China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [133]
38 Nicholas Lardy, “China’s Worsening Debts,” The Financial Times, June 22, 2001.
39 Li Rongrong, head of the State Asset Management Administration, which oversees SOEs, admitted in late 2003 that SOE reforms remained in a difficult stage. He cited the failures to establish a modern corporate system, improve the corporate governance structure, reform internal management of SOEs, and reduce their massive bad debts. www.chinanews.com.cn, October 3, 2003.
40 See Lin Yi-min and Tian Zhu, “Ownership Restructuring in Chinese State Industry: An Analysis of Evidence on Initial Organizational Changes,” The China Quarterly166 (2001): 305-341; Edward Steinfeld, “Free Lunch or Last Supper? China’s Debt-Equity Swaps in Context,” TheChina Business Review (July-August 2000): 22-27.
41 Nicholas Lardy, “When Will China’s Financial System Meet China’s Needs,” Conference on Policy Reform in China, Stanford University (mimeo, November 1999).
42 OECD, China in the WorldEconomy:The DomesticPolicy Challenges (Paris: OECD, 2002), 9.
43 The OECD study notes that real growth fell between 1996 and 2000 and argues that such deteriorating performance is not cyclical. OECD, China in the WorldEconomy,22.
44 Wanda Tseng and Markus Rodlauer, eds., China:Competing in the Global Economy(Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 2003).
45 According to the World Bank, China’s official growth rate from 1978 to 1995 was inflated by an average of 1.2 percent a year. World Bank, China 2020, 3. Alwyn Young argues that China’s GDP growth from 1986 to 1998 was overstated by 3 percent. Young, “Gold into Base Metals: Productivity Growth in the People’s Republic of China during the Reform Period,” NBER WorkingPaperNo.7856 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2000); Thomas Rawski argued in 2001 that China’s growth statistics for the late 1990s were so inflated that real growth was probably close to zero. See Rawski, “China’s GDP Statistics—A Case of Caveat Lector?” www.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers2001/caveat.web.pdf.
46 Morris Goldstcin and Nicholas Lardy, What Kind of Landing for the Chinese Economy? (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 2004).
47 www.chinanews.com.cn, February 18, 2004; NEZM, July 1, 2004.
48 In 1999, forty-two of the fifty leading academics interviewed by a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences research group said that the political system has lagged behind the economic system. Lujianhua, “Mianlin xinshiji tiaozhan dc Zhongguo” (China: Facing Challenges of the New Century), in Ru Xin et al., eds., SHLPS 2000, 112-123; for the results of the 2003 study, see Lu Jianhua, “Zhuanjia yanli de shehui xingshi jiqi qianjing,” 20.
49 The question posed to 116 senior and midlevel officials in 2003 was how they viewed “adjustment in the major relationships in recent years.” On “the relationship between economic reform and political reform,” 66.4 percent said “little change”; 21.6 percent said this relationship “has become more out of sync”; only 11.2 percent said the relationship had become “more in sync.” Xie Zhiqiang, “Dangzheng ganbu dui 2003-2004 nian Zhongguo shehui xingshi de jiben panduan” (Party and Government Officials’ Basic Assessment of China’s Social Situation in 2003-2004), in Ru Xin et al., eds., SHLPS 2004, 27.
50 Each poll surveyed about 120 officials. Between 2000 and 2003, about 30-36 percent of the respondents identified “political reform” as the issue they were “most concerned with.” Qing Lianbin and Xie Zhiqiang, “Dangzheng ganbu dui 2000-2001 nian shehui xingshi de jiben kanfa” (Party and Government Officials’ Basic Views of the Social Situation in 2000-2001) in Ru Xin ct al., eds., SHLPS 2001, 47-48; Qing Lianbin, “Zhongguo dangzheng lingdao ganbu dui 2002-2003 nian shehui xingshi de jiben kanfa” (Chinese Party and Government Officials’ Basic Views of the Social Situation in 2002-2003), in Ru Xin et al., cds., SHLPS 2003, 130; Xie Zhiqiang, “Dangzheng ganbu dui 2003-2004 nian