By Charles Parton I am happy to share a report from Charles Parton, an Associate Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and a retired British diplomat with a long history of working on China-related issues. Plateau China: Reform in the ten years after the Third Plenum of 2013, analyses what to expect at the Third Plenum of the 20th Party Congress, and where the People’s Republic of China (PRC) stands ten years after the Third Plenum of 2013.
had a thorough read, not sure if Charles finished proof reading it, a few typos around... start with paragraph 1 of executive summary, 16th central committee was in 2003 not 2013, for in 2013 was the 18th central committee....then footnote 21 should not be Ibid to footnote 20 as they are referring to different year's GWR... then footnote 26 should not refer to sec 2 subsec 8 of the quoted Decision, should be the summary section of sec 2 before subsec 5 .... footnote 34 says Ibid however the whole paragraph was referring to a different article in a different year to footnote 33's text... footnote 45 as well...
still, very impressed with Charles's extensive and fluent knowledge of the various documents/policies/decisions issued over the years across diff departments and ministries... one thing i would like to point out is that, while the common understanding is that local govt is responsible for 85% of expenditure while only receiving 50% of the rev, with central govt keeping the other 50%, in reality by last year the central govt only straight away turned around and transferred that 50% and some back to local govts. the role central govt played is only taking excess from the east and giving to the west and from south to north. delegate this power to the local govts would naturally make the rich provinces richer and poor poorer. whether that change may turn out to be good or bad in the long run is topic for another debate, but the central govt is not as much a greedy overlord as the numbers show.
had a thorough read, not sure if Charles finished proof reading it, a few typos around... start with paragraph 1 of executive summary, 16th central committee was in 2003 not 2013, for in 2013 was the 18th central committee....then footnote 21 should not be Ibid to footnote 20 as they are referring to different year's GWR... then footnote 26 should not refer to sec 2 subsec 8 of the quoted Decision, should be the summary section of sec 2 before subsec 5 .... footnote 34 says Ibid however the whole paragraph was referring to a different article in a different year to footnote 33's text... footnote 45 as well...
still, very impressed with Charles's extensive and fluent knowledge of the various documents/policies/decisions issued over the years across diff departments and ministries... one thing i would like to point out is that, while the common understanding is that local govt is responsible for 85% of expenditure while only receiving 50% of the rev, with central govt keeping the other 50%, in reality by last year the central govt only straight away turned around and transferred that 50% and some back to local govts. the role central govt played is only taking excess from the east and giving to the west and from south to north. delegate this power to the local govts would naturally make the rich provinces richer and poor poorer. whether that change may turn out to be good or bad in the long run is topic for another debate, but the central govt is not as much a greedy overlord as the numbers show.
Thank you. You mentioned the 3d Plenum many times before, but reading this I (finally) understood why it is important.