China http://lists.repec.org/mailman/listinfo/nep-cna China 2026-05-04 China's Global Ownership https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35106&r=&r=cna We study the global footprint and real effects of Chinese overseas corporate ownership. By assembling a comprehensive micro-level dataset of 161, 773 firms across 159 countries (2012–2021), we independently reconstruct multi-layered ownership chains to trace capital through offshore tax havens to its ultimate origin. This approach reveals a global footprint substantially broader than official FDI statistics. Chinese-controlled foreign assets expanded at 20% annually, reaching $2.1 trillion or roughly 3% of global corporate assets by 2021. Chinese investors—particularly state-owned enterprises (SOEs)—strategically target R&D-intensive and supply-chain-linked firms. Following acquisition, target firms increase capital stock and R&D expenditures, yet these inputs fail to generate higher patent output and are accompanied by a significant decline in profitability. We document a novel 'innovation spillback' mechanism: while target innovation remains stagnant, Chinese parent firms experience a sharp acceleration in granted patents following their first developed-economy acquisition. Furthermore, a greater Chinese presence crowds out R&D at non-target peer firms, though aggregate industry-level innovation remains unchanged. China thus represents a distinctively state-driven model of global ownership that accepts weaker near-term performance to internalize technological capacity at home. Jennie Bai Luc Laeven Yaojun Ke Hong Ru 2026-04 Dynamic Complementarity https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:2595&r=&r=cna Dynamic complementarity is the concept that past investments that lead to higher stocks of skill at an age, promote the growth of skills from investment at that age. We define and produce evidence on dynamic complementarity and its three components using unique Chinese data from a home visiting program for young children targeted to parents in rural China. In addition, we investigate growth in learning due to innate, parental, and environmental factors that occur in the absence of any formal intervention. James Heckman Haihan Tian Zijian Zhang Jin Zhou Dynamic Complementarity, Learning, Human Capital 2025-11 The Rise of Viet Nam's Solar Panel Industry: Inputs, FDI, and Spillovers https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25138&r=&r=cna We document how foreign firms, inputs, and subsidies have shaped the development of Viet Nam's solar panel industry. We use firm-to-firm transaction data from Panjiva as well as firm-level data from the Vietnamese Enterprise Survey to trace solar panel value chains. We uncover three key findings: First, parts and components from subsidizing countries are 30% cheaper than alternatives. Those from China, which provides the majority of solar inputs to Vietnamese producers, are cheapest. Foreign subsidies may thus spill over across countries via value chains. Second, Chinese FDI firms dominate Viet Nam's solar industry, accounting for 75% of exports and 50% of jobs, while exporting solar panels that are 38% cheaper than those of other producers in Viet Nam. Third, local firms supplying parts and components to these Chinese FDI firms experience positive productivity gains. Our findings show how Viet Nam's solar boom emerged through deep integration into China's subsidized supply chains. Meng Yu Ngov Pierre-Louis Vézina Trang Thu Tran Gaurav Nayyar global value chains, green subsidies, FDI 2025-12 Revisiting Skinner : Counting Counties in Song China https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hitcei:2025-02&r=&r=cna We revisit a long-held consensus that the number of county-level units in imperial China remained stable and consistently hovered around 1, 250 for two millennia. We argue that this consensus, traceable to G. W. Skinner 's influential introductory chapter in The City in Late Imperial China, focuses excessively on the county (xian), which exist ed throughout the imperial period, and overlooks other dynasty-specific types of field administration. During the Northern Song dynasty (960- 1127), alongside the predominantly rural counties, the state established various alternative types of field administration, most notably the towns (zhen), which administered urban households. Approximately 30% of the 1, 900 towns existing in the year 1084 were staffed by centrally-appointed bureaucrat s. These officials collect ed t axes, provided basic public services, interact ed with the population daily, and were directly account able to the prefect. Overlooking the existence of these towns means underestimating not only the scale of the Song field administration, but also its sophistication. Unlike later dynasties, the Song state differentiated between urban and rural settlements administratively, and its urban coverage was unsurpassed until the modern age. We trace the precocity of the Song system to institutional innovations during the two centuries of political fragmentation that preceded the Song dynasty. HAN, Yidan SNG, Tuan-hwee 2026-03 Negotiating a win-win end to the lose-lose US-China trade war over technology and critical minerals https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp26-5&r=&r=cna The United States and China put parts of the global economy at risk in 2025 through their trade war over critical minerals and technology. A series of escalatory tariffs and export restrictions led to shortages of essential inputs, nearly forcing automakers worldwide to shut down production. The costly policies reflected uncoordinated and uncommunicated efforts by both countries to reduce their mutual economic dependence. This paper explores a novel path for the United States and China to "cooperate" over how they reduce their dependence on each other in technology and critical minerals, with the aim of limiting future escalation risks and avoiding unnecessary costs. The proposal draws on a version of the reciprocal approach to negotiations developed under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, modified to accommodate a mutual reduction in each country's market dominance in key sectors. Chad P. Bown economic security, supply chains, tariffs, export restrictions 2026-03 This paper explores factors driving the internationalization of Renminbi (RMB) trading, using data from the 2025 BIS Triennial Survey of global foreign exchange turnover. We analyze both short-term (three-year) trading growth and long-term RMB turnover levels across jurisdictions. Unlike recent studies that struggled to identify sizable effects of real or financial links with China, we find that financial factors, especially banking links with China, play a key role, even over short horizons. These financial links reinforce market-driven "convergence" patterns, whereby RMB trading adjusts based on its under- or over-representation in total currency trading in a given location. However, this convergence is slower than previously reported, while financial drivers have grown in importance. For the long-term geographical distribution of RMB trading, financial links with China, including policy-driven variables such as qualified investor licenses, dominate, though trade links also contribute significantly. We also find that bilateral trade effects are stronger for cross-border RMB trading, and we report new insights on the dynamics in Asian financial centers and trading in spot versus derivatives. https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:1345&r=&r=cna Juliana Robbert Vladyslav Sushko Frank Westermann geography of currency trading, foreign exchange, renminbi internationalization, cross-border banking 2026-04 Pricing the Future: China’s Ambitions for Commodity Derivatives Markets https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:sduf2_v1&r=&r=cna China’s efforts to develop commodity futures markets and enhance its influence over commodity pricing are best understood as part of a broader strategy to reduce financial vulnerabilities and increase strategic autonomy within a hierarchical global financial system. Commodity pricing power – defined as the capacity to shape the infrastructures, regulation, participation and currency denomination of derivative markets through which prices are formed – has become an increasingly important component of geopolitical competition. For China, this is not about economic efficiency, but control over the terms under which strategically important commodities are valued and traded. Petry, Johannes 2026-04-15 Pricing the Future: China’s Ambitions for Commodity Derivatives Markets https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:qawpt_v1&r=&r=cna China’s efforts to develop commodity futures markets and enhance its influence over commodity pricing are best understood as part of a broader strategy to reduce financial vulnerabilities and increase strategic autonomy within a hierarchical global financial system. Commodity pricing power – defined as the capacity to shape the infrastructures, regulation, participation and currency denomination of derivative markets through which prices are formed – has become an increasingly important component of geopolitical competition. For China, this is not about economic efficiency, but control over the terms under which strategically important commodities are valued and traded. Petry, Johannes 2026-04-15 Political Accountability and Local Government Debt: Evidence from China https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:128626&r=&r=cna This study investigates how the interaction of political accountability and local officials' career incentives shapes the market for Municipal Corporate Bonds (MCBs) in China, taking the 2017 local government debt personal responsibility rule as a quasi-natural experiment. We develop a stylized incomplete-information bargaining model to analyze how the rule reshapes the bargaining equilibrium by rendering officials' observable characteristics credible signals of bailout incentives. Using a dataset of prefecture-level MCBs from 2008 to 2020, we empirically test the model's predictions and focus on separating officials' incentive effects from their inherent ability. Our core findings show that post-announcement of the rule, each additional year of a local party secretary's remaining time to retirement, a proxy for bailout incentives, reduces MCB spreads by approximately 2.5 basis points and increases issuance volume by about 2.0%. These effects are significantly amplified in fiscally stressed cities. Notably, under the 2017 rule, cities led by party secretaries with stronger bailout incentives can expand MCB issuance, which is contrary to the rule's original intent to rein in local borrowing. Li, Runheng Tang, Yao Weng, Xi Zhou, Li-An Municipal Corporate Bonds, personal responsibility rule, official career incentives, local government debt 2026-04-08 Sowing Seeds of Mobility: The Gendered Impact of Land Reform https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18569&r=&r=cna We study how land market frictions affect men and women differently during structural transformation, exploiting two major Chinese land reforms that strengthened farmers' rental rights. Using large-language-model text analysis, we construct a county-level reform index and combine it with large panel data to identify causal effects. The reforms shift rural women out of agriculture more than men and reduce urban women's employment and wages relative to men. A multisector model with intra-household labor allocation rationalizes these findings: gender-neutral land market frictions act as gender-specific mobility barriers, and their removal disproportionately accelerates women's transition into non-agricultural employment. Chen, Ting Gu, Jiajia Ngai, L. Rachel Wang, Jin gender, land, labor mobility, structural transformation 2026-04 Unintended Consequences of China’s Double Reduction Policy: Its Immediate and Intergenerational Impacts https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26034&r=&r=cna This paper evaluates the unintended consequences of China's 2021 "Double Reduction" policy, which aimed to ease students' academic burden by limiting homework and private tutoring. Using a tailored household survey, a constructed policy enforcement index, and a difference-in-differences design, we find that the policy increased private tutoring enrollment, household tutoring expenditures, and parental time spent on helping children with schoolwork. These effects disproportionately harmed low-income families, resulting in worse academic outcomes. Our findings suggest that the policy's effects run counter to its intended goals and may exacerbate educational inequality. Xin Liu Xin Meng Guangqian Pan Guochang Zhao Education Policy, Private Tutoring, Academic Outcome, Intergenerational Inequality, Parent Outcome 2026-01 Abhängigkeit des Mittelstands von Zulieferungen aus China https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ifmmat:340160&r=&r=cna Politische Bemühungen, Unternehmen zu einem sog. De-Risking in Bezug auf chinesische Zulieferungen zu veranlassen, zeigen bisher nur geringen Erfolg. Diese Studie untersucht auf Basis von Verbands- und Unternehmensinterviews mögliche Gründe für ein ausbleibendes De-Risking, insbesondere bei mittelständischen Unternehmen. Es zeigt sich, dass sich die Unternehmen der Risiken einer Abhängigkeit durchaus bewusst sind, dass Maßnahmen zur Abhängigkeitsreduktion aber an konkreten Hindernissen (z. B. regulatorische Hürden, Kosten) scheitern. Holz, Michael Kranzusch, Peter Pahnke, André Rieger-Fels, Markus Suprinovič, Olga Wolter, Hans-Jürgen China, kritische Abhängigkeit, kritische Rohstoffe, De-Risking, Mittelstand, critical dependency, critical raw materials, de-risking, Mittelstand enterprises 2026 Who controls the global petrochemical industry, and how might that change? https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp26-4&r=&r=cna Key Takeaways - A small group of large firms dominates the global petrochemical industry, with ownership heavily concentrated among corporations and geographically in China, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. - Ownership does not equal control. Chinese and other Asian investors exert significant control, while US investors exercise limited control due to reliance on passive investments. Saudi Arabia has full control over its investments. - Europe has weak control and limited presence in the petrochemical industry, with very few major companies, leaving it more dependent on external suppliers. Petrochemicals--used in everything from fertilizers, solar panels, clothing, and cosmetics to electric vehicles, electronics, and medicines--are integral to food security, manufacturing, and clean energy. They are also becoming the fastest-growing source of demand for oil. The 2026 conflict in the Middle East has exposed vulnerabilities in petrochemical supply chains, especially since Middle Eastern producers account for much of the global supply of key petrochemical products, including fertilizers, and one-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade transits the Strait of Hormuz. Understanding the petrochemical industry, including its size, geographical distribution, and ownership and control structure, is essential to reduce risks from geopolitical shocks, hostile takeovers, and fragile supply chains. Abdullah AlHassan Luc Leruth Adnan Mazarei Charles Meuwly Joseph Moussa Pierre Regibeau 2026-03 Measuring Bias in Job Recommender Systems: Auditing the Algorithms https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:25108&r=&r=cna We use an algorithm audit of China's four largest job boards to measure the causal effect of a job seeker's gender on the jobs that are recommended to them, and to identify the algorithmic processes that generate those recommendations. Focusing on identical male and female worker profiles seeking jobs in the same industry-occupation cell, we find precisely estimated but modest amounts of gender bias: Jobs recommended to women pay 0.2 percent less, request 0.9 percent less experience, come from smaller firms, and contain .07 standard deviations more stereotypically female content such as requests for patience, carefulness, and beauty. The dominant driver of these gender gaps is content-based matching between posted job ads and the declared gender in new workers' resumes. 'Action-based' mechanisms -based on a worker's own actions or recruiters' reactions to their resume- contribute relatively little to the gaps we measure. Shuo Zhang Peter Kuhn Recommender System, Algorithm, Gender, Job Platform 2025-11 Trump's global tariff war: Faulty premises, costly consequences https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iie:wpaper:wp25-23&r=&r=cna President Donald Trump's Global Tariff War has discarded US commitments to the postwar international trading order established under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). It replaces the Most Favored Nation (MFN) principle with an "Every Nation Different" principle under the false premise that any economy with a trade surplus against the United States must be cheating on its trade obligations and imposes a "reciprocal" tariff increase based on the ratio of bilateral US imports to exports. It fails to recognize the role of US fiscal deficits in boosting demand for imports, and of the attractiveness of the US capital market to inflows of foreign capital in strengthening the dollar and contributing to a persistent trade deficit. The Trump Global Tariff War promises revival of US manufacturing jobs under the false premise that trade deficits rather than technological change and Engel curve shifts in demand toward services have driven the decline in the share of manufacturing in employment and GDP. It shows no recognition that higher tariffs are a self-inflicted wound to the economy because of large static welfare triangle costs and loss in dynamic efficiency growth. This study estimates that the 18 percent rise in tariffs so far in the Trump Global Tariff War imposes an ongoing future static welfare cost of 0.28 percent of GDP. The medium-term dynamic efficiency loss brings the total welfare loss reaching a range of 1.1 to 2.3 percent of baseline GDP by 2035. Congressional Budget Office budget estimates of increased tariff revenues of 1 percent of GDP over the next decade (including interest savings) may be understated on an implied premise of sharp import reductions but overstated because President Trump has suggested giving them away in "tariff dividend" checks to all but high-income households. Moreover, a possible Supreme Court ruling against application of the "emergency" legislation on which the main tariff increases are based further reduces the reliability of revenue estimates. The Trump Global Tariff War has usefully revealed a vulnerability of the US economy to a future cutoff in the supply of rare earth minerals, metals, and magnets imported from China that requires urgent action. William R. Cline tariffs, trade war 2025-12 Multipolarities - The world-order visions of others https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swprps:340177&r=&r=cna Multipolarity has become a central but, at the same time, highly ambiguous point of reference in debates about the future world order. The term is used descriptively, that is, to describe shifts in the distribution of power; and it is also used normatively, as an aspirational construct for a more just international order. However, as the following comparative analysis of seven countries shows, there is no coherent understanding of the term even in those countries that are pushing for multipolarity. Sharp dividing lines are evident between the United States, which has long understood the construct of multipolarity as being at odds with its strategic interests, and Russia and China, which both associate it with challenging US hegemony. However, while Russia is striving for a disruptive and violent transformation, China is aiming for an evolutionary one. Other states - above all, India and South Africa - hope that multipolarity will provide them with greater foreign-policy room for manoeuvre. And some derive their own reform proposals at the multilateral level from their understanding of the construct. Germany and the EU must rigorously examine the various interpretations and uses of the construct of multipolarity. They should not dismiss the term as irrelevant or inherently anti-Western as it can provide a common frame of reference on international politics. At the same time, its unreflective use carries risks, as the term is highly politicised and associated with what are at times the conflicting goals of a broad range of international actors. Rather than simply participating in conceptual debates, Germany and the EU should take concrete steps towards reforming the international order in policy areas such as trade, health, energy and climate. At the same time, they should regard the call for multipolarity as an indicator of the need for broad reforms of the international system and initiate negotiation processes with other states. To this end, they must first establish their own reference points with regard to the future international order so that they can identify suitable partners and institutions. Heiduk, Felix Müller, Melanie Aydın, Yaşar Kluge, Janis Scholz, Tobias Stanzel, Angela Thimm, Johannes 2026