Using nationally representative data, the present paper examines the impact of China's ongoing rural tax reform on farmers. The difficulties in further local governance restructuring are also discussed.

This paper studies the impact of the largest conservation set-aside program in the developing world, China’s Grain for Green program, on poverty alleviation in rural areas. Based on a large-scale survey, we find that although poor households in rural China were not disproportionately targeted, they have benefited.

Over the last two decades, China has sustained a rapid economic growth at about 8-10%, part of which is attributed to the positive total factor productivity (TFP) growth. However, this extraordinary economic performance has been accompanied by severe environmental pollution and associated health damage.

This is a guest speech when Prof Xu was attending the OECD Roundtable for Sustainable Development, January 8-9, 2007, Paris.

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the state-owned forestry industry (SOFI) has contributed greatly to national construction and social development. However, since the end of the 1970s the SOFI has been affected by the “two crises” [poor economic performance and ecological degradation], and these to date have yet to be resolved.

Understanding relationship between environmental protection and economic development is crucial to form practical environmental policy. At micro level, implementation of environmental regulations often causes production mills adjustment of technology which might leads to change of productive efficiency and cost, which, in turn, determine effort level of mills and even local government in pollution control.