China’s Third Generation Leadership and Their Legacy for Economic Governance

Dali L. Yang

Abstract

Faced with multiple challenges, China’s leaders have since the late 1980s been on a perpetual drive to rebuild the fiscal prowess and institutional sinews of the central state and improve governance. The initiatives to improve the efficiency, transparency, and accountability of the administrative state, whilst still unevenly adopted across the country, may prove the most enduring legacy of the current age.  In the short and intermediate run, such reforms help bridge the gap between elite and masses and go some way toward curbing rampant rent-seeking activities. In the long run, an efficient and well-governed administration will be indispensable if and when elite politics do make the democratic transition.

Keywords: Chinese government reforms, tax and fiscal reforms,

                   local fiscal autonomy, banking system reforms