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This article offers a detailed analysis of the policy design of the current fourth round of state-owned enterprise (SOE) corporate restructuring in China. This time, the state's efforts to improve SOE performance hinged on attracting private capital to take ownership shares in state firms—or so-called mixed-ownership reforms. The article relies on an analysis of policy documents, interviews with policy experts in China, and a case study of local mixed-ownership reform implementation in the city of Nanjing. It discusses implications of mixed ownership for corporate governance amid changing state–Party–business relations in China. It concludes that the reform agenda consolidates a hybrid political-economic system that organically blends planning and market modes of economic coordination, as well as public and private modes of ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the challenge posed by flawed democracies or political regime to the rise of China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Topics discussed are attempts of political leaderships in Nepal, Malaysia, Pakistan and Maldives to influence the direction of China's development efforts and flaws in the design of BRI including investment of China in corruption, scale of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) financial obligations and demand for local participation in BRI projects.

China has become the leading country to develop wind and solar energy industries. By presenting the institutional arrangement and interest constellations of China's regulatory system of renewable energy sectors, this paper argues that the reasons for China's swift expansion of wind and solar energy investment go beyond the notion of a state-led model. It also reveals that due to a series of internal power struggles and external shocks, the current regulatory system is undergoing significant restructuring. A new policy paradigm is emerging that is largely different from the previous decades of policy orientation that centred on capacity expansion and instrumental interests for renewable energy development. The new paradigm would face tremendous challenges from existing institutions and vested interests, and it requires new set of ideologies that can help renewable energy sector to truly competing with the energy incumbents in order to bring about meaningful lowcarbon energy transition in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As development is no longer simply conceived of as economic growth, but also as encapsulating human development, the role of the developmental state must be rethought. Focusing on the state's ability to deliver collective goods such as welfare has become an important task for developing and developed nations alike, and nowhere is this more important than in China. Consequently, intimate connections between the political and industrial elites are no longer sufficient and may actually be counterproductive to the success of the developmental state. Diverging from traditional developmental states, China shows that incorporation of new stakeholders is not premised on principles of human development. The novelty that China brings to re-thinking and re-articulating a new developmental state framework is that the development state of the twenty-first century can create new alliances such as with non-governmental organisations to meet human development objectives, but substantive change with regards to how the state is organised is not a precondition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of a rising China, some scholars have argued that ASEAN countries will choose to either bandwagon with or balance against China, while others believe they will respond with a more moderate policy known as ‘hedging’. In considering these options, ASEAN countries must take into account their individual interests within the economic and security structure of this region. In this research, we argue that each ASEAN country confronts divergent sets of security and economic relations with China, which play a major role in shaping their policy responses. We can characterize their responses into four quadrants. Each cell can be categorized in terms of a high or low degree of threat perception (HT or LT) from China, as well as a positive or negative economic expectation (PE or NE) with China. We thus hypothesize that ASEAN countries in the HT–NE situation will balance against China; those in the LT–PE situation will bandwagon with China; those in the HT–PE or LT–NE situations will hedge against China. Hypotheses are supported by three case studies, Vietnam–China (HT–NE), Cambodia–China (LT–PE) and Singapore–China (HT–PE) relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]