Peter Ho has recently been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for Consolidators. With the 1.5 million Euro grant, Professor Ho - Co-Director of the Modern East Asia Research Centre (MEARC) and Chair of Chinese Economy and Development at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies - aims to carry out research on China’s collapse and institutional development.
Today China has appeared as a globalizing force in every sense. At the same time, many observers’ feel that its development might come to a grinding halt or even collapse, because of its lack of political reforms, rising inequality, and rampant corruption. Contradictorily, since the start of the reforms China has exhibited relatively high socio-economic and political stability.
Today China has appeared as a globalizing force in every sense. At the same time, many observers’ feel that its development might come to a grinding halt or even collapse, because of its lack of political reforms, rising inequality, and rampant corruption. Contradictorily, since the start of the reforms China has exhibited relatively high socio-economic and political stability.
Background
Prof. Ho’s proposed ERC project seeks to go beyond widely accepted dichotomous views on China’s development – be they on an impending collapse or on its booming future. Instead, it will attempt to analyze and explain China’s paradoxical development. To meaningfully study the multi-layered, contradictory dimensions of Chinese development, the project makes two choices: to study development around one of the means of production – land, and to do so by zooming in on its governing institutional architecture.Unlike the other means of production, capital and labor, which have been largely privatized, land is one of the last vestiges of Chinese communism. As such, it is central to the Chinese leadership’s decisions about the nation’s future. This study will delve into the major issues that affect it – the bubble in urban real estate; landlessness and urban sprawl; rent-seeking; forced evictions; and ethnic conflict. It is hypothesized that China can maintain overall stability despite the rising conflict and inequality due to the credibility of its institutions.
“Credibility” was coined in economics and political science, yet, in general has been little researched, let alone, in the case of land-based institutional change. It is exactly for this reason that the ERC project has been proposed. As argued elsewhere, when it comes down to successful institutions it is the level of credibility that matters, not the extent of formality, security or privatization. Apart from cultural and historical factors, credibility might thus be a pivotal notion that is closely intertwined with the dynamics of dichotomous development. The proposed ERC project will demonstrate that China is a powerful case in point.
The ERC project will have various research and project positions available in 2012. More info available at the vacancy website of the University of Leiden. For the assignment to be done by applicants for the ERC projects, please see below or download the assingment as pdf.
For this assignment you have to write a review of 2 articles. First, download the two articles below. The first article you should find yourself through the digital library of your university. The second article can be downloaded from the website www.mearc.eu:
Duty
Read both articles, and write a detailed review about them. The review should be short, max. 750 words for each article (so 1,500 words in total) in which you explain:
1. A summary of the main points and argumentation of the author(s);
2. Your own opinion of the two articles:
4. You are encouraged to compare the articles with other literature that you know or can locate, and explain how the article relates to that literature (e.g. does it contradict? Does it concur with the literature?)
- Chang, H.-J. and I. Grabel (2004), ‘Reclaiming Development from the Washington Consensus’, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 27(2), p. 273-291
- Peter Ho, “Beyond Development Orthodoxy: Chinese Lessons in Pragmatism and Institutional Change”, in P. van Lieshout (ed.), Doing Good or Doing Better: Development Policies in a Globalizing World, Scientific Council for Government Policy -WRR Verkenningen, University of Chicago Press, 2009
Duty
Read both articles, and write a detailed review about them. The review should be short, max. 750 words for each article (so 1,500 words in total) in which you explain:
1. A summary of the main points and argumentation of the author(s);
2. Your own opinion of the two articles:
- Why is the debate important in your view?
- Do(es) the author(s) argue convincingly? If so, why, if not why not?
- Explain why you like or dislike the articles, and discuss if there is any relation between them, if so, what kind of relation?
4. You are encouraged to compare the articles with other literature that you know or can locate, and explain how the article relates to that literature (e.g. does it contradict? Does it concur with the literature?)
