Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Political Economy of China's Trade Policy

政治学博士论文研究：中国贸易政策的政治经济学

• 批准号: 1122647
• 负责人: Jean Oi
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-01 至 2012-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1122647&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

In September 2008, China filed a claim to the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO), requesting consultations on four of the six products on which the United States had imposed definitive anti-dumping and countervailing duties. Why did Beijing complain about the treatment of its exports in steel pipes, tires and plastic woven sacks, but not magnets and sodium nitrate? Similarly, in bilateral negotiations with the US during its entry into the WTO, China secured far more favorable tariff schedules for some products than others, sometimes even within the same industry. Why did China offer more protection for certain industries and sectors but not others?This project addresses these questions by focusing on the domestic politics of China's foreign economic policies in the reform era. The overarching question is: given the weakness of formal institutions and the lack of electoral accountability in authoritarian states such as China, how do societal interests and preferences affect trade policy outcomes? A general framework of interest group politics is developed in which the political survival of authoritarian leaders depends on maintaining a winning coalition from a "selectorate" (a set of people with a say in the selection of leaders and a prospect of belonging to leaders' winning coalition) that is composed of members whose interests diverge and compete against each other due to the distributional effects of trade policies. The extent to which societal interests can successfully influence policy outcomes thus depends on their access to and interaction with these members of the selectorate.This theory is examined using a multi-method approach combining case studies and quantitative analysis. The project examines firm and industry influence on import tariff, nontariff barriers and outcome of antidumping cases in China. In prior field work, the researcher uncovered various channels and mechanisms through which Chinese domestic groups lobby for their preferred policy and identified a number of factors associated with the effectiveness of their lobbying efforts. In particular, such factors as state ownership and ties to the local economy increased the strength of societal demands for protection and hence the likelihood and degree of trade policy concessions granted by the government. The current project involves collecting and using original data on over 450 Chinese industries from 1999 to 2009 and on antidumping cases initiated by China from 1997-2008.This project makes several contributions to scientific understanding. With few exceptions, extant studies of China's foreign economic policies are generally divorced from broader theories of economic policies derived from open and democratic societies. That gap reflects a relative lack of understanding of authoritarian regimes more generally. This research helps fill the gap by proposing a theoretical framework that links the study of authoritarian trade policy- making to more general theories in scholarly work in international political economy and comparative politics. Second, extant scholarship on China's foreign economic policies does not employ the mixed methods approach used here. This project also fills that gap at the same time that it creates a dataset with improved measures and data at a much lower level of disaggregation. The richness of the data will allow other scholars to engage in novel studies of China's political economy and state-society relations.This project also has broader implications. On the one hand, as the US and other major trading partners of China find it increasingly common to face both resistance and support from domestic-level actors in their economic relations with Beijing, it becomes ever more important to comprehend the processes by which these different Chinese actors influence policy making. On the other hand, the pluralization of China's foreign policy making may well extend beyond trade issues. Thus this project can shed light on how China might engage in bilateral and multilateral relations on issues in security, energy and environment.

2008年9月，中国向世界贸易组织（WTO）争端解决机构（Dispute Settlement Body of World Trade Organization）提出申诉，要求就美国已征收确定反倾销和反补贴税的六种产品中的四种进行磋商。为什么中国政府抱怨其出口产品在钢管、轮胎和塑料编织袋方面受到的待遇，而不是磁铁和硝酸钠？同样，在中国加入世贸组织期间与美国的双边谈判中，中国对某些产品的关税安排比其他产品优惠得多，有时甚至在同一行业。为什么中国对某些行业和部门提供更多保护，而对其他行业和部门没有？本项目通过关注改革开放时期中国对外经济政策的国内政治来解决这些问题。首要问题是：考虑到中国等威权国家正式制度的薄弱和缺乏选举问责制，社会利益和偏好如何影响贸易政策的结果？在利益集团政治的总体框架中，专制领导人的政治生存依赖于维持一个获胜的联盟，而“选择”（一组在选择领导人方面有发言权的人，并有可能属于领导人的获胜联盟）是由利益分歧和相互竞争的成员组成的，由于贸易政策的分配效应。因此，社会利益能在多大程度上成功地影响政策结果取决于它们能否接触到这些选民并与之互动。这一理论是使用多方法的方法结合案例研究和定量分析进行检验。该项目考察了企业和行业对中国进口关税、非关税壁垒和反倾销案件结果的影响。在之前的实地工作中，研究者发现了中国国内团体游说其优先政策的各种渠道和机制，并确定了与游说工作有效性相关的一些因素。特别是，诸如国家所有权和与当地经济的联系等因素增加了社会对保护的需求，从而增加了政府给予贸易政策让步的可能性和程度。目前的项目包括收集和使用1999年至2009年450多个中国行业的原始数据，以及1997年至2008年中国发起的反倾销案件的原始数据。这个项目对科学认识作出了若干贡献。除了少数例外，现有的关于中国对外经济政策的研究通常脱离了源自开放和民主社会的更广泛的经济政策理论。这一差距反映出，在更广泛的意义上，人们对专制政权的理解相对缺乏。本研究提出了一个理论框架，将威权主义贸易政策制定研究与国际政治经济学和比较政治学学术工作中的更一般理论联系起来，从而填补了这一空白。其次，现有的中国对外经济政策研究并未采用本文所使用的混合方法。该项目也填补了这一空白，同时它创建了一个数据集，其中包含改进的度量和更低层次的分解数据。数据的丰富性将使其他学者能够对中国的政治经济和国家-社会关系进行新颖的研究。这个项目还有更广泛的含义。一方面，随着美国和中国的其他主要贸易伙伴发现，在与北京的经济关系中，面对来自国内行为者的抵制和支持越来越普遍，理解这些不同的中国行为者影响政策制定的过程变得越来越重要。另一方面，中国外交决策的多元化很可能会超越贸易问题。因此，这个项目可以揭示中国如何在安全、能源和环境问题上参与双边和多边关系。