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on China |
| By: | Oscar Claveria (AQR-IREA, University of Barcelona); Mihály Tamas Borsi (Universitat Ramon Llull) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines trade relations between China and the European Union from 2000 to 2022, focusing on the role of trade policy uncertainty alongside key economic and institutional factors. Using an extended gravity model, the results show that China’s economic growth is a dominant driver of trade flows. The study introduces a novel proxy for China’s trade policy uncertainty, finding that it significantly influences bilateral trade. Results are robust to different specifications. Additionally, the results indicate that while non-eurozone EU countries demonstrate higher trade flows with China, the immediate impact of China’s Belt and Road Initiative on EU trade remains limited. Given the anticipatory nature of trade policy uncertainty and its relationship with economic growth, the findings highlight the usefulness of trade uncertainty indicators as tools for the early detection of shifts in trade patterns, offering valuable insights for policymakers to design strategies that promote greater stability and economic integration |
| Keywords: | international trade; economic growth; uncertainty; China; European Union; gravity model JEL classification:C33; F13; F14; O24 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aqr:wpaper:202506 |
| By: | Shu Cai (Jinan University); Albert Park (Asian Development Bank); Sangui Wang (Renmin University of China) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the impacts of a government-led microcredit program in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which was implemented at scale in poor rural areas, using a randomized controlled trial (RCT). In contrast to recent RCT-based studies that found no evidence of significant increases in income from microcredit interventions, we find that the Chinese program significantly raises household income and reduces poverty. We explore possible explanations for why the estimated impacts may be greater in the PRC, including larger loan size, lump sum repayments, lower interest rates, less access to formal credit before the program, and greater returns from credit constrained off-farm employment opportunities. |
| Keywords: | microfinance;program evaluations;randomized controlled trial |
| JEL: | D12 D22 G21 I32 O16 |
| Date: | 2025–10–20 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:021688 |
| By: | Ruixue Jia; Gaurav Khanna; Hongbin Li; Yuli Xu |
| Abstract: | China’s unprecedented expansion of higher education in 1999, increased annual college enrollment from 1 million to 9.6 million by 2020. We trace the global ripple effects of that expansion by examining its impact on US graduate education and local economies surrounding college towns. Combining administrative data from China’s college admissions system and US visa data, we leverage the centralized quota system governing Chinese college admissions for identification and present three key findings. First, the expansion of Chinese undergraduate education drove graduate student flows to the US: every additional 100 college graduates in China led to 3.6 Chinese graduate students in the US. Second, Chinese master’s students generated positive spillovers, driving the birth of new master’s programs, and increasing the number of other international and American master’s students, particularly in STEM fields. And third, the influx of international students supported local economies around college towns, raising job creation rates outside the universities, as well. Our findings highlight how domestic education policy in one country can reshape the academic and economic landscape of another through student migration and its broader spillovers. |
| JEL: | F22 I23 J23 J24 J61 O15 O38 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34391 |
| By: | Stephan Heblich; Marlon Seror; Hao Xu; Yanos Zylberberg |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of large, successful manufacturing plants on other local producers in China, focusing on “Million-Rouble Plants†built in the 1950s during a brief alliance with the U.S.S.R. The ephemeral geopolitical situation and the locations of allied and enemy airbases provide exogenous variation in plant siting. We find a boom-and-bust pattern: Counties hosting these plants were 80% more productive than control counties in 1982 but 20% less productive by 2010. This decline reflects the performance of local establishments, which exhibit low productivity, limited innovation, and high markup. Specialization hindered spillovers, preventing the emergence of new clusters and local entrepreneurship. |
| Date: | 2025–04–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:uobdis:25/792 |
| By: | Strachman, Eduardo |
| Abstract: | What makes a country grow and develop while another languishes in stagnation or regression? What kinds of decisions are made that lead to this divergence? This article seeks to illustrate this question through two examples of very close nations: China and Japan. It aims to compare the largely successful example of Japan with the failure of the former Chinese empire to withstand Western pressures, which became stronger following the attainment of industrial and military supremacy after the British Industrial Revolution and its imitation and subsequent surpassing by other European countries and the USA. This failure would only be reversed in the Chinese case in the 20th century, starting with the Revolution of 1949 and, more decisively, after the economic reforms initiated in 1978. The contrast between China’s ineffective response to the Western challenge and Japan’s effective and incredibly rapid response will be explained in the article, along with some of the reasons for these different reactions. It will be demonstrated how Japan undertook something entirely different by changing the Emperor and initiating the so-called Meiji Revolution, in place of the Tokugawa Era (1603-1867). This also resulted in Japan’s modern industrialization occurring nearly a century earlier than that of its Asian neighbors, including China. |
| Keywords: | Japan; China; Development; Economic Growth; Catch-Up |
| JEL: | L60 N15 O14 O21 O25 |
| Date: | 2025–08–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:126428 |
| By: | Godehardt, Nadine; Mayer, Maximilian |
| Abstract: | This year's Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin marked the largest gathering in the organisation's history, drawing more than 20 heads of state and 10 representatives of international organisations. At the SCO+ session, China's Head of State and Party Leader Xi Jinping delivered a keynote address, prominently unveiling the Global Governance Initiative (GGI). For Beijing, development, security, civilisation, and governance constitute the four pillars of building a "community with a shared future for mankind", in essence, a new world order. Amid today's ongoing upheavals, it is imperative for Germany and Europe to recognize China as a global strategic challenge. |
| Keywords: | China, Russia, Xi Jinping, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Global Governance Initiative (GGI), new world order, Germany, Europe, Global South, critical raw materials |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:329917 |
| By: | He, Meng-Yun |
| Abstract: | This article examines the triple migration of young female live streamers performing street entertainment in Shenzhen, China. These second-generation rural-to-urban migrants navigate three intersecting trajectories: spatial mobility to urban centres, digital migration onto live-streaming platforms as precarious workplaces, and embodied negotiation of liminality where their bodily experiences blur online-offline boundaries. Drawing on multisensory ethnographic fieldwork, this study explores how sensory experiences, platform governance and systemic inequalities shape these women's precarious livelihoods. Beneath their public performances lie burnout, stigma and hidden injuries of inequality. By situating these women's experiences at the intersection of class, gender, rural-urban migration and platform capitalism, this research uncovers the intimate cost of precarious digital labour. It also highlights their resilience and creativity in navigating structural barriers. This study contributes to empirical and theoretical discussions on gendered labour, digital precarity and affective politics of precarity in contemporary urban China. |
| Keywords: | multisensory ethnography; rural-to-urban migration; platform gendered labour; digital precarity; embodied liminality; structural inequality |
| JEL: | R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2025–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:129509 |
| By: | Yuhan Cheng; Heyang Zhou; Yanchu Liu |
| Abstract: | We leverage the capacity of large language models such as Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) in constructing factor models for Chinese futures markets. We successfully obtain 40 factors to design single-factor and multi-factor portfolios through long-short and long-only strategies, conducting backtests during the in-sample and out-of-sample period. Comprehensive empirical analysis reveals that GPT-generated factors deliver remarkable Sharpe ratios and annualized returns while maintaining acceptable maximum drawdowns. Notably, the GPT-based factor models also achieve significant alphas over the IPCA benchmark. Moreover, these factors demonstrate significant performance across extensive robustness tests, particularly excelling after the cutoff date of GPT's training data. |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2509.23609 |
| By: | Tiantian Yang (Xi’an Jiaotong University); Richard S.J. Tol (University of Sussex) |
| Abstract: | To address the dual environmental challenges of pollution and climate change, China has established multiple environmental markets, including pollution emissions trading, carbon emissions trading, energy-use rights trading, and green electricity trading. Previousempirical studies suffer from known biases arising from time-varying treatment and multipletreatments. To address these limitations, this study adopts a dynamic control group designand combines Difference-in-Difference (DiD) and Artificial Counterfactual (ArCo) empiricalstrategies. Using panel data on A-share listed companies from 2000 to 2024, this studyinvestigates the marginal effects and interactive impacts of multiple environmental marketsimplemented in staggered and overlapping phases. Existing pollution emissions tradingmitigates the negative effects of carbon emission trading. Carbon trading suppresses(improves) financial performance (if implemented alongside energy-use rights trading). Theaddition of energy-use rights or green electricity trading in regions already covered bycarbon or pollution markets has no significant effects. |
| Keywords: | Multiple environmental markets; Policy interactions; Marginal abatement cost;Contamination bias; Artificial Counterfactual; Difference-in-Difference |
| JEL: | Q54 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sus:susewp:0625 |
| By: | Liu, Renliang (Liaoning University); Xie, Jian (Southern University of Science and Technology) |
| Abstract: | Why do some regions fail to adopt the best available technologies? This paper examines how anti-foreign sentiment, proxied by the incidence of anti-missionary violence, and industrial capacity jointly shaped the gains from China's 1983 Quid Pro Quo policy (QPQ, trading market access for technology). Our difference-in-differences analysis shows that the QPQ policy substantially increased foreign technology adoption in cities with more developed early industrial capacity. A subsequent triple-differences specification shows that anti-missionary violence erased around three-quarters of these gains, with the most pronounced effects on critical equipment, licensing agreements, and in cities where officials led the conflicts. Disaggregated analysis with stringent fixed effects demonstrates that hostility toward specific source countries sharply cut technology in-flows from those countries. Mechanism analysis suggests that anti-missionary violence contributed to this erosion by deteriorating bilateral municipal ties and deterring the entry of foreign-invested firms. Firm-level matching indicates a 15.8% productivity premium for technology adopters, and a back-of-the-envelope calculation translates this into an average city-level productivity shortfall of 0.128% over 1983–1995 due to anti-foreign sentiment. |
| Keywords: | Foreign Technology Adoption, Quid Pro Quo Policy, Anti-Foreign Sentiment, Industrial Capacity JEL Classification: F63, N45, N75, O14, O33 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:777 |
| By: | Charles Hodgson; Shilong Sun |
| Abstract: | How do vertically integrated firms' pricing and product provision decisions change with upstream and downstream competition? We answer this question in the context of the Chinese film industry. Theaters allocate significantly fewer showings to non-integrated films. This foreclosure effect is particularly pronounced in two scenarios: when an integrated theater faces limited spatial competition, and when an integrated film is similar to competing films. To measure welfare effects, we estimate a model of consumer preferences and theater showings choice using a novel method that combines standard demand data with film ratings data. Our results show that integrated theaters internalize a substantial portion of their upstream profits, driving foreclosure behavior that distorts showings. Counterfactual simulations show that vertical integration increases consumer welfare by 2.4% in the median market, but reduces consumer welfare in 7% of markets. The welfare effects of foreclosure vary with upstream competition between films and downstream competition between theaters, and we show that targeted antitrust policy that removes of integration based on measures of market competition can substantially increase welfare. |
| JEL: | L0 L13 L40 L42 L82 |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34390 |