Author: Courtney

Harvard-educated Liu He was appointed as a vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the nation’s top economic planning agency. Analysts mark the appointment as a sign that President Xi Jinping might be planning to implement market-driven policy changes. Cheng Li, a China scholar at the Brookings Institution, described Liu as an advocate… Continue reading Appointment has implications for economic policy →

An official on China’s monetary policy committee expressed fear that the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing will lead to higher inflation, diminishing the value of China’s American holdings. At present, China has $3.3 trillion in U.S. long-term securities. There has been some concern on the part of FOMC members about the Fed’s policy. Those… Continue reading Quantitative easing has implications for China →

In light of unprecedented pollution levels in Beijing, the Chinese government announced plans last week to introduce a carbon tax with the goal of curbing emissions.  The Xinhua news agency also reported the government will implement an environmental protection tax. While the country is one of the largest contributors to global pollution, the introduction of… Continue reading China to introduce carbon tax →

In March 2000, China introduced the Grain-to-Green program, aimed at converting cultivated land on steep slopes back into forests with the goal of minimizing erosion and mitigating the impact of flooding. It marked one of the largest scale conservation programs of all time. Estimates place land loss into the Yellow and Yangtze rivers to be… Continue reading Term Paper Topic: Grain-to-Green Policy →

A recent study in the Harvard Business Review found that companies with political connections have more frequent worker deaths. Ray Fisman, an economist at Columbia University, and Yongxiang Wang, a finance professor at the University of Southern California, hypothesized that well-connected executives “might be able to grease the wheels” in terms of safety regulations. The… Continue reading Corruption in firms tied to high worker death rates →

Environmental concerns will be one of the topics addressed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switerland as part of a holistic discussion about China’s economy.