Asia Institute - Research Publications
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ItemBold Strategy or Irrational Exuberance: Can China's Fiscal Foundation Support the Belt and Road Initiative?(Stanford University Press, 2020)This chapter examines the economic rationale and finances of the Belt and Road Initiative, a signature program in Xi Jinping's assertive foreign policy that aims to build multidimensional networks linking more than sixty countries and costing trillions of dollars. The BRI was conceived during the decade-long fiscal expansion that began at the turn of the century, and the question is whether it remains affordable under slower growth. At this stage in its development, China must manage the program prudently to avoid saddling banks with bad loans from failed projects. As ever, the decentralized system remains the Achilles' heel, reflected in the gap between official statements of expenditure and figures compiled from bank lending and program announcements. Recent fiscal reforms have strengthened the government's ability to rein in local governments but provide little protection against risks from an overly ambitious foreign policy agenda.
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ItemPublic policy for a modernising China: The challenge of providing universal access to education under fiscal decentralisation(OECD, 2019)One of the key inequalities in China today is the divide between urban residents with local registration (hukou) and those without. This chapter examines the historical and systemic causes of this divide between the hukou and non-hukou populations, focusing on the provision of basic education. The limited access to urban schooling for the children of rural migrants is a divisive issue in the debate on citizenship and social rights of migrants, and one with adverse implications for labour markets and intergenerational mobility. This chapter uses the provision of basic education to illustrate how fiscal decentralisation in China – under particular historical circumstances, produced a divisive, rather than inclusive growth outcome. Moreover, even though education policies have shifted over the past two decades to calling for inclusiveness, their impact has to date remained limited, leaving the government with an inequality it does not want and finding very difficult to reverse.
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ItemManaging across levels of government: The challenge of pension reform in China(OECD, 2020)The People’s Republic of China is facing a “population ageing tsunami”, with the share of the population aged over 65 expected to double between 2010 and 2030. Reforming the social security system to improve coverage, sustainability and equity is an urgent task for the government. This chapter examines the workings of the Urban Employee Scheme (UES), the main pension programme currently covering more than 400 million workers and retirees. Although nominally a national programme, the UES is a patchwork of pension pools, managed mostly at the city and county levels. Under fragmented management and weak oversight, the system is rife with underpayment and evasion and has stymied previous efforts by the central government to promote consolidation. This may finally change under top-down reforms implemented since 2013 that have strengthened governance and enforcement capacity. Improving equity and the long-term sustainability of the UES will also require extending coverage to younger migrant workers and strengthening their incentives for participation.
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ItemReforming Public Finance for the New Era(NUS Press, 2022)Fiscal reform was high on the agenda at the outset of Xi Jinping’s administration, when a plan for comprehensive reform of the fiscal system was introduced in 2013 that promised a significant realignment of the central-local relationship as the end goal, to be completed by 2020. Reforms to date have focused on building institutions of financial control but without any significant realignment of revenues or expenditures (Wong 2021). Although intergovernmental reform is said to be continuing and now extends to the subnational levels, this re-iterates past reforms that have to date shown little effect. To restore the vitality of local finance will require a wholesale reform of the intergovernmental system.
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ItemBudget reform in China: Progress and prospects in the Xi Jinping era(ANU Press, 2018-01-11)
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ItemThe amalgamation of Malagasy(Pacific Linguistics Publishers, 2010)
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ItemThe comparative method in Austronesian linguistics(Mouton de Gruyter, 2017)This book presents the most comprehensive coverage of the field of IndoEuropean Linguistics in a century, focusing on the entire Indo-European family and treating each major branch and most minor languages. The collaborative work of 120 scholars from 22 countries, Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics combines the exhaustive coverage of an encyclopedia with the in-depth treatment of individual monographic studies.
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ItemOn the History of Malagasy Terms for Human Body Parts(IAAS Moscow Lomonosov State University, 2019)
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ItemWho were the first Malagasy, and what did they speak?(Institute of South East Asian Studies, 2017-01-01)
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ItemHistorical linguistics of the languages of Sumatra, Java, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and Moken Moklen(Oxford University Press, 2023)Critical analysis of recent literature on the classification of the (non-Malay) languages of Sumatra, Java, Bali-Lombok-Sumbawa and Moken Moklen.