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on China |
| By: | Shuhui Xiang (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID)); Xinran Yin (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID)); Yuan Zi (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) and CEPR) |
| Abstract: | This paper constructs a new database based on China's WTO subsidy notifications (2001–2022) and provides the first systematic overview of China's industrial subsidies over the past two decades. Five findings emerge. First, subsidies expanded rapidly, but direct fiscal support stabilized around 0.8 percent of GDP after 2008. Second, China has employed more subsidies than its income level would suggest, with striking policy persistence. Third, subsidies and tax incentives for FDI have declined, while those targeting specific industries and promoting innovation have grown. Fourth, wealthier and more trade-oriented provinces provide more local subsidies. Finally, subsidies are concentrated in a few sectors, and measures based on counts versus values reveal different patterns. These patterns reveal how China's subsidy strategy has evolved, offering insights to state-led development in the 21st century. |
| Keywords: | Industrial Policy; Industrial Subsidies; Chinese Economy |
| JEL: | F13 O25 H2 |
| Date: | 2025–12–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gii:giihei:heidwp18-2025 |
| By: | Sang Soo Park (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade) |
| Abstract: | China is the dominant force in the world of industrial robots and has staked out an enormous share of the market for both new installations and operational robot stock. This reflects an intentional commitment to smart manufacturing, part of a larger effort by the Chinese government to overcome a longstanding demographic crisis (the country’s birth rates have been crashing and its population rapidly aging for years now) that threatens to derail its pursuit of global manufacturing preeminence. By accelerating the deployment of industrial robots in core sectors such as automobiles and electronics, China is looking to enhance productivity, upgrade product quality, and consolidate its status as the world’s global manufacturing powerhouse. |
| Keywords: | robotics; industrial robots; industrial robotics; artificial intelligence; AI; industrial AI; humanoid robots; China; robotics industry; robotics policy; industrial policy; automation; South Korea |
| JEL: | L64 L52 |
| Date: | 2025–10–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kieter:021802 |
| By: | Pamina Koenig (Paris School of Economics); Jiancong Liu (Paris School of Economics); Sandra Poncet (Paris School of Economics); Dan Xie (University College Dublin) |
| Abstract: | We provide the first empirical evidence linking digital trade facilitation reforms to changes in port operations. Leveraging the staggered rollout of Single Window reforms in the People’s Republic of China (2014–2016), which streamlined customs clearance, we combine Automatic Identification System data on container ship movements with event study methods to identify causal effects. While effects on carried tonnage are positive but statistically insignificant, decomposition analysis reveals that the Single Window operates through a specific channel, without changing vessel loading conditions, ship size, and port processing times. To assess port responses, we analyze heterogeneity across vessel and terminal characteristics. Impacts are concentrated among smaller vessels and less congested terminals, with no effect on larger vessels and capacity-constrained facilities. These findings demonstrate that administrative efficiency improvements boost maritime activity through extensive rather than intensive margins, with ports accommodating increased trade demand primarily through higher vessel frequency. |
| Keywords: | trade facilitation;digital technology;container shipping;People’s Republic of China ports |
| JEL: | F10 F13 F14 R40 R58 |
| Date: | 2025–12–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbewp:021808 |
| By: | Yan Hu; Stephan Maurer |
| Abstract: | Do minorities benefit from social networks? In this paper, we study this question using the historical example of China's first modern bureaucratic organization, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Drawing on newly digitized personnel records from 1876-1911, we first show that the Chinese clerks employed by the service were predominantly Cantonese. Using the plausibly exogenous transfers of clerks across stations, we then estimate that a non-Cantonese (minority) clerk benefited significantly from meeting at least one colleague from his same province and dialect. Such connections led to faster promotion and a 5.6% salary increase, with even stronger effects when meeting a clerk who was either senior or of high quality. |
| Keywords: | Chinese maritime customs service, social connections, wages, promotion, minorities |
| Date: | 2025–12–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2138 |
| By: | Laura Alfaro; Harald Fadinger; Jan Schymik; Gede Virananda |
| Abstract: | Trade and industrial policies, while primarily intended to support domestic industries, may unintentionally stimulate technological progress abroad. We document this mechanism in the case of rare earth elements (REEs) – critical inputs for manufacturing at the knowledge frontier, with low elasticity of substitution, inelastic supply, and high production and processing concentration. To assess the importance of REEs across industries, we construct an input-output table that includes disaggregated REE inputs. Using REE-related patents categorized by a large language model, trade data, and physical and chemical substitution properties of REEs, we show that the introduction of REE export restrictions by China led to a global surge in innovation and exports in REE-intensive downstream sectors outside of China. To rationalize these findings and quantify the global impact of the adverse REE supply shock, we develop a quantitative general-equilibrium model of trade and directed technological change. We also propose a structural method to estimate sectoral input substitution elasticities for REEs from patent data and find REEs to be complementary inputs. Under endogenous technologies and with complementary inputs, input-supply restrictions on REEs induce a surge in REE-enhancing innovation and lead to an expansion of REE-intensive downstream sectors. |
| Keywords: | Trade Restrictions, Industrial Policy, Global Value Chains, Rare Earths, Directed Technological Change, Input-Output Linkages, Downstream Sectors, Innovation |
| JEL: | F13 F14 F42 O33 O47 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bon:boncrc:crctr224_2025_720 |
| By: | Amoa-Gyarteng, Karikari |
| Abstract: | This case study examines Highland Spring’s potential entry into the Chinese bottled water market. As the United Kingdom’s leading domestic bottled water brand, Highland Spring has built a solid position at home but has little activity abroad. With the UK market already well developed, the company now faces limited room to grow locally, which makes international expansion an important consideration. The case requires students to evaluate whether Highland Spring should expand into China, determine the appropriate entry mode, identify target customer segments, and design a marketing strategy that balances standardization with local adaptation. Students analyze Highland Spring's internal capabilities using SWOT and product life cycle frameworks, assess the UK market environment to understand the push factors for internationalization, evaluate China's attractiveness using PESTEL and Porter's Five Forces, and develop recommendations for segmentation, targeting, and positioning. The case is designed for global strategic management and international marketing courses, where students need to bring together several frameworks to develop practical and well-reasoned market entry recommendations for a premium consumer brand. |
| Keywords: | global strategic management, international marketing, market entry strategy, standardization versus adaptation, segmentation and targeting, China |
| JEL: | M16 F23 M31 M21 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:333698 |
| By: | Thi Thanh Ha DOAN; Asei ITO; Changyuan LUO; Hongyong ZHANG |
| Abstract: | Utilizing comprehensive parent-affiliate matched data on Japanese multinational firms, this study investigates how geopolitical risks affect global supply chain configurations, with a focus on East and Southeast Asia during the period 2009–2022. We construct firm-level exposure to geopolitical risk in China using data on trade and foreign direct investment. First, Japanese multinational firms tend to respond to geopolitical shocks by diversifying their supply chains away from China and toward the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) economies. This response is particularly pronounced among firms that depend heavily on imported inputs from China or maintain substantial production operations there. Second, such diversification typically does not entail drastic within-firm relocation (“friend-shoring†) of supply chains. Third, Japanese multinational firms tend to increase their capital investment in Japan while maintaining their existing production bases in China. These results suggest that firms favor a strategy of supply chain diversification—rather than outright relocation / reshoring or abrupt decoupling—as a means of mitigating geopolitical risks. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:25112 |
| By: | Ruike Lyu; Anna Li; Jianxiao Wang; Hongxi Luo; Yan Shen; Hongye Guo; Ershun Du; Chongqing Kang; Jesse Jenkins |
| Abstract: | In many countries, declining demand in energy-intensive industries (EIIs) such as cement, steel, and aluminum is leading to industrial overcapacity. Although overcapacity is traditionally seen as problematic, it could unlock EIIs' flexibility in electricity use. Using China's aluminum smelting sector as a case, we evaluate the system-level cost-benefit of retaining EII overcapacity for flexible electricity use in decarbonized systems. We find that overcapacity enables smelters to adopt a seasonal operation paradigm, ceasing production during winter load peaks driven by heating electrification and renewable seasonality. In a 2050-net-zero scenario, this paradigm reduces China's electricity-system investment and operating costs by 15-72 billion CNY per year (8-34% of the industry's product value), enough to offset the costs of maintaining overcapacity and product storage. Seasonal operation also cuts workforce fluctuations across aluminum smelting and thermal-power sectors by up to 62%, potentially mitigating socio-economic disruptions from industrial restructuring and the energy transition. |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2511.22839 |
| By: | Ma, Shuang (Guangzhou University); Mu, Ren (Texas A&M University); Xiao, Han |
| Abstract: | Minimum wage increases are often accompanied by firms raising qualification requirements in job postings, but whether this skill upgrading reflects changes in who applies (composition effects) or changes in whom firms select from an unchanged applicant pool (selection effects) remains unclear. Using unique data from a large online job platform in China that links job postings, applications, and job offers, we compare firm hiring practices and applicant pools before versus after province-level minimum wage increases, treated versus control provinces, and minimum-wage versus higher-wage occupations. We find that firms raise educational requirements in postings by 3-4 percentage points and increase job offers to college-educated workers by 30\%, while offers to less-educated workers remain unchanged. At the same time, the application volumes and applicant characteristics remain unchanged. This pattern reveals that the shift in job offers occurs entirely through the selection effect, as the short-run labor supply response is limited even when firms actively attempt to reshape their applicant pools. Minimum wage increases thus redistribute employment opportunities among existing job seekers away from less educated workers. |
| Keywords: | job offers, part-time jobs, job postings, minimum wage, China |
| JEL: | J23 J63 O53 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18290 |
| By: | Sohee Park (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade) |
| Abstract: | At the Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2024, the Chinese leadership identified the expansion of domestic demand as the top economic policy priority for 2025. For the first time, it mentioned the expanded and reinforced Two New (大规模设备更新和消费品以旧换新, lit. Large-Scale Equipment Renewal and Consumer Goods Trade-in) policy.<p> The Two New policy appropriately has dual aspects, corresponding to production/investment and consumption: large-scale equipment renewal (production/investment) and consumer goods trade-in (以旧换新, lit. the replacement of old products with new ones), which represents the demand (consumption) side. First, large scale equipment renewal is a measure designed to encourage firms to replace or upgrade their facilities with equipment that is more technologically advanced, energy-efficient, and safe.<p> This is supported through investment subsidies, interest subsidies on loans, and other mechanisms, with the aim of enhancing productivity by expanding investment in more efficient manufacturing infrastructure. Second, the consumer goods trade-in policy is meant to stimulate consumption by providing subsidies to individual consumers who purchase consumer goods that meet government-designated standards. This measure seeks to unlock consumption potential and promote household spending. |
| Keywords: | China, industrial policy; Two New; Two New policy; trade-in policy; consumption subsidies; Chinese domestic market; industrial upgrading; industrial strategy |
| JEL: | L52 H25 H54 |
| Date: | 2025–10–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kieter:021806 |
| By: | Zhang, Zhi Min; Yu, Chengzheng; Li, Jingting |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Health Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea24:343627 |
| By: | Yu, Chengzheng; Zhang, Zhi Min; Wei, Liangchun |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Health Economics and Policy, Resource/Energy Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea24:343628 |
| By: | Frederik Rech (School of Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China); Fanchen Meng (Faculty of Economics, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, Shenzhen, China); Hussam Musa (Faculty of Economics, Matej Bel University, Bansk\'a Bystrica, Slovakia); Martin \v{S}ebe\v{n}a (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China); Siele Jean Tuo (Business School, Liaoning University, Shenyang, China) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates whether firm-level artificial intelligence (AI) adoption improves the out-of-sample prediction of corporate financial distress models beyond traditional financial ratios. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms (2008-2023), we address sparse AI data with a novel pruned training window method, testing multiple machine learning models. We find that AI adoption consistently increases predictive accuracy, with the largest gains in recall rates for identifying distressed firms. Tree-based models and AI density metrics proved most effective. Crucially, models using longer histories outperformed those relying solely on recent "AI-rich" data. The analysis also identifies divergent adoption patterns, with healthy firms exhibiting earlier and higher AI uptake than distressed peers. These findings, while based on Chinese data, provide a framework for early-warning signals and demonstrate the broader potential of AI metrics as a stable, complementary risk indicator distinct from traditional accounting measures. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2512.02510 |
| By: | Wang, Lei; Jiang, Dingjing; Zhang, Siqi; Rozelle, Scott D. |
| Keywords: | Community/Rural/Urban Development |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea24:343987 |
| By: | Yan, Ru; Ji, Chen; Jin, Songqing |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Agricultural Finance |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea24:344052 |
| By: | Rao, Xudong; Wang, Xingguo; Turvey, Calum G.; Zhang, Yuehua |
| Keywords: | Livestock Production/Industries, Risk and Uncertainty, Farm Management |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea24:343709 |
| By: | Sun, Falin; Hou, Peibin; Qiu, Huanguang; Kong, Xiangwen |
| Keywords: | Agribusiness, Environmental Economics and Policy, Industrial Organization |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea24:343678 |
| By: | Shi, Hongxu; Chen, Kelin; Zhang, Jun |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Resource/Energy Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea24:343702 |
| By: | Ye, Lei; Xu, Meng; Lin, Bin; Wang, Xiaoxi |
| Keywords: | Crop Production/Industries, Productivity Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea24:343865 |
| By: | Heiduk, Felix; Hell, Nora |
| Abstract: | The biannual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit meetings are a fixed component of regional summit diplomacy. Internationally, however, they tend to attract little to no attention. This is partly due to their reputation as mere "talk shops" that rarely produce concrete results and partly due to the structural and institutional weaknesses of ASEAN itself, which frequently become visible during such summits, reinforcing fundamental doubts about their effectiveness. The fact that the ASEAN Summit held in Kuala Lumpur in October 2025 attracted considerably greater international attention than usual can be attributed to several factors. United States (US) President Donald Trump participated in a meeting of the regional organisation for the first time and acted as patron of the so-called Thai-Cambodian peace agreement signed during the summit. Moreover, on the sidelines of the summit the US and China conducted negotiations aimed at limiting their trade disputes. The admission of Timor-Leste as ASEAN's 11th member further underscored the organisation's continuing appeal. Nevertheless, numerous concrete challenges, such as the management of regional conflicts or reform of the consensus principle, remain unresolved. Despite its limitations, ASEAN remains significant for Germany and Europe because of its "convening power", its inclusive multilateralism, and the growing strategic significance of Southeast Asia. |
| Keywords: | Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Kuala Lumpur, ASEAN Centrality, Thai-Cambodian peace agreement, US and China, President Donald Trump, Myanmar |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:333597 |
| By: | Zhang, Haotian (Lingnan College, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China); Jamasb, Tooraj (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School); Nepal, Rabindra (School of Business, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia); Dong, Kangyin (School of International Trade and Economics, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, China) |
| Abstract: | Gender equality and carbon inequality are interrelated and pervasive. However, there is limited evidence on the presence and nature of the causality relationships between gender equality and carbon inequality in the literature. This paper examines how gender equality affects carbon inequality and the underlying mechanisms using a theoretical model analysis with a novel perspective and panel data from 153 countries for the period 2006–2019. We find that gender equality mitigates carbon inequality by alleviating wealth and income disparities with democratization and anti-corruption efforts amplifying its impact. The reduction in carbon inequality and economic inequality stems mainly from the decrease in carbon emissions and the economic share of the wealthy. The benefits of gender equality for the poor are relatively small, while democratization and anti-corruption and efforts strengthen its positive effects on disadvantaged groups. |
| Keywords: | Gender equality; Carbon inequality; Democratization; Corruption; Wealth inequality; Income inequality |
| JEL: | C23 F35 O13 P28 Q55 |
| Date: | 2025–12–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cbsnow:2025_011 |