Jeffrey David Sachs

This volume is a report by leading international economic experts on China's economic priorities in the coming years. From various aspects of the domestic and foreign situation, China has now reached a critical juncture in its economic development. Unless China is able to overcome the difficulties in undertaking further reforms in the next ten years, China would be caught in the middle-income trap and be unable to become a modern country. The future course of China's economic development is also of great concern to the rest of the world because the socio-political-economic conditions in China will have significant impact on global economic prosperity and on global political harmony.

The book is a product of close collaboration between the School of Economics at Fudan University and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. They cover a new paradigm for growth, short-term demand management, institutional reforms for middle-term growth, and strengthening the fundamentals for long-term growth.

Contents:

• A New Economic Growth Engine for the 21st Century: Change Out Not Scale Up the Present Policy Regime:

  • The Major Types of Middle-income Trap That Threaten China (Wing Thye Woo)

• Short-term Demand Management: Working the Hardware Correctly:

  • A Prediction of China's Economy in 2012: Soft Landing and Back to the Normal (Gang Fan and Liping He)
  • The Correction of China's Twin Surpluses (Yongding Yu)
  • The Long-run Growth and Short-run Fluctuations of the Chinese Economy (Zhigang Yuan and Yuxin Yu)

• Institutional Reforms for Middle-term Growth: Upgrading the Hardware and Software:

  • Reforming China's Public Pension System: Coping Effectively with Aging, Urbanization and Globalization (Jin Feng and Lixin He)
  • Unraveling the Gridlock on Fiscal Reform in China: Government, Market and Central-local Relations (Yan Zhang)
  • China's Financial Sector Development: Understanding the Past and Shaping the Future (Liqing Zhang and Xiaofen Tan)
  • On Regional and Inter-household Inequality in China (Guanghua Wan, Jingjing Ye and Juzhong Zhuang)

• Strengthening the Long-term Growth Fundamentals: Sustaining the Power Supply:

  • Ensuring Efficiency and Equality in China's Urbanization and Regional Development Strategy (Zhao Chen and Ming Lu)
  • China 2049: Energy Security and Climate Change (Klaus S Lackner and Sarah Brennan)
  • The Sustainability of Water Resources in China (Ximing Cai and Upmanu Lall)

Readership: Researchers, students and readers interested in China's economy.