China’s Transformation and Development," Studia z Polityki Publicznej / Public Policy Studies, Warsaw School of Economics, vol. 2(4), pages 1-24, December.
    13. Philip Arestis & Nikolaos Karagiannis & Sangkwon Lee, 2021. "The economic growth of China: enabling politico-institutional and socio-cultural factors," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 339-358, July.
    14. Shen, Xiaoxiao & Tsai, Kellee S., 2016. "Institutional Adaptability in China: Local Developmental Models Under Changing Economic Conditions," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 107-127.
    15. Weiqing Song, 2019. "Logic of the Chinese developmental state and China’s geo-economic engagement with Central and Eastern Europe," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 387-401, December.
    16. Peng Bin & Andrea Fracasso, 2017. "Regional Consumption Inequality in China: An Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition at the Prefectural Level," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(3), pages 459-486, September.
    17. Székely-Doby, András, 2017. "A kínai fejlesztő állam kihívásai [Challenges to the Chinese developmental state]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 630-649.
    18. John Knight, 2017. "China’s evolving inequality," Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 307-323, October.
    19. Naseemullah, Adnan, 2023. "The political economy of national development: A research agenda after neoliberal reform?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    20. Schmalz, Stefan & Gräf, Helena & Köncke, Philipp & Schneidemesser, Lea, 2022. "Umkämpfte Globalisierung: Amerikanische und europäische Reaktionen auf Chinas Aufstieg im Hochtechnologiebereich [Contested globalization: US and EU responses to China’s rise as a high-tech power]," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 427-454.
    21. Andrea Fracasso, 2015. "Economic Rebalancing and Growth: the Japanese experience and China’s prospects," DEM Discussion Papers 2015/07, Department of Economics and Management.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    China; Developmental state; Economic growth; Incentives; Principal-agent problem; Virtuous circle;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B52 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Modern Monetary Theory;
    • E02 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2012-13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Julia Coffey (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.