Jean-François Huchet

Bio: Jean-François Huchet is an academic researcher from Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales. The author has contributed to research in topics: China & Capitalism. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 40 publications receiving 274 citations. Previous affiliations of Jean-François Huchet include Institut Français.

Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics

Abstract: Huang Yasheng, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, 348 pp.Now that the Chinese government has celebrated with great pomp the 30th anniversary of the launch of economic reforms and is preparing to stifle any attempts at commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, economist Huang Yasheng's analysis in his latest book assumes particular significance. There has been deplorable silence on the period between 4 June 1989 and the 14th Congress of the Communist Party of China 1992, not only in the Chinese media but more seriously in most of the economic analyses by Chinese academics.(l) However, this period was crucial for the direction of economic reforms. Of course, it is difficult to rewrite history, and as Barry Naughton says elsewhere in this special issue, many of the adjustments adopted after June 1989 would in all probability have been made even if the reformist camp had prevailed. However, in Huang's view, Chinese leaders could well have made other policy choices that would have led to China's economy and society looking considerably different today, especially in terms of social equity. It is precisely the analysis of the impact of this shift in the general direction of reforms between 1989 and 1992 and its consequences on the building of a particular type of capitalism that forms the bulwark of Huang's book.One of its most interesting aspects is the author's analytical method. Huang stays firmly rooted in political economy. Unlike most economists, he recognises and assumes the primacy of politics in the genealogy and conduct of Chinese economic reforms. There are no lengthy discussions of the ideological tussle in the 1989-92 period between Deng Xiaoping and the conservatives (under Chen Yun's leadership)(2) regarding the orientation of economic reforms, but the five long chapters that hold up the book afford a detailed and quite convincing view of the centrality and impact of political choices on the structuring of China's economy and society since reforms were launched in 1978. Huang chooses to divide the economic takeoff and emergence of capitalism over the past 30 years into two periods, which he says are characterised by distinct political choices on the part of Chinese leaders. As he analyses it, there was clearly a "before and after 1989" in the building of Chinese capitalism. Although he acknowledges the efforts of the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao duo since 2003 in modifying some aspects of Chinese capitalism (under the "harmonious society" concept in ideological terms), he insists that China has yet to change the direction set in 1989. Huang says the political choices that prevailed at the time of the 14th Party Congress in 1992 were to profoundly alter the direction taken in the 1970s and developed during the 1980s.Huang's analysis of the 1980s marks a radical departure from those of many Chinese and Western economists. Moreover, it is one of the strongest and most original points, as developed in the second chapter on what he calls the entrepreneurial decade. He says the reforms introduced in the rural areas in the late 1970s were a good deal more liberal and radical in terms of unleashing entrepreneurship than noted in academic literature on this period. He bases his argumentation on an analysis of changes in the incentive system for private investment and peasant entrepreneurship. The changes were far-reaching and not, as some Western economists suggest, a mere beginning or change in the direction of neoclassical orthodoxy. The error in most of their analyses, Huang says, lies in comparing the content and nature of policies adopted in this period in China with ahistoric and disembodied canons of neoclassical economic manuals. This led most analysts to note two basic traits in Chinese economic reforms; firstly, a progressive and incremental approach in their adoption, and secondly, belief in the effectiveness of an incomplete, intermediate, and hybrid form of property rights, the so-called "collective" rights of township and village enterprises (TVEs). …

The Great Reversal

Abstract: The review and analysis of the book 'Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics' by Huang Yasheng is discussed The positive and negative aspects of the views put forward by Yasheng are highlighted

Between Bureaucracy and Market: Chinese Industrial Groups in Search of New Forms of Corporate Governance

Abstract: This paper investigates the peculiar and contradictory nature of the on-going construction of a system of corporate governance in China. The analysis attempts to overcome the limits of traditional corporate studies that tend to focus on enterprise management, and puts the issue within the framework of the systemic and political relationships that shape economic management and state intervention in large enterprises in transitional socialist systems. The emergence of a specific managerial culture within the market and of winners among the enterprises is related to the position still held by the state in the enterprise asset, and by the access to competitive markets available to the enterprises. State owned enterprises, enjoy the protection of their status but they are more successful and adopt a more profit-oriented management culture if they operate in the internationalised and competitive markets rather than in the strategical lowprofit, state-dominated sectors. Due to continuous interaction between enterprise management and external (policy or macro-economic) factors, and to the absence or underdevelopment of most of the institutions generally necessary for a sound corporate governance system (financial markets, bank independence, free press etc.) the privatisation does not seem sufficient to engender all round market-led governance.

China's Transition and its Implications for International Business

Abstract: This paper focuses on institutional change as the central and most consequential contextual aspect of China's transition. Identification of key characteristics of China's emergent institutions leads to propositions on their relevance for international business practice. China's transition also raises issues for theory development, including the way that transition is modeled, the need to draw upon multiple perspectives, and the concomitants of a contextual approach.

Today's state‐owned enterprises of China: are they dying dinosaurs or dynamic dynamos?

Abstract: This paper raises the question and provides empirical evidence regarding the status of the evolution of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China today. In this study, we compare the SOEs to domestic private-owned enterprises (POEs) and foreign-controlled businesses (FCBs) in the context of their organizational cultures. While a new ownership form, many of the POEs evolved from former collectives that reflect the traditional values of Chinese business. Conversely, the FCBs are much more indicative of the large global MNCs. Therefore, we look at the SOEs in the context of these two reference points. We conclude that the SOEs of today have substantially transformed to approximate a configuration desired by the Chinese government when it began the SOE transformation a couple of decades ago to make them globally competitive. The SOEs of today appear to be appropriately described as China's economic dynamic dynamo for the future. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

China returns to Africa : a rising power and a continent embrace

Abstract: Chinese-African relations became an issue of increasing importance leading up to the 2006 China-Africa Summit in Beijing. Nevertheless, academics and policymakers have largely neglected China's expanding relationship with Africa. Scholars have yet to explore the concrete ways in which Chinese actors operate in different parts of Africa, and developmental policy advisors have yet to take the political dynamics and implications of this involvement into consideration when forming policy. China Returns to Africa addresses key issues in contemporary Chinese-African relations, examining the impact of this relationship in issues of diplomacy, trade, and development. Beginning with the assertion that China is engaged in a "scramble for Africa" and that we are now on the brink of a "new Chinese imperialism," the essays in this volume transcend narrow, media-driven concerns and offer one of the first far-ranging surveys of the consequences of China's investment in Africa.

Multinational Firm Knowledge, use of Expatriates and Foreign Subsidiary Performance

Abstract: The impact of knowledge transfer on foreign subsidiary performance has been a major focus of research on knowledge management in multinational enterprises (MNEs). By integrating the knowledge-based view and the expatriation literature, this study examines the relationship between a multinational firm's knowledge (i.e. marketing and technological knowledge), its use of expatriates, and the performance of its foreign subsidiaries. We conceptualize that expatriates play a contingent role in facilitating the transfer and redeployment of a parent firm's knowledge to its subsidiary, depending on the location specificity of the organizational knowledge being transferred and the time of transfer. Our analysis of 1660 foreign subsidiaries of Japanese firms over a 15-year period indicates that the number of expatriates relative to the total number of subsidiary employees (1) strengthened the effect of a parent firm's technological knowledge (with low location specificity) on subsidiary performance in the short term, but (2) weakened the impact of the parent firm's marketing knowledge (with high location specificity) on subsidiary performance in the long term. We also found that the expatriates' influence on knowledge transfer eventually disappeared. The implications for knowledge transfer research and the expatriate management literature are discussed.