The Peopleâs Republic of Chinaâs (PRC) fiscal system is characterized by very high expenditure decentralization and heavy reliance on transfers to finance public services. The governmentâs embrace of inclusiveness and equalization as national goals has raised questions about whether transfers can deliver equalization. This paper seeks to answer this question by analyzing newly available fiscal data compiled from government websites. We find the allocation of central transfers remains strongly region based, resulting in high intra-regional inequality among provinces. Poorer provinces also tend to retain more central transfers at their own (provincial) level. Those provinces with greater pretransfer inequality tend to exert greater equalization efforts, but these are not necessarily proportional to their pretransfer inequality. As a result, some localities are left out of the PRCâs countrywide equalization program. These equalization patterns remained highly persistent during the coronavirus disease shock in 2020. Collectively, the findings highlight that the PRCâs complex intergovernmental fiscal system still poses challenges for equalization.
Financing is a major challenge and concern for the future of family planning (FP) programs. As countries commit to increasing access to and quality of FP services and to universal health care (UHC), it is crucial that UHC schemes include FP and other reproductive health services. This brief aims to: 1) document trends in UHC and health financing, drawing out implications for policymakers and programmers; and 2) identify opportunities for the FP community of practice to advocate for the inclusion of quality FP services within UHC and health financing discussions. With this brief, we aim to highlight experiences in Kenya, given that there is a body of experience with health financing reforms and UHC schemes and a relatively strong national FP program. The Kenya case study is instructive for other countries with decentralized and mixed health systems as they seek to integrate FP within their own UHC initiatives and health financing reforms.
A multiplicity of spatial plans in a planning system can have different ways of co-existing under different institutional organizations. Having a highly centralized government like China, the phenomenon of a multitude of national-level plans dominating at the same time has its own unique characteristics. Much literature emphasizes only the lacking of coordination between governmental institutes. However, this research finds that the current constitution of the Chinese planning system profoundly reflects the relations between central and local governments. This paper first examines the characteristics of the Chinese political system, briefly reviewing the iterative process of "centralization-decentralization-selective centralization", showing the rise and fall of spatial planning as an administrative tool of local governments. Especially since the 1990s, the central government has raised revenue from the local level, which leads to local governments depending more on selling land for quick money. But as the urban expansion accelerates, the state asserts its control on local development by the National Mainfunction Plan and National Land-use Plan, which seriously impedes the coordination of spatial plans at different levels. Therefore, this study argues that spatial planning reform in China requires not only generating integrated information platforms and technical standards, but more importantly, establishing new relations between central and local government. In the end, some suggestions are made on central authorities reducing the constraints of a planning censorship system and rebalancing the responsibility and the public finance of local government on planning matters.
The heavy reliance of Chinese local governments on landâleasing revenues in recent decades has attracted widespread criticism due to its potential risks and problems. This research, using a panel dataset of 280 prefectureâlevel cities in China from 1999 to 2009, explores what factors affect Chinese city governmentsâ dependence on land finance. The findings provide strong support for hypotheses concerning the effects of both fiscal incentives and political incentives on local fiscal behavior. Both fiscal factorsâsuch as local reliance on fiscal transfers and fiscal decentralizationâand political factorsâincluding local top leadersâ tenure and their distance to mandatory retirementâhave exerted significant impacts on city governmentsâ reliance on land finance. These findings point to the significance of intergovernmental fiscal arrangements and political institutions in affecting local government fiscal behavior in developing countries.
Due to its success, China's family planning programme has attracted attention from other countries seeking to replicate its strategies. Much is known about the organization and operation of China's family planning education and service delivery programmes, yet relatively little is known about costs and programme-financing methods. The authors present information about China's family planning pro gramme from a family and county level administrator perspective, drawing extensively on unpublished recent information to provide insights into costs and methods of financing. A case history illustrates various family planning options available as well as the payment mechanisms for programme incentives. Financial responsibility for the vast majority of the national family planning effort belongs to work units such as factories, educational organizations, stores and cooperatives. Translating the cost of family planning into US dollars and comparing with comparable costs in other developing countries and translating into terms relative to average unskilled Chinese worker salaries reveals the substantial investment made per capita on behalf of the family planning programme. Factors of political will, comprehensive administra tive support, effective organization, an all encompassing motivational programme and extensive service delivery covering the entire country together with generous decentralized financing are presented as important to programme success. Implications for transfer to other countries and the associated costs of doing so are discussed.