The dilemmas of market socialism: Capital market reform in China ‐ part II: Shares
从政治经济学角度分析中国社会主义金融体系改革,指出股票发行在经济上不重要但在政治上挑战了社会主义经济基础,改革前景取决于政治问题的解决。
This two‐part article analyses the attempts to reform the socialist financial system in China by diversifying financial assets and introducing capital markets. The approach used is that of political economy, in the sense of elucidating the interplay between political and economic interests, actors and issues in the reform process. Part I discusses the issue of bonds by governments and enterprises. Although the reform era has seen gradual progress towards something resembling a bond 'market' in terms of a diversification of bond types and growing competition between bond issues, there is no evidence that this has improved allocative efficiency in the economy. Rather, bonds have functioned as one instrument in a complex struggle for resources between political, institutional and economic actors in the context of a continuing 'shortage economy'. This competitive system falls far short of a true 'market'; rather it embodies powerful systemic factors reflecting the basic structural and institutional features of a semi‐reformed socialist economy. One of these systemic factors is the institution of social ownership of the means of production which has been called into question by the emergence of shares and share markets, a process we discuss in Part II. Share issues have in the event been economically unimportant but politically important since they challenge the ideological and institutional underpinnings of a 'socialist' economy. The key to the future of this form of financial liberalisation depends not merely on further progress in complementary areas of economic reform policy, but also on a resolution of these fundamental political issues.