Rentseeking Politics in China

Convenor: Tak-Wing Ngo
Organized by Leiden University

Contact: Tak-Wing Ngo
[email protected]

The market reform in China has resulted in widespread practice of rent seeking. Economic rents are created when the state regulates market entry, imposes tariffs, allocates investment, and rations bank credits. State agents exchange rents with enterprises for private gains or parochial interests. The workshop compares rent seeking across different economic sectors and seeks to locate the political and institutional factors in shaping rent-seeking politics.

Programme

Session 1: Concept and Institutional Background

Rent Seeking in China: The View through a Comparative, Historical and Institutional Lens
Richard Boyd (Leiden)

Rent Seeking and Corruption in China: Is It All the Same?
Flora Sapio (Lund)

From Surplus Seeking to Rent Seeking: The Political Economy of Reform in China
Xiaobo Hu (Clemson)

Session 2: Government-Business Relations

Social Efficiency and the Expansion of Rent-Seeking: Reconceptualizing State-Society Relations in China’s Private Sector
David Wank (Sophia)

Political Entrepreneurship in China’s Economic Transition
Yi-min Lin (HKUST)

Rent Seeking and Local Public Finance: Economic Growth and Government Revenue from Local Industries
R. Bin Wong (UCLA)

Session 3: Heavy and Light Industries

Rent Dissipation by Rent Seeking: An Analysis of the Development of the Chinese Automotive and Beer Sectors
Andrew Wedeman (Nebraska, Lincoln)

Changing Modes of Rent Utilization and Industrial Governance in China’s Automobile Industry
Tak-Wing Ngo (Leiden) and Chen Yilin (Tsinghua)

Rent Seeking in the Chinese Beer Industry
Yongping Wu (Tsinghua) and Jin Biao (Tsinghua)

Session 4: Energy and Strategic Sectors

China's Electricity Industry: Powering the Rent-Seeking?
T.J. Cheng (William and Mary) and Chung-min Tsai (UC Berkeley)

Rents and Rent-seeking in China’s Coal Industry
Tim Wright (Sheffield)

Rent Dispersion and Persistent Fragmentation in the Chinese Steel Industry
Pei Sun (Nottingham)

http://www.iias.nl/files/Leiden%20workshop%20announcement.doc