Speaker: Tao Ran, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)

This talk outlines a holistic analytical framework for China’s current growth and urbanization model, as well as its political and economic background and consequences. Tao Ran argues that China has developed an investment-driven and export-oriented growth and urbanization model since the mid-1990s. Under this model, state-owned banks, upstream state-owned enterprises, and local governments have maintained administrative monopolies in the financial sector, the upstream manufacturing and non-financial high-end service sector, and urban commercial & residential land development respectively. At the same time, the Chinese central and local governments have engaged in a two-tier international and domestic race to the bottom to support market competition in consumer goods production by private firms. This has significant implications for China’s further growth and development.