Dilemas do desenvolvimento na China: crescimento acelerado e disparidades regionais (da Revolução Comunista à globalização)
Because China´s outstanding economic performance in the last three decades is seenas an imitative experience for the whole developing countries, this paper aims tobring evidences on the fact that Chinese-style economic success can not be appliedinstantaneously for other countries. The lines presented here can be used as a warningfor Brazilian policy-makers not to abandon the idea that government intervention ?like many liberal thinkers had predicted widespread recently ? is always harmful forthe economy. In fact, the opposite has been proved more beneficial with publicaction more intensely required in these present days of economic globalization.China´s state intervention in the production factors (capital, investment and labor)has been steady and decisive to achieve the observed growth rates as well as goingahead with the modernization of economic structures. Meanwhile, there have beenundesirable results concerned with increasing regional inequalities. The creation ofspecial economic zones (SEZ´s) to attract foreign investment to coastal areas resultedin strong concentration of industrial plants in the coastal region widening regionalper capita income gaps.
Introduction to the Symposium: Greater China and the World Economy
China, the sleeping dragon, is no longer sleeping. Since opening its door to the rest of the world at the end of the 1970’s, China has undergone widespread and drastic changes, which no one could have foreseen. These changes have been responsible for China’s prolonged economic growth. Column 2 of Table 1 presents annual growth rates from 1970 to 2000. In early 1970, China was recovering from the Cultural Revolution, so economic development began from a fairly low base. Growth in the first decade was somewhat erratic, ranging from a low of —2.68% in 1976 to a high of 16.19% in 1970. Beginning in the early 1980’s, a series of domestic changes accompanied by trade and investment liberalization policies promoted high growth rates. Starting from 1982, with the exception of only two years, China did not have an annual growth rate lower than 7%. In fact, in one-half of the 18 years from 1982 to 2000, China was able to grow at rates higher than 10%. Such long periods of high growth rates were unprecedented and propelled China into a position of importance in the world economy.
Income distribution, economic systems, and transition
We consider the differences in income distribution between market and planned economies in two ways. First, using benchmarks from the OECD area we review evidence from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union during the socialist period. Second, we look at the transitions currently being made by the latter. In each case we review available data and the problems they present before considering in turn: (i) the distribution of earnings of full-time employees; (ii) the distribution of individuals' per capita household incomes; and (iii) the ways in which the picture is altered by nonwage benefits from work, price subsidies and social incomes in kind. For the socialist period we are able to consider long series of data, often covering several decades, and we can thus show the changes in the picture of distribution under the socialist system. We also emphasise the diversity across the countries concerned. For the period of transition, itself incomplete, the series are inevitably shorter but we are able to avoid basing conclusions on evidence drawn from single years. The picture during transition, like that under socialism, is varied. Russia has experienced very sharp increases in measured inequality to well above the top of the OECD range. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland have seen more modest rises. We note the lack of a satisfactory analytic framework in the literature that encompasses enough features of the transition, a framework which would help interpretation of the evidence.