学术前沿讲座--Rapid Urbanization in China and its Impact on the World Economy

 

This paper examines the impact of reforms in both China’s rural land and labor markets on the aggregate economic welfare in China and the rest of the world. Propositions derived from a theoretical model include that while the labor market liberalization generates unambiguous gains, the land reform may have some impact on income distribution. When the labor intensive industries gain, the capital intensive industries suffer in China. The impact on the rest of the world varies across different regions. The hypotheses are tested tentatively by running simulations on a simplified 10x10 GTAP Model. Several different modeling scenarios including 1) an accelerated urbanization as a result of free mobility of the rural labor; 2) a de facto privatization of the rural land ownership and 3) a combination of both (1) & (2) are used to capture different market environments. Policy implications are developed based on these simulation results.

 

Dr Xiaohe Zhang is a lecturer at the University of Newcastle. He obtained a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Adelaide in 1993, a Master degree in economics from the Australian National University in 1989 and a Bachelor degree from Beijing Normal University in 1982. As a Member of the Management Council of Association of Chinese Economic Studies in Australia and a research fellow in World Business Institute, he has done intensive research in international economics and economic development, along with an experience in delivering a great number of courses in China, Hong Kong and Australia. He has published more than 15 academic papers in international refereed journals including China Economic Review, Journal of the Asia-Pacific Economy, and the Journal of Development Studies, and more than other 50 papers in internationally refereed books and conference proceedings.