Instructions

This book examines China’s response to the Asian fi nancial crisis of 1997, both in its immediate aftermath and in the years since. The crisis caused turmoil throughout Asia’s economies, and precipitated wholesale reform of economic and financial policies and institutions across the region. As one of Asia’s largest economies,China responded to the crisis more successfully than many others, avoiding devaluation of its currency, whilst undertaking financial reform, restructuring state-owned enterprises, rural development, and social security systems. This book considers all of these issues, showing how the lessons drawn from the crisis have helped shape China’s policies of liberalisation and market-orientated reform,including its attitude towards globalisation and the outside world in general.Based on research conducted by the China Development Research Foundation,one of China’s leading think-tanks, this book includes contributions from senior policy makers in the Chinese government and some experts participating directly in the government’s policy-making process to assess the effects generated by the country’s related policies, making it an indispensable account of China’s own thinking on its response to the fi nancial crisis.

Wang Mengkui is former President of the Development Research Center of the State Council, and is currently Chairman of the China Development Research Foundation.

Contents

    List of tables and figures
    List of Contributors
    Foreword
    Introduction

PART I China’s macroeconomic management after the Asian financial crisis
1  From overcoming defl ation to preventing inflation
2  From proactive to sound fi scal policy: an improvement to China’s public finance system
3  Renminbi exchange rates and relevant institutional factors
4  China’s policy of opening up in the decade after the Asian financial crisis

PART II China’s fi nancial system and reform of state-owned enterprises after the Asian fi nancial crisis
5  Reform of state-owned commercial banks: from disposing of non-peforming assets to institutional reform
6  System reform of China’s capital market
7  Reform of state-owned enterprises: a three-year disconnect from difficulties leads to system innovation
8  China’s rural reform and development after the Asian financial crisis

PART III Restructuring China’s social welfare system
9  Proactive employment policy and labour market development
10 Social security policy
11 Reform and development of the public health system
12 Educational policies: from expansion and equity to quality

PART IV Refl ections on the Asian fi nancial crisis and China’s opening up to the outside
13 The 1997 Asian fi nancial crisis: review and refl ections
14 China in the realm of the world economy 281
     Index