Search

How does a state's source of wealth condition the domain in which it seeks to project influence? We argue that what a state makes conditions what they take. Specifically, the less states rely on land rents to acquire wealth, the less interested they will be in seeking control over territory and the more interested they will be in securing access to distant markets. We develop and test several observable implications that should follow whether this proposition is true. First, as states become less economically dependent on territory, they should be less likely to fight over territory; second, those states should be more likely to both invest in power projection capabilities and subsequently project power at greater distances. Our findings support our theory. These results are robust across a variety of model specifications that take into account potential confounds, such as regime type, economic development, threat, and geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Sino-British Joint Declaration and Basic Law, Hong Kong was to exercise a high degree of autonomy under the framework of “one country, two systems” after the British handover of its sovereignty to China in 1997. In the initial post-handover period, Beijing adopted a policy of nonintervention in Hong Kong, but the outbreak of the July 1, 2003 protest triggered a subsequent change of policy. Since then, Beijing has embarked on state-building nationalism, adopting incorporation strategies so as to subject Hong Kong to greater central control over the political, economic, and ideological arenas. Ironically, instead of successfully assimilating Hongkongese into one Chinese nation, Beijing’s incorporation strategies are leading to a rise of peripheral nationalism in the city-state and waves of counter-mobilization. This article analyzes mainland–Hong Kong relations on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the handover and offers insights from an emerging case study that builds upon the nationalism literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies of China’s economic rise and political system, multiyear comprehensive and sectoral plans issued by the national government tend to be played down as futile efforts at reigning in a political economy increasingly driven by market incentives and decentralized decisions. Contrary to this, we provide evidence that China’s planning system has been transformed alongside the economic transition, yet remains central to almost all domains of public policy making and the political institutions that have fostered China’s high-speed growth and economic stability. The incorporation of experimental programs into macro-plans, a tiered hierarchy of policy oversight, newly introduced mid-course plan evaluations, and systematic top-level policy review have allowed Chinese planners to play a central role in economic policy making without succumbing to the rigidity traps that debased traditional planned economies. By better understanding how the planning cycle influences incentives and resources of successive layers of bureaucracies and jurisdictions, and how it updates itself and adapts to new challenges, it is possible to explain a greater proportion of the Chinese policy-making process, including many of its successes and pathologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]