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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/3/2016, SPi
Douglas B. Fuller
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/3/2016, SPi
3
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/3/2016, SPi
Acknowledgments
I am incredibly grateful to have had the help of so many gifted people along
the way to the completion of this book. First and foremost, I wish to thank
Suzanne Berger and Richard Samuels for all their guidance and patience as my
dissertation supervisors at MIT’s Department of Political Science. Whatever
else I’ve accomplished as an academic is in no small part the result of those
years learning from them. I would also like to thank my first PhD supervisor at
MIT, Cui Zhiyuan, who has always been both a gentleman and a scholar.
I remain forever indebted to Tayo Akinwande and Charlie Sodini for teaching
me all two electrical engineering professors could possibly teach a distressingly
non-technical social scientist like myself about the electronics industry and
for our wonderful times conducting research together in Asia. Richard Lester
as director of the Industrial Performance Center (IPC) dispensed good humor
and even better advice to all the graduate students working there. I would also
like to thank a number of classmates and colleagues from MIT: David Art, Dan
Breznitz, Ed Cunningham, Erica Fuchs, Wenkai He, Sara Jane McCaffrey, Dane
Morgan, Apiwat Ratanawaraha, Amos Zehavi, and most especially, Yutaka
Kashiwabara and Jiyoon Kim.
Prior to MIT, John Zysman and Lillian M. Li inspired me to pursue an
academic career involving comparative political economy and China.
In my academic career, I’ve been blessed with supportive colleagues includ-
ing Henry Rowen, Marguerite Hancock Gong, William Miller, Michelle Hsieh,
Rafiq Dossani, Iris Xiaohong Quan, and Yo Yamaguchi at Stanford APARC,
Nanette Levinson at American University, Chung-Ming Lau, Shige Makino,
Kevin Au, Daphne Yiu, Gongming Qian, and John Lai at Chinese University of
Hong Kong, and Dean Wu Xiaobo, Chen Ling, Wei Jiang, Chen Zongshi,
Wu Aiqi, Dong Xusheng, Zhang Zhongyuan, and Mark Greeven at Zhejiang
University. At King’s College London, Olivier Butzbach, Ginny Doellgast,
Tony Edwards, Howard Gospel, Aditi Gupta, Gregory Jackson, Finola Kerrigan,
Peter Kingstone, Hyunji Kwon, Gretchen Larsen, Dirk vom Lehn, Gerhard
Schnyder, Matt Vidal, and Cagri Yalkin offered a wonderful mix of friendship
and intellectual stimulation.
I’ve benefited greatly from Tom Gold, Bill Hurst, Kun-Chin Lin, Adam Segal,
Victor Shih, Eric Thun, Kellee Tsai, and, particularly, Matt Ferchen (who read
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/3/2016, SPi
Acknowledgments
viii
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Contents
List of Figures xi
List of Tables xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
1. The Framework 12
5. IC Fabrication 117
Contents
x
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List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
List of Abbreviations
IT information technology
JV joint venture
LCD liquid crystal display
LGFV local government financing vehicle
LLP limited liability partner
LME liberal market economy
MNC multinational corporation
MPW multi-product wafer
NPLs non-performing loans
OBM original brand manufacturer
ODM original design manufacturer
OEM original equipment manufacturer
OS operational strategy
PRD Pearl River Delta
R&D research and development
S&T science and technology
SEI strategic emerging industry
SEZ special economic zone
SOE state-owned enterprise
SOHO small office and home office
SPC State Planning Commission or stored program control
STB set-top box
TTC transnational technology community
TVE township and village enterprise
VC venture capital/capitalist
VIE variable interest entity
VoC varieties of capitalism
WFOE wholly foreign-owned enterprise
YRD Yangtze River Delta
Source abbreviations
xvi
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List of Abbreviations
xvii
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 9/3/2016, SPi
Part I
Setting the Stage
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Introduction
On a very hot and humid day in July of 1998, I, a naïve first-year doctoral
student, unwittingly imitated those celebrated British companions of mad
dogs under Hong Kong’s noon sun by making the then three and a half
hour train trip from Shanghai to Wuxi in Jiangsu Province clad in coat and
tie. My mission was to see first-hand the fruits of China’s efforts to leapfrog
into advanced semiconductor technologies. I had been forewarned by two
different sources about what to expect. Some Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology engineering professors had made the same trip six months earlier only
to find an operation where the new fab (the fabrication facility or, in layman’s
terms, computer chip-making plant) remained empty because the state-
owned firm charged with operating it, Huajing, had no idea what products
to turn out for the market. Later, a Lucent employee, a Chinese returnee (a
term used for expatriate technologists who return home, see Saxenian 2006)
involved in technology transfer from Lucent to Huajing, reported much the
same. Nevertheless, the Lucent employee invited me out to see the infamous
state-run 908 Project for myself. I left Wuxi that evening with two convic-
tions: I would never be able to remove the ring-around-the-collar from the
shirt I was wearing and China’s technology sector was stillborn.
As it turned out, only one of my two convictions proved true. My shirt was
ruined. As for China, its perceived technological rise now causes concerns
about economic and technological competitiveness, not to mention national
security, in many quarters. This book, based on more than a dozen years of
research, explains how China’s technological development transformed the
country from an also-ran to a competitor to be reckoned with in technology-
intensive industries. However, the story is not so thoroughly triumphant.
China’s technological development is uneven and fragile. Moreover, the
firms driving China’s development are not purely Chinese.
The argument in this book is that China has undertaken a path of techno-
logical development quite different from previous late developers. Whereas
state policy and market institution-building are the main explanations offered
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for the success of past developers, China has had poorly developed, if perhaps
improving, market institutions and a state that is quite ill equipped to foster
and guide (let alone build) the industrial firms that have driven development
in late developers, such as Japan and Korea.1 In place of building robust
market institutions and implementing effective industrial policy, China has
instead allowed the space for a certain type of foreign firm to drive techno-
logical development in China.
While foreign firms have played a constructive role in economic develop-
ment in a number of late developers in the post-World War II era, they have
generally done so under one of two types of state-structured parameters. In the
first model, the state lured multinational corporations (MNCs) with incentives
and then encouraged them to progressively build up local competencies and
capabilities through upgrading each MNC’s own internal activities in the host
economy. Singapore is the foremost example of this model. Other states
concentrated on fostering the internal capabilities of their own domestic
enterprises and then encouraged (Taiwan) or coerced MNCs using market
access as leverage (Japan and Korea) to transfer capabilities to these local
firms. The deployment of a vigilant and capable host government that
could identify and punish MNC non-compliance was necessary in both of
these models.
In China, by contrast, the transnational, ethnic Chinese, technology com-
munity2 has served as the glue to bind foreign firms to China, working in the
place of effective state industrial policy. Put simply, shared ethnic ties have
provided the incentives to encourage ethnic Chinese foreign technology firms
to locate core technology activities in China. In contrast, other foreign firms
have tended to be slow to commit significant resources to the developing
world when left to their own devices.
Nevertheless, these shared ethnic ties alone are not enough to produce
technological development.3 The story of China’s technological development
is not simply one in which transnational ethnic Chinese technology networks
overcome all obstacles to development. Domestic and foreign institutions
external to these networks play an equally important role because these
networks do not operate in an institutional vacuum in China or elsewhere.
The institutions of foreign finance to which these foreign-invested firms are
linked are as important as the transnational networks into which they are
embedded. The importance of these foreign institutions is most clearly seen
1
See Moore (2002), Tylecote (2009), Tylecote et al. (2010), and Pettis (2013) on problems of
China’s state capacity for industrial policy, particularly in the area of finance.
2
Saxenian’s (2006) work documents how the ethnic Chinese transnational technology
community is just one of several of these ethnic transnational technology communities.
3
Hsu and Zhou (2010) and Kenney et al. (2013) offer critical assessments of the contribution of
returnees in various countries.
4
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Introduction
by looking at the domestic firms that have links to the transnational ethnic
Chinese technology community via returnees working for these domestic
firms. Despite these transnational links, these domestic firms have conspicu-
ously failed to advance China’s technological development because they lack
robust linkages to foreign financial institutions.
The ethnic Chinese, foreign-invested firms (called hybrid foreign-invested
enterprises or hybrids for short) are the hidden dragons driving China’s
technological development. They are hidden because they are not widely
recognized as a distinct category of firms by the Chinese state and foreign
and domestic analysts of China’s economy. Standing in sad contrast to
them, China’s domestic firms are paper tigers. They have been the
targets of the government’s industrial policies, and celebrated and feared in
equal measure by foreign analysts.4 Yet the images of these firms’ techno-
logical prowess are by and large more fiction than fact, as this book will
demonstrate.
Beyond the domestic firms and hybrids, there is another set of foreign-
invested enterprises (FIEs) operating in China, the multinational corporations
(MNCs). The MNCs are those FIEs that either do not have ethnic links to
China or, if they do, eschew utilizing China as an extensive base for their
firm’s core competencies. The MNCs are neither hidden dragons driving
technological development nor paper tigers failing to deliver on their hype.
Some of these firms have contributed to China’s technological development,
but their commitment to China is generally weak so China’s development
would be much slower if it relied upon the MNCs to drive technological
progress. Chapter 1 explains in detail the differences between hybrids and
MNCs.
The combination of foreign institutions and the ethnic Chinese trans-
national technology network that has propelled China’s technological devel-
opment has important implications for three key concerns: (1) what will be
China’s near-to-medium term development trajectory; (2) how we conceive of
the political economy of development under globalization; and (3) how the
comparative capitalism literature conceives of the integrity of national insti-
tutional arrangements.
This introduction will now turn to examine each of these three subjects in
turn. Following the discussion of the themes, this chapter will examine the
information technology (IT)5 industry as a case and outline the organization
of the rest of the book.
4
Zeng and Williamson (2008), Breznitz and Murphree (2011), and Lee (2013) are examples.
5
The IT industry comprises computing, communications, software and consumer electronics
products, as well as the software and hardware subsystems and components that go into these
products.
5
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1. Whither China?
6
Optimist commentators, such as Dragonomics’ Arthur Kroeber and Goldman Sachs’ Jim
O’Neil, tend to focus on just good enough market mechanisms and downplay concerns about
overinvestment. Optimists in the scholarly community provide pro-state and pro-market
arguments. Heilmann (2008) believes in the Chinese state’s flexible, experimentalist economic
development capabilities. McNally (2012) celebrates a distinct Sino-capitalism featuring a capable
state and a vibrant entrepreneurial economy. Nee and Opper (2012) see market institutions
growing up from below. Lardy (2014) believes China’s bias towards state-owned firms has
diminished as the private sector has grown and economic policies have reformed.
7
The book acknowledges and indeed details how these foreign links are a point of contestation
and thus the continuation of these links cannot be assumed.
6
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Introduction
Comparative political economy over the post-World War II era has principally
concerned itself with the institutional arrangements of distinct national
8
The literal translation is “the state advances, the private (sector) retreats.”
7
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This book focuses on the Chinese IT industry while also examining a broader
swath of industries in Chapters 4 and 7. There are several reasons for selecting
the IT industry as a case. The IT industry is both a representative case and a
critical case. Representative cases are those that potentially represent a wider
number of similar cases. Critical cases are those that have important broad
implications despite not necessarily being representative. A critical case can be
one in which the previous theories predict the polar opposite outcome from
the actual one. Or a critical case can be one in which the case itself is of such
great import that its singularity by no means diminishes its importance.
8
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Introduction
9
The developing nations signing the agreement are allowed longer periods of time to adjust
their tariff schedules. What is more, the nations that are WTO members but not signatories of the
ITA still enjoy the tariff benefits from the lowering of tariffs by ITA signatories, which include the
triad of advanced economies: the EU, the United States, and Japan. Thus, this adjustment
mechanism actually works in favor of the developing world contrary to the predictions of the
globalization pessimists. In July 2015, fifty-four countries, including China, Japan, the United
States, and the twenty-eight European Union states, agreed to extend the ITA to include new
categories of products, primarily products not yet invented in 1997.
10
China became a member of the ITA following its WTO accession.
9
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The book will address the themes and issues highlighted above across the
following chapters.
Chapter 1 will present the overall framework and causal mechanisms by
which ethnic Chinese hybrid firms linked to foreign institutions drive techno-
logical development in China’s high-technology industry.
Following the first part of the book introducing and framing the argument,
the next three chapters (comprising Part II) will address aspects of Chinese
state policy to induce technological development and contrast them with the
successes linked to foreign finance and hybrids. At the broadest level, there are
two main paths to technological upgrading and innovation. One is through
vibrant clusters of often initially small firms along the lines of Taiwan’s
Hsinchu and Silicon Valley in the United States. The other is upgrading and
innovation pursued through large firms along the lines of the Korean chaebol,
Japanese keiretsu, and Western conglomerates. Chapters 2 and 3 each address
one of these two broad paths to upgrading and innovation.
Chapter 2 explores China’s efforts to foster clusters of upgrading and innov-
ation through the promotion of development zones and venture capital,
i.e. efforts to mimic Taiwan and Singapore’s model of upgrading as well as
Silicon Valley’s model of innovation. The success of foreign venture capital,
particularly foreign venture capital embedded in ethnic Chinese networks,
contrasts with the meager outcomes of the domestic efforts in development
zones and venture capital.
11
The Four Modernizations are the modernizations of agriculture, industry, defense, and
science and technology (S&T). They were proclaimed on the eve of the Cultural Revolution,
during which they were temporarily shelved only to be reaffirmed at the Fourth National
People’s Congress in January of 1975 (MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006: 380). In 1991, S&T
was moved up from third to first position in ranking of importance of the Four Modernizations
(Fewsmith 2001: 47).
12
Various subsectors of the IT industry have been considered critical priority industries under
every one of China’s five-year plans (FYP) going back at least to the Seventh FYP (1986 to 1990).
10
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Introduction
13
Technically speaking, the semiconductor industry is broader than integrated circuits, but
these two terms are often used interchangeably even in policy and industry analysis discourse.
Part III will focus on integrated circuits and thus not include discrete semiconductors, which are
relatively low-tech.
11
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The Framework
This chapter will provide a more detailed account of the causal mechanisms
that explain the outsized contribution of the hybrids, the moderate contribu-
tions of the MNCs, and the much smaller contributions of domestic firms to
China’s technological development. The argument connects the outcomes in
technological development in China back to the specific institutional arrange-
ments of finance.1 The failures of technological upgrading are largely tied to
the weaknesses of the Chinese financial system. The successes are largely due
to firms that draw upon foreign sources of finance outside of China but
maintain an abiding commitment to China’s development.
Section 1.1 will provide an overview of the argument. Section 1.2 will
examine how technological development, the outcome or dependent variable
of this study, is measured. Section 1.3 will describe the methodology and data
collection of the book. Section 1.4 will examine the problems with China’s
industrial policymaking. Section 1.5 will rebut alternative explanations for the
varying technological development contributions that this book documents.
1
The argument thus builds on the insights of scholars such as Michael Pettis, Yasheng Huang,
Andrew Tylecote, and Victor Shih who have documented China’s problematic political economy
of finance.
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The Framework
entrepreneurs that I dub hybrid FIEs. Global capital serves to offset the
inefficiencies of China’s financial sector. Hybrid FIEs combine foreign
finance with a strategic commitment to develop core technological activ-
ities in China. The hybrids take the best of both worlds of foreign and
domestic firms. Hybrids, as foreign firms, receive finance and the concomi-
tant financial discipline from global capital, an option that remains gener-
ally unavailable to Chinese domestic firms. At the same time, hybrids’
ethnic ties to China often encourage commitment to local development
more commonly associated with domestic firms than with MNCs. Due to
this combination of foreign finance and strategic commitment to China,
hybrids contribute much more to its technological development than
any other type of technology enterprise operating in China’s high-
tech industry. They are the hidden dragons behind China’s technological
development.
Regarding the overall topography of China’s technology sector, this book
finds that there are four distinct types of firms in China’s technology sector
with three distinct patterns of technological upgrading. There are two types of
domestic firms: favored domestic firms and neglected domestic firms. Simi-
larly, there are two types of FIEs: hybrid FIEs and MNCs, the latter of which are
the FIEs with stereotypically weak ties to the host economy. The three out-
comes of technological upgrading are high, moderate, and low levels of con-
tribution to technological upgrading. The hybrids contribute high levels of
upgrading earning them the hidden dragon sobriquet. The MNCs contribute
moderate levels of upgrading and the two types of domestic firms provide low
levels of upgrading. Driving these different patterns of technological upgrad-
ing are two factors: the source of finance in China and operational strategies
(also referred to in the book as OS) of the respective firms. The OS variable in
turn is influenced by the presence or absence of ethnic ties to the Chinese
economy.
Source of finance is a binary variable with a firm either being linked to
domestic or foreign financial sources. The OS of the firm is also a binary
variable, with firms possessing either a commitment to basing core corporate
activities in China, which we dub the China-based strategy, or a strategy
where firms do not have such commitment to China, which we call the
foreign OS. Ethnic ties to the local economy explain the propensity of some
firms to adopt China-based operational strategies.
In China, the relationship of firms to the state determines their sources of
finance (Gregory et al. 2000; Huang 2003, 2008) and these in turn impact their
ability to upgrade. Firms have hard budget constraints when they do not
receive free financial help. With hard budget constraints firms have to remain
competitive to survive. By definition, a critical part of the competitiveness of
technology firms is their technology so they have every incentive to improve
13
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2
X. Liu’s (2001: 204) surveys indicate that domestic firms were actually favored over foreign
firms as the destination for returning Chinese technologists for most of the 1990s. Subsequent
chapters will discuss a number of case studies where returnees failed to turn around domestic firms.
14
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The Framework
Proposition 1:
FIEs contribute more to China’s technological development than domestic
firms.
Proposition 2:
Hybrid FIEs contribute more to China’s technological development than
MNCs.
The next two subsections will examine the two causal or independent variables.
1.1.2 Finance
Favored firms have a close relationship to the Chinese state, which provides
them with finance and procurement without any effective monitoring
(Huang 2003, 2008; Unirule 2011; Pettis 2013). Favored domestic firms have
generous access to China’s state-run financial system that undermines both
firm capabilities and incentives for upgrading. In the past, the favored firms
were almost exclusively formally designated state-owned firms, but as the
categorization of firms as state-owned becomes increasingly difficult due to
corporatization and partial privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs)
(Guiheux 2002; Huang 2008), the mix of ownership types (i.e. state-owned
and other) in the favored category has expanded. This book will document
that firms that clearly are not SOEs leverage the right connections to enjoy the
state’s lavish patronage including soft loans and government procurement.3
Neglected domestic firms are those that do not have access to the state
financial system and other perquisites of state patronage. They are almost
exclusively private firms with a distant relationship with the state. Cut off
from credit, they are unable to afford the costs of upgrading (Gregory et al.
2000; Tylecote et al. 2010). MNCs can upgrade due to their financial discip-
line, but undertake less of it in China than hybrids because they lack the
China-based OS.
The FIEs’ ability to access foreign finance is as much a result of politics as of
the domestic firms’ financial arrangements. The Chinese state has generally
not allowed foreign firms to utilize its financial system (Lardy 1998; Pettis
2013).4 At the same time, the Chinese state opened up China to investment in
3
Here government procurement means all state purchases not just those processed under the
government procurement law, which are a small fraction of government procurement. Opening
government procurement to foreigners has not progressed very far in China as the system of state
purchases remains very opaque and decentralized (Chou 2006). Furthermore, the National
Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the State Council issued a directive on
May 26, 2009, that stresses the imperative to buy Chinese goods in state procurement.
4
As late as 2012, foreign loans constituted only 3 percent of total enterprises loans (Lardy 2014).
15
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5
Even Lardy’s optimistic account of the rise of private enterprise in China does not deny that
there is continued discrimination against the private firms as state firms enjoy a disproportionate
share of the loans.
6
This non-traditional translation follows Lardy (2014) because this translation better captures
what these entities actually are.
16
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The Framework
automatically means foreign control over the listed entity. Instead, it exam-
ines what entities actually exercise effective control over a given firm listed
offshore.
This book distinguishes FIEs from domestic firms using two sequential
metrics. The first metric is share ownership. To be considered a foreign
(domestic) company, foreign (domestic) entities cumulatively had to own
more than 50 percent of the firm’s shares.7 This is different from the Chinese
statutory definition of FIEs where such enterprises only have to be 25 percent
foreign-owned to be considered foreign enterprises. The second metric is
company control. Foreign (domestic) firms are those firms where foreign
(domestic) entities exercise majority control. For companies where a board
of directors exists and the board participants are made public, this study uses
control of the board to determine control.8 For companies with less than
transparent governance structures, further research into what entities have
sizeable stakes in the firm has been necessary to determine the control.
In any case, share ownership and effective control of the firm (foreign versus
domestic) is only important insofar as it indicates the source of financing. In
order to determine which domestic firms are state-favored as opposed to state-
neglected, we add a third metric of the actual financial support in terms of
loans and state procurement from the Chinese state to determine which non-
state-owned or controlled firms are in fact state-favored. Given the over-
whelming preponderance of evidence that indicates the state-owned sector
receives the majority of the loans from the state banking system (Lardy 1998;
OECD 2002; Huang 2003, 2008; Shih 2004, 2007, 2008; Hope and Hu 2006;
Allen et al. 2008, 2013; Unirule 2011; Pettis 2013),9 it is safe to assume that
those firms majority owned by the state have access to the state banking
system. For domestic firms which were not majority owned or controlled by
state entities, this study collected further evidence of firms’ sources of finance
and procurement to determine whether they were state-favored or state-
neglected domestic firms. Chapters 3, 5, and 6 will document in detail the
7
The OECD uses this definition of 50 percent control (Huang 2008: 18).
8
By board we are referring to the board of directors rather than the supervisory board within
China’s two-tiered board structure. Research has shown the latter board has little power or
influence (Teng 2010).
9
Lardy (2014) argues that private firms have received the majority of new loans since 2011, but
there are reasons to think that the China Banking Society data he uses still underestimates state
control and overestimates private control among enterprises (email correspondence with Victor
Shih on August 25, 2015) even while recognizing that Lardy is probably correct in pointing out a
lessening in lending discrimination towards private enterprise over the reform decades. Elsewhere
in his book, he mislabels state-owned firms as private in a manner suggesting a cognitive bias
towards seeing private firms where none exist. For example, Lardy refers to Lenovo as a private firm
at the time of its acquisition of IBM’s PC division when in fact Lenovo was still majority owned by
state entities at that time.
17
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18
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The Framework
10
This book departs from the excellent work of Tylecote and his colleagues (2010), who argue
that China’s financial bias towards state-owned firms and against private firms hurts the latter, by
emphasizing the disastrous effects of China’s financial system on the very firms favored by it.
Tylecote and his colleagues believe corporate governance changes in SOEs are enough to transform
them into vehicles for technological upgrading. This book provides evidence that even those firms
with more long-term top management teams (the main corporate governance adjustment
advocated by Tylecote) have trouble staving off the inefficiencies and disincentives to perform
that soft budgets create.
11
Nee and Opper (2012) point out that private firms are reliant on the profits they generate for
future investments because of lack of access to the formal financial system. Lardy (2014) also points
out that private firms mainly rely on retained earnings for investment.
19
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 11/3/2016, SPi
2008; Tylecote et al. 2010). China conspicuously lacks the deep stock markets
and venture capital and private equity that are most effective in developing
new industries (Allen et al. 2008).12
12
Indeed, the retained earnings approach to investing also does not suffice to invest in these
high-technology activities as Allen et al. (2008) and the history of high-technology investment in
ethnic Chinese, high-technology Taiwan point out so Lardy’s (2014) celebration of the ability of
Chinese private firms to retain earnings to invest does not really help such firms enter technology-
intensive industries. Nee and Opper’s (2012) examination of private firms in the “advanced”
Yangzi River Delta also provides evidence for this lack of technology-intensive investment.
13
This subsection draws on Fuller (2013). Revised and reproduced with permission from Journal
of Development Studies (tandfonline.com).
14
While Hong Kong and Macau are Special Administrative Regions of the People’s Republic of
China, their financial systems are distinct and much more market-based.
15
Cumulatively, the ECEs and tax havens contributed 60 percent of China’s foreign direct
investment (FDI) from 1985 to 2005. A large portion, possibly even a large majority, of the tax
haven FDI is from Hong Kong and Taiwan (Naughton 2007: 413) and offshore investors who want
to invest in technology start-ups in China often choose the tax havens as well. The United States,
Canada, Japan, and the EU countries, the core countries of the OECD, account for another 25 percent.
20
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The Framework
Table 1.1 China’s NPLs in comparative perspective: NPLs as a portion of GDP (%)
Sources: Allen et al. (2008, 2011); Davies (2013); and March 2013 email correspondence with an investment bank
analyst.
* The figures here for China are double the nominal rate provided the Chinese government and listed in Allen et al.
(2008: 523) and Allen et al. (2013: 64). The nominal rate among other things does not include the NPLs already taken off
the banks’ books by the state’s AMCs and loans that have been rolled over when they should have been declared non-
performing. The figures are double the nominal rate because scholars generally believe these government figures to be
far too low and probably understate the NPL problem by at least half (see Shih 2007; Allen et al. 2008: 525 ). Allen et al.
(2013) actually use double the nominal NPLs in their Table 3C.
** Allen et al. (2008: 523) also note that the Chinese authorities understated the size of the NPLs during 1998 and 1999
even more than they did for the later years.
*** The figures for 2013 are the 2010 figures for these countries as 2013 figures were not available.
**** The investment analyst cited the low estimate of NPLs to be Goldman Sachs’ at 8 percent and Paul Davies cited
estimates ranging from just under 20 to 40 percent of GDP.
21
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Indeed, recent estimates suggest that the number of recognized NPLs probably
ranges from 20 to 40 percent of GDP (Davies 2013).16
The current global financial crisis, as bad as it is, does not really challenge
the notion of China’s comparatively greater financial inefficiency for two
reasons. First, the global crisis did not grow out of banks’ inability to distribute
loans to creditworthy borrowers in commercial enterprises while continuing
to lend to bankrupt or poorly performing ones. Rather, some large financial
institutions began to make highly leveraged bets on new types of financial
instruments that they did not fully understand; this brought the healthy
functioning parts of the banking system down with the rest (Blair 2008).
Second, even in the United States, the epicenter of the crisis, NPLs as a
percentage of GDP are still far lower than China’s have been over an extended
period of time. At the height of America’s recent financial crisis, the NPLs were
3.3 percent of GDP (Allen et al. 2013).
Two important trends potentially challenge business as usual in China’s
financial system. First, over the last several years as growth has slowed down,
the very low and even negative real interest rates enjoyed by state-favored firms
in the past are not as favorable as they were. Another important change is the
gradual deregulation of interest rates over the last several years.17 However,
both of these movements themselves face countervailing currents in the form
of continued state support for propping up the bad debt already out there (FT
5.15.2015) and continued interference by the People’s Bank of China in banks’
interest rates (WSJ 5.14.2015). Nevertheless, if these trends gather steam, then
the cheaper cost of capital state-favored firms have enjoyed through their better
access to the banking system may come to an end. This issue will be revisited in
the conclusion of this book given its import for the allocation of capital.
16
Author’s email correspondence on March 13, 2013, with an investment bank analyst whose
job it is to follow the health of the Chinese banking system stated that the lowest reasonable
estimate for then current spring 2013 NPLs was Goldman Sachs’ estimate of 8 percent. He thought,
however, that this estimate was much too low and NPLs would grow to be much higher from an
even higher base than Goldman’s estimate. Bloomberg News (April 13, 2011) was already
predicting in 2011 a surge to between 15 and 30 percent of GDP over the next few years as the
government once again began belatedly to recognize NPLs as NPLs.
17
The liberalization of lending rates was announced in July 2013. Following some initial moves
on long-term deposit rate liberalization in August 2015, the People’s Bank of China announced
much broader liberalization of the deposit rates in October 2015 although there will still be some
regulation to prevent excessive competition (see this October 23, 2015, statement from the People’s
Bank of China, downloaded on October 27, 2015: <http://www.pbc.gov.cn/goutongjiaoliu/113456/
113469/2968751/index.html>).
22
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The Framework
China-based OS) or as just another location among many (the foreign OS). OS
is a measure of a firm’s determination to place core corporate activities,
activities that the corporation relies upon for its competitiveness, in a particu-
lar location or locations. Thus, the China-based OS is a commitment to base
these core corporate activities in China.
Why would any foreign firms embrace a China-based OS, as the hybrid FIEs
have? Hybrids share a common feature that explains their propensity to adopt
a China-based OS: they all have ethnic Chinese management.18 The research
for this study did not start out with the objective of examining ethnicity as a
factor in explaining firm strategy or technological development. Only in the
course of conducting research did it become obvious that certain foreign-
invested firms shared a China-based OS and empirically all of these firms
had ethnic Chinese management. Moreover, I structure the definition of the
China-based OS in such a way to allow for the possibility of non-ethnic
Chinese firms adopting a China-based OS (see Appendix A). I need to stress
that the connection between Chinese ethnicity and adoption of the China-
based OS is probabilistic rather than deterministic, and while all the causal
links are probabilistic rather than deterministic, the probability of Chinese
ethnic management embracing a China-based OS is lower than the relevant
cause and effects in the other causal links in Figure 1.1.
With these caveats in mind, insights borrowed from the nationality of
multinationals literature help to explain the propensity for firms with ethnic
Chinese management to adopt a China-based OS. This literature, based on
empirical observations of MNCs’19 behavior, argues that firms concentrate
core resources in their home bases. This research gives lie to the idea of the
truly multinational enterprise (Hu 1992; Wade 1996; Doremus et al. 1998;
Hirst and Thompson 1999; Cohen et al. 2009).
Explanations for the continuation of this practice vary. Some argue that firms
have developed competitive strengths that rely on the specific institutions of the
home economy (Hall and Soskice 2001).20 An alternative interest-based
18
I use management because part of the ownership of these firms is from foreign financial
institutions, which may or may not be ethnic Chinese. Nevertheless, even in the case of start-ups
where the majority of shareholders (the venture capitalists) are often not ethnic Chinese, the teams
of managers in charge of running these firms are ethnic Chinese and have significant equity stakes
and board representation. The managers sold investment stakes of their firm on the basis of their
China-based strategy so there is no reason to think that the non-ethnic Chinese foreign finance
will try to change the strategic orientation towards China of these hybrids. I uncovered no
instances of this and I heard reports of just the opposite, foreign venture firms attracted to invest
in hybrid firms precisely because these firms were “China plays.” See Grimes (2004: B1).
19
In this subsection, MNCs refer to the general category of multinationals rather than the
specific subcategory of FIEs in this study.
20
The varieties of capitalism literature (Hall and Soskice 2001) is not very applicable to the case of
hybrid FIEs in China because this literature assumes, at least implicitly, that domestic corporations’
utilization of the strengths of the home economy is a product of a long historical co-evolution. The
hybrids and China’s institutions simply have not had the time to co-evolve in this manner.
23
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Ethnicity
Dotted line indicates less
deterministic relationship
Operational
Strategy
Technology
Inputs
(follow the
finance)
24
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The Framework
21
For some countries, one could argue that immigrants also adopt a nationalist bias towards
their adopted country, but China is not an immigrant country so the chance of this happening
among non-ethnic Chinese foreigners is quite low. For ethnic Chinese, it is a different matter.
There is an ideology in China regarding ethnic Chinese foreigners, so-called Overseas Chinese
(Huaqiao), as fellow Chinese rather than as foreigners. Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern
China revered on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, was a US citizen who learned about the Chinese
revolution he supposedly started while taking a train in the middle of the United States.
22
I did not bring up the nationalist motivation proactively in interviews due to the sensitive
nature of talking about such topics with a foreigner, but some of the interview subjects still stated
that this factor was part of the motivation. Segal (2003) also found nationalism a motivation for
local Chinese entrepreneurs.
25
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26
Another random document with
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Kmicic katsoi poispäin peittääkseen hämminkinsä.
Tiesenhausen sanoi:
Oli hetkiä, jolloin Kmicic tahtoi jättää kaikki — kunnian, joka oli
hänen saavutettavissaan, ja kuninkaan palveluksen — ja rientää
kostamaan tuolle ylimykselle. Mutta toiselta puolen hän, niin
raivostunut kuin olikin, ajatteli, että kostoon on tilaisuutta niin kauan
kuin ruhtinas on elossa, mutta paras keino ja ainoa tapa osoittaa
hänen katalasti valehdelleen oli palvella uskollisesti kuningasta.
— Selittäkää tarkemmin!
Jo matkan alussa nähtiin, miten hyvä oli ollut Kmicicin neuvo, että
matkustettaisiin erikseen. Kaikkialla Mährissä puhuttiin Puolan
kuninkaan äskeisestä käynnistä. Muutamat vakuuttivat nähneensä
hänet omin silmin haarniska yllä, miekka kädessä ja kruunu päässä.
— Kuka se oli?
— Herra Wolodyjowski.