The Singapore Economic Review

In recent years, the economic slowdown growth has been continuing in China, in tandem with the difficult situations faced by the world emerging economies, it could weaken the confidence of the world economic recovery. China is now facing many structural problems and fiscal reform is one of the fundamental ways to make structural changes that may help with sustainable development. In the introductory paper, the coordinators of this Special Issue of the Singapore Economic Review contextualize the contributions that follow the broader debates on fiscal reform and sustainable development in China, particularly with the summary of reality and vision, options for improvement, international perspectives and consolidation of taxation reform and legislation, running through the collection of papers. They conclude with suggestions for policy decision as well as for further research.

Through the first and second year of China’s 13th five-year plan coincided with local governments holding their own “Two Sessions” before attending the “Two Congresses” in Beijing in March. As one of the frequent results, the issue of local government debt naturally became a popular topic. The scale of local government debt in China was/is considerable, and the structure is complex, which poses a threat to sustained economic development. To address this situation, China must regulate local government debt, clean up urban financing vehicle debt, foster and manage the local bond market, and introduce innovation in the management of local government liability. Only through initiatives such as this will China gain control of local government debt and thus support and promote the long-term sustainable growth of the economy.

This study aims to explore the influence of fiscal transparency on foreign direct investment (FDI, hereafter) in China under the consideration of the spatial dependence of FDI. The study adopts panel data for 30 provinces from 2010 to 2014 to estimate a one-way fixed-effect spatial Durbin model. The primary finding of this study is that a higher level of fiscal transparency will attract more FDI, while keeping other factors constant and considering the spatial dependence of FDI. Other explanatory variables, such as gross regional product and the density of railways, also have statistically significant influences on FDI. Consequently, this study suggests that the Chinese local governments should improve their fiscal transparency in order to attract more foreign capital and further stimulate their economic development as well as China’s economic growth as a whole.

The 1993/1994 reforms in China created the fiscal space for public investment and rapid growth, based on modern tax instruments (VAT) and administration by offsetting local gainers and losers though the transfer system — and allocation of funds for investment in coastal hubs. Current challenges of congestion, pollution, and growing inequality require the design and financing for new sustainable growth hubs. This will involve an interface between local, national and cross border investments in connectivity under the One Belt One Road Initiative, together with new options for subnational (local) own-taxes, transfers, service delivery and strengthened governance mechanisms to monitor and manage liabilities, including PPPs.

This study examines the financial rights and responsibilities of China’s local villages and townships based on a field survey conducted in Xingguo County. This field study focussed on local revenues and expenditures from 2012 to 2014. Upon analyzing data from the survey, we noted numerous difficulties of local financial management due to a lack of well-configured financial authority and power among central and local governments. In addition, revenues and expenditures are unbalanced at the local government level in China. Rural financial management systems need to be improved, and the rural finance function should be strengthened.

In this paper, we empirically investigate the impact of informal institutions on local public investment in rural China. We find that lineage groups have a significant effect on local public investment (per capita investment in irrigation, schools, roads, etc.): One clan is good for local public goods investment, while two or more clans in a village have a negative effect. The effect is increasing with the coverage of the largest clan. The evidence on religious groups is mixed.

Based on 10342 Chinese family samples, by means of non-linear models, the effects of wage income tax (WIT), individual business income tax (IBIT) and other income tax (OIT) on the income gap in China are analyzed. It is found that China’s classified income tax is helpful to narrow the income gap. WIT plays a very important role in narrowing the income gap, with IBIT and OIT widening the income gap. Such income taxes, especially WIT, cause differences of the tax burden between taxpayers who have the same income amount. Uniform income tax is an indispensable measure to solve the problems. On the basis of the income tax systems of 13 countries, 16 different kinds of personal or household uniform income tax modes were built up. Namibia’s household uniform income tax mode is practical to China, because the income adjustment effect of such mode is stronger than that of China’s classified income tax, but the average tax rate of it is lower than that of China’s classified income tax.

Due to rigid rules, incomplete institutions and concentration on short-run fiscal discipline, economic and institutional diversity and insufficient reforms caused the progressive segmentation of the Eurozone. Insufficient integration process is due to lack of trust among member countries and the need to keep a hard budget constraint of national budgets to avoid uncontrolled inflationary pressure and moral hazard. Although understandable in the short run, this situation is causing serious economic and social costs and damages to the development of vulnerable countries. The paper enquires possible solutions to this dangerous stalemate, that could also provide useful suggestions for other countries.

This paper discusses the potential dangers of adversarial debt management in China between central and local authorities. It draws lessons from Germany’s recent mishandling of the Greek debt crisis to illustrate nuances and stresses the wisdom of cooperation and mutual support in restoring balance to local Chinese finance. Inclusive economic theory provides additional insight.

In Spain, as in China, local administration concentrates a number of problems. This is a level of financially weak government. In addition, this fragility is increased, because the municipalities manage numerous services to citizens. Since 2008, the outbreak of the economic crisis caused many difficulties to municipalities, which borrowed. The central government has responded in 2013 with a local reform, which seeks to control the spending of municipalities. Faced with this attempt, municipalities have responded by introducing more economic discipline. Undoubtedly, some of these Spanish lessons may be important for the experience of China, where economic problems of local power are similar.

Firms’ behaviors are not only affected by their taxation burden level, but also their differences from each other. In this paper, we use Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database (CIED) to investigate the relationship between firms’ heterogeneity of tax burden and firms’ characteristics, such as size, ownership, exportation and location. We measure a firm’s tax burden in three ways, the value-added tax (VAT) burden, the corporate income tax (CIT) burden, and the total tax burden. By using a Hausman–Taylor estimation, we find: (1) The CIT burden is positively correlated to the size, while other two tax burdens are not; (2) Both the VAT burden and the total tax burden of SOEs are significantly heavier than those of non-SOEs, while the CIT burden shows the exactly opposite effect; (3) Exporters have a remarkably lower tax burden than non-exporters for all three tax burden measures; and (4) The western region and particularly the central region have lighter tax burden than the eastern region for all three tax burden measures. We also provide empirical evidence and policy suggestions for continuing to proceed with the structural tax reduction and the structural fiscal reform in China.

This paper measures the index of industrial structure upgrade nationally, regionally and provincially by employing angle cosine method. The results show that China’s industrial structure has upgraded and the East is higher than the Northeast and the Midwest. The paper presents an empirical study to examine the effect of variables including demand-side factors, New Normal as a dummy variable and supply-side factors on industrial structure upgrading. It implies that New Normal is not significant, while consumption, investment, technology improvement and labor supply significantly facilitate the upgrade. It highlights policy suggestions designed to adopt innovation-driven strategy and regional economy development strategy.

Environmental pollution has produced adverse impacts on sustainable development in China, and the inappropriate tax legal regime may be one of the important causes. There are only three separate laws concerning three types of taxes, and most of the other taxes are collected by regulations or rules. China has not adopted particular tax laws concerning environmental protection by December 25th, 2016, and has not enforced any special environmental tax law, and polluters are primarily charged for their pollution activities as a way of assuming their legal liabilities, which has significant shortcomings. Under the situations of addressing climate change and constraining and curing environmental pollution for sustainable development, a comprehensive system of green tax laws shall be established and perfected by making and enforcing Environmental Protection Tax Law and improving the existing tax laws involved in environmental protection.