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Growing Apart: Declining Within- and Across-Village Risk Sharing in Rural China

Orazio Attanasio, Costas Meghir, Corina Mommaerts, and Yu Zheng , May 25, 2022

China has embarked on an ambitious campaign to close income gaps, address regional inequality and unfair social welfare provision, and make solid progress toward common prosperity by 2035. This marks a shift in focus from overall growth to promoting equitable and balanced growth.

Microgiving with Digital Platforms

Xiheng Jiang, Jianwei Xing, Jintao Xu, Eric Zou, Nov 30, 2022

“Microgiving,” a new model of fundraising made possible by digital technologies, is premised on the notion that charities can raise substantial funds by soliciting minuscule donations from many individuals.

How China’s Business Registration Reform Boosted Entrepreneurship and Productivity

Panle Jia Barwick, Luming Chen, Shanjun Li, Xiaobo Zhang, Nov 05, 2025

China’s 2014 business registration reform spurred greater market dynamism by lowering entry barriers, which increased firm turnover and allowed smaller yet more productive entrepreneurs to establish new businesses, boosting overall productivity and growth.

China’s New Goal for Income Distribution: What Does it Mean and are There Tradeoffs?

Martin Ravallion, Shaohua Chen, Mar 16, 2022

China’s political leadership recently committed to expanding the proportion of middle-income groups to create a less polarised, and more ‘olive-shaped’, distribution of wealth. This column considers the potential trade-offs between reducing income polarisation and other goals, including poverty reduction.

Industrial Policy and Retaliatory Protection under the WTO:Lessons from China

Yusheng Feng, Haishi Li, Siwei Wang, Min Zhu, Aug 13, 2025

Industrial policy is increasingly implemented worldwide, with many policymakers and researchers highlighting its benefits (Juhász et al. 2024). However, the cost of industrial policy remains less understood. Using Chinese firm-level data, we show that higher industrial subsidies raise the likelihood and severity of foreign anti-dumping and countervailing duties at each investigation stage (Feng et al. 2025). These retaliatory tariffs wipe out roughly a quarter of the firm revenue growth the subsidies would otherwise create. Neglecting this channel may lead governments to overstate the net benefits of industrial policy and fuels deeper trade frictions and geoeconomic fragmentation.