Business Commons^™

China Inc. And The World's Response, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

This article is based on the author’s new book, China, Inc.: How the Chinese Communist Party Transformed China into a Giant Corporation (Cambridge University Press, 2022). The author argues that leveraging its absolute power, low human rights advantage, and tolerance by other countries, the Chinese Communist Party has transformed China into a giant corporation. Living, working, and investing are not rights but privileges granted by the party. The party is the management of China, Inc., with the politburo standing committee as the board of directors and the party’s general secretary as the CEO. The various ministries are the functional departments …

An Empirical Study On Innovation Ecosystem, Technological Trajectory Transition, And Innovation Performance, Yu Sun, Ling Li, Yong Chen, Mikhail Yu Kataev

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper explores technological trajectory transition in the perspective of innovation ecosystem and their effect on innovation performance of latecomers in market. A structural equation model is developed and tested with data collected from 366 firms in China. In specific, this paper categories technological trajectory transition creative accumulative technological trajectory transition (CCT) and creative disruptive technological trajectory transition (CDT). The results indicate that firms' organizational learning ability positively affect their technological trajectory transition and innovation performance. Firms' network relationship strength negatively affects their technological trajectory transition and positively affect their innovation performance. Governments' environmental concerns positively affect firms' technological trajectory …

The Role Of The Chinese Communist Party In The Covid-19 Crisis, Matthew Farrell

Management Faculty Publications

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has received plaudits from international press and organizations for their handling of the COVID-19 crisis, with some describing it as a win for China in terms of propaganda. In this essay, I explore an alternative view: That the CCP is responsible for the origin and extent of the pandemic, and that much of their perceived altruism is carefully disguised opportunism and propaganda. Facts are drawn from scholarly work and the popular press to support my arguments. This essay carries strong implications for interpretation of recent events.

Regime Type And Covid-19 Response, Ilan Alon, Matthew Farrell, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

From late 2019 to the first half of 2020, the world has witnessed the epic spread and destruction of the novel coronavirus which was discovered in Wuhan, China. The huge number of infections and deaths caused by the virus, the collapse of the healthcare system and the economic consequences have few modern equivalents. While governments of all countries are responding to the pandemic, a heated debate rages about which political system, democracy versus authoritarian, is better positioned to respond to the pandemic. While the worldwide effort to contain the virus continues, we offer a preliminary comparison between democracies and authoritarian …

China's Intellectual Property Rights Provocation: A Political Economy View, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

It is well recognized that intellectual property rights (IPR) violations are at the heart of the economic conflict with China. Little agreement, however, exists about the origin and solutions for this provocation. Broadly speaking, two prescriptions have been proposed: the natural evolutionary and the rule of law views. While both have merits and add to our understanding, they do not go far enough to address the more fundamental IPR policy issue: China has benefited from a rule of law overseas and a rule through law at home, manufacturing unfair advantage to its firms, many of which are owned and/or influenced …

Social Health Insurance Coverage And Financial Protection Among Rural-To-Urban Internal Migrants In China: Evidence From A Nationally Representative Cross-Sectional Study, Wen Chen, Qi Zhang, Andre M. N. Renzaho, Fangjing Zhou, Hui Zhang, Li Ling

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

INTRODUCTION: Migrants are a vulnerable population and could experience various challenges and barriers to accessing health insurance. Health insurance coverage protects migrants from financial loss related to illness and death. We assessed social health insurance (SHI) coverage and its financial protection effect among rural-to-urban internal migrants (IMs) in China.

METHODS: Data from the '2014 National Internal Migrant Dynamic Monitoring Survey' were used. We categorised 170 904 rural-to-urban IMs according to their SHI status, namely uninsured by SHI, insured by the rural SHI scheme (new rural cooperative medical scheme (NCMS)) or the urban SHI schemes (urban employee-based basic medical insurance (UEBMI)/urban …

Corruption May Worsen In Democratizing Economies: But Don't Let It Erode Our Faith In Democracy, Shaomin Li, Ilan Alon, Jun Wu

Management Faculty Publications

This commentary is based on a recent study we conducted on the relationship between regime type, corruption, and economic development. We build a theory that links corruption and regime type to economic growth and test it on 158 countries, using multiple databases including Polity IV, transparency international, the World Bank, and others. We first distinguish three regime types, autocracy (dictatorship), anocracy (countries in early stage of democratization), and mature democracy. We found that when autocratic countries begin democratize, corruption usually gets worse. As the infant democracies mature, corruption decreases.

Assessment Of And Outlook On China's Corruption And Anticorruption Campaigns: Stagnation In The Authoritarian Trap, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

Since the beginning of China's economic reform in the late 1970s, corruption has been progressing alongside of economic growth. In 2012, when Xi Jinping took power, he waged the largest and longest anticorruption campaign known in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. This study provides an assessment on his campaign and projects an outlook on the future of corruption and anticorruption in China. The author argues that China will enter into an "authoritarian trap," in which the authoritarian power enables the state to effectively carry out the economic reform and achieve economic growth, while suppressing the demand for the …

The Choice Of Technology And Equilibrium Wage Rigidity, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

In this general equilibrium model, firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose increasing returns technologies to maximize profits. Capital and labor are the two factors of production. The existence of efficiency wages leads to unemployment. The model is able to explain some interesting observations of the labor market. First, even though there is neither long-term labor contract nor costs of wage adjustment, wage rigidity is an equilibrium phenomenon: an increase in the exogenous job separation rate, the size of the population, the cost of exerting effort, and the probability that shirking is detected will not change the equilibrium wage rate. …

Photos Of Major Social Turmoils In China Since 1900, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Inevitable And Difficult Transition From Relation-Based To Rule-Based Governance In China, Shaomin Li

Management Faculty Publications

China has benefited tremendously from replying on the relation-based way of doing business and governance, as evidenced in its rapid economic growth up to now. However, further relying on the relation-based governance may eventually hinder China's economic growth and exacerbate inequality, resulting in political instability. On the other hand, given China's cultural heritage and powerful vested interest groups, can China shed its relation-based way? This article argues from logical, theoretical, and empirical perspectives the inevitability and difficulty of China's transition from relations to rules, and discuss the implications of the transition or the lack of it for China.

Asian Corporate Governance Or Corporate Governance In Asia?, Shaomin Li, Anil Nair

Management Faculty Publications

Corporate governance has become an important issue for Chinese and Indian firms as they increasingly interact with regulators and investors from developed markets. For instance, tapping into global capital markets to raise funds to finance their domestic and international growth requires firms from China and India to demonstrate strong corporate governance credentials, so that investors do not discount their stock (LaPorta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, & Vishny, 2000). The swift action of Chinese and Indian authorities in response to recent corporate scandals – such as the one at Satyam Computers – reveals that even governments in emerging countries such as China and …

Production Research In China, S. Chaudhry, S. Feng, H. Li, H. Sui, J. L. Zhang, Z Zhang, Li Xu

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) China is the world’s largest emerging economy. In recent years, China has moved to an increasingly market-oriented economy that opens to international trade and investment. At the same time, the popularity of China as a manufacturing base, assembling goods for sale worldwide is growing. In addition to global manufacturers who have built their own plants in China, many manufacturing companies are outsourcing production to Chinese subcontractors and branding the products with their own logos. In today’s China, production research is becoming more and more important; advanced production research becomes an important enabler to make its manufacturing industry competitive. …