Fiscal reform, fiscal decentralization and poverty reduction in China: Some observations

Abstract

China has been said to be one of the world's most economically decentralized countries. While the claim that decentralization had much to do with the success of China's reforms has been controversial and it has been argued that China's approach to administrative decentralization might over time threaten the success of the reform process, the highly remarkable extent of fiscal decentralization could have the potential to aid the effort at poverty alleviation, especially in the context of the ethnoregional dimension of the country's poverty problem. This research note presents various observations on the dimensions of decentralization in China and briefly explores its potential implications on poverty reduction