Speakers:  Liu Zhi, Peking University-Lincoln Institute

Over the last few years, the Chinese government has actively promoted urban regeneration action across the country. However, many projects are not justified by demand and struggle to attract investment. Others lack rigorous feasibility studies and economic assessments, posing significant risk of inefficient or wasteful investment. Behind this phenomenon is what I call “investment impulse,” a bureaucratic incentive that uses public investment not to meet demand in a cost-effective way, but to increase the size of local GDP. What drives the investment impulse? Placing the urban regeneration action into a broad context of China’s public capital investment behavior, I argue that the investment impulse is an unintended consequence of China’s political and economic management system and can be avoided with policy reform measures.

Zhi Liu is Senior Research Fellow and Executive Director of China and Asia Program, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and Director, Peking University–Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy. His research interests are mainly in land and housing policy, infrastructure economics and policy, municipal finance, and urban and regional planning. Before joining Lincoln Institute in 2013, he was a lead infrastructure specialist at the World Bank, with years of operational experience in the infrastructure and urban sectors. He is co-editor of International Housing Market Experience and Implications for China (Routledge 2019) and Infrastructure Economic and Policy: International Perspectives (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2022).

This event series is sponsored by the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning, and the Harvard University Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Presented via Zoom Meeting.
Meeting link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/93343229272