May 24 2006
Read this article from China Youth Daily: 美国在华企业评估中国城市竞争力
北京市首当其冲需要解决的问题是该市急剧恶化的交通堵塞。全市有超过250万辆轿车，而且每天还新增1000辆。在空气质量上，北京在中国的主要城市中持续排名最后，主要原因是机动车污染的显著增长。
日益恶化的环境也削弱了上海的竞争力. 空气污染使上海每年在医疗上至少多花80亿元人民币。2002年，污染造成的经济损失相当于上海GDP的2％。由于缺乏高素质、有经验的管理者和富有能力的职员. 该市的平均工资居中国大陆之首。
对于人口大省四川来说，缺乏的则是熟练工人。
对于天津和成都来说，地方保护主义、对中小企业的准入障碍、效率低下的海关办事效率等，则限制了当地对外来资本的吸引力。
May 24 2006
Rural Reform:
1. Fees to tax: no fees or levies but increase of agriculture tax to 7%
2. From 2005 on, zero-burden.
Old rural tax/local revenue makeup:
1. Agriculture tax, cash corp tax, slaughter tax
2. Fees and levies
3. 3 Tiao? Wu Tong
4. Obliged labor
Wu Tong (五项统筹):
Education, family planning, social security, road construction, mailitary training
RFR is supposed to make up the difference from the reduction of rural tax. ZFZ found out the RFR are often short-changed. Even so, not all are distributed to the local level where they are affected by the rural tax reform.
Education funds:
Capital and expense funds from the state have to have “matching funds”
Matching funds–who is responsible to collect/fulfill?
May 22 2006
I am very very surprised that major news outlets have not picked up the stock market story in India. I only saw one from Reuter’s wire. The title was pretty scary: India on alert for suicides after stocks slide(c)
Basically, “market slide — which has been as much as 22.4 percent from an all-time high of 12,671.11 points on May 11″
“I borrowed money to trade in the market. I lost it all in the past two days,” said 37-year-old Sanjay Joshi, a small investor. “I don’t know how will I repay my loans.”
–Seems typical of market crash. But India is a large economy and is getting integrated into the world. Particularly, what if the commodity price drops as a result of this? If inflationary scare keeps lingering, return on energy investment diminishes and interest rate stays high: won’t world economy withdraws as a result?