Journal articles on the topic 'Fiscal policy China Kwangtung Province'

Urbanization is still the direction of China's development in the next twenty years. The study of the relationship between fiscal policy and urbanization is of great value to the healthy promotion of urbanization. In this paper, through the establishment of vector autoregressive model, and analysis using the impulse response function and variance decomposition empirical dynamic correlation between the development of urbanization in Jiangxi province and that of fiscal policy, fiscal policy focus; at the same time, this thesis employs qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis, normative analysis and empirical analysis, combined with the reality of the development of urbanization in Jiangxi Province in order to analyze of the relationship between the development of urbanization in Jiangxi province and fiscal policy and the existing problems. The study found that there is a cointegration relationship between fiscal policy and urbanization. The impact of fiscal expenditure on Urbanization in Jiangxi is better than that in fiscal revenue. Finally, this paper also puts forward relevant policy.

Fiscal imbalances in China are widening; the problem of fiscal sustainability in each province is becoming increasingly serious. However, so far, few studies have focused on the issue of the fiscal sustainability of China’s provinces. This paper will focus on it to clarify the degree of fiscal sustainability in China’s provinces. In this paper, the GH test method is used to analyze the structural breaking of fiscal revenue and expenditure data of each province, the panel cointegration method is used to analyze the relationship between fiscal revenue and expenditure and DOLS is used to estimate the degree of fiscal sustainability of each province. It is found that the fiscal sustainability of most provinces in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, is strong, while that of some provinces, such as Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang, is weak. This paper states that people should pay more attention to the fiscal sustainability of China’s provinces, and provinces with weak fiscal sustainability should minimize unproductive expenditures while the central government should continue to give appropriate financial support to local governments.

The regulation of fiscal and tax policies is an imperative prerequisite for improving the regional innovation capability. In view of this, an attempt was made to select 31 provinces and cities in China as the research object from 2009 to 2018, to extract the fiscal and tax policy text encouraging innovation of the Chinese provinces and cities based on Python, and analyze their impact on regional innovation capability from both a text data and numerical data perspective. It is noteworthy that most of the provincial fiscal policies just follow the national fiscal policies. Each province does not formulate fiscal and tax policy according to its own unique characteristics. Fiscal policies and regional innovation capability exhibit significant spatial heterogeneity. Based on the results of the dynamic panel data model, it is seen that the R&D input and industrial structure are the main sources of improving innovation capability. The fiscal expenditure for science and technology, fiscal and tax policy text, macro tax burden, business tax (BT), and value-added tax (VAT) have a significant boosting effect on the regional innovation capability. However, the corporate income tax hinders the regional innovation capability. Finally, through the robustness test of invention patents, it is found that the fiscal and tax policy text, macro tax burden, and business tax still have a positive effect on invention patents, but the role of value-added tax has changed from promotion to obstruction, and the corporate income tax has become a significant obstacle on invention patents. This shows that China should build a tax system that promotes fair competition, reduce the tax burden of enterprises, encourage enterprises to conduct independent R&D, and guide enterprises in the evolution from the low-tech to high-tech innovation by improving the tax structure and fiscal technology expenditures.

The Chinese government announced the Clean Energy Heating Program in northern China in 2017, promoting clean energy for residents’ winter heating. The key difficulty of implementing this policy initiative lies in rural areas. This research hence focuses on evaluating the implementation of this policy in rural areas. Rural residents who directly benefit from, and are integrally involved in, the implementation process in Shandong Province were surveyed to evaluate their satisfaction with this policy. In order to identify their satisfaction indicators and obstacle factors, a TOPSIS obstacle model adjusted by entropy weight was developed. An evaluation system of the indicators of residents’ satisfaction with the policy was developed and converted into a questionnaire. The designed questionnaire was distributed to 341 rural residents in Jinan, Zibo and Heze in Shandong province. Data analysis suggests that, at the fiscal subsidies level, supporting infrastructure, technical supports and support organizations are four important factors affecting rural residents’ satisfaction. The key obstacle factors identified include technical support, supporting infrastructure, the operation subsidies level, heating cost, period of subsidies and achieved temperature. Corresponding suggestions for further clean energy heating policy design and implementation in rural areas in northern China are provided.

AbstractIn order to improve the effectiveness of redistributive policies, in 2002 the Chinese government increased fiscal transfers and imposed more stringent regulations on the use of earmarked funds. This article evaluates the impact this had on K county in a north-western province. The case study finds that the misappropriation of earmarked transfers did decrease but this did not necessarily indicate an improvement in the local government's compliance in the usage of transfers. Instead, the county governments found ways to sabotage central policies by exporting fiscal burdens to the subordinate bureaus that received the earmarked subsidies. In some bureaus this was done by reducing the amount of funds allocated for operating expenses. In others it involved increasing staff numbers. These findings provide a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of using earmarked funds and internal supervisory mechanisms to achieve policy objectives in an authoritarian regime.

Based on cross-sectional data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2004 to 2017, this paper systematically examines the nonlinear effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on carbon emissions and its causes using the PSTR model. It is found that the impact of EPU on carbon emissions at the provincial level in China has significant nonlinear characteristics and shows a positive and then negative pattern as the level of EPU increases. Furthermore, increased levels of EPU also cause a nonlinear migration of the effects of provincial economic and financial development, industrial structure, government spending, and environmental regulation on carbon emissions, illustrating a large amount of heterogeneity among Chinese provinces. Specifically, provinces with higher levels of economic and financial development experience a greater positive carbon emission effect from EPU, whereas provinces with lower levels of such development experience a greater negative carbon emission effect. In contrast, in provinces with irrational industrial structures, lower fiscal expenditures, and weaker environmental controls, the nonlinear carbon emission consequences of EPU are greater. Therefore, local governments should prudently adjust economic policies, improve and perfect the market information disclosure system, and afford full play to regional comparative advantages to help achieve the “double carbon goal”.

With the rapid development of industrial economy, local governments in China have invested a large amount of financial funds in environmental protection. In the era of widespread use of clean energy, local governments have a greater responsibility to coordinate fiscal policies with industrial development policies to improve regional environment. Local governments with large fiscal surpluses would make more efforts to improve environmental efficiency, rather than attract heavily polluting industrial enterprises to develop their local economies, and more likely to promote the use of clean energy equipment and raise environmental awareness in government. This paper focuses on testing the impact of abundant fiscal revenue of local governments on the efficiency of regional environmental governance with the data in all prefecture-level cities of China’s Guangdong province from 2001 to 2020. We estimate local environmental governance efficiency score with super-efficiency SBM method, taking unexpected output into account. Then we find that fiscal affluence has significant positive effect on the efficiency of environmental governance and the environmental awareness of the government also has obvious help in improving local environmental efficiency. We hope that these findings will provide practical help for local governments to improve their fiscal policy agendas and the quality of environmental governance.

The article evaluates the expected welfare gain from voluntary partial government-subsidized maize insurance in north-east China. A total of 356 maize-growing households’ risk preferences from Linkou County of Heilongjiang province are examined and their expected welfare gains were analysed by the expected utility theory with each farmer’s unique risk preference. The research found that 217 out of 356 households are rational decision-makers and most of them are risk averse. In term of expected welfare gain, the research pointed out that providing the existing crop insurance creates a welfare gain of about CNY 177 per hectare. However, this estimated welfare gain might be reduced to only CNY 124 per hectare if the local government decided to provide 100 per cent insurance premium subsidy with a lower level of protection at the same fiscal budget. Further, the results indicated that about 36 per cent of the rational households made wrong decisions in buying the crop insurance, and households with fewer family members and a lower portion of non-farming income are more likely to make wrong decisions. Additional education may help these farmers to make better decisions and increase future welfare gain to a potential level of about CNY 275 per hectare on average.

It has been established that culture can contribute to the sustainable development of a country and the world. In China, cultural demands are increasing while cultural resources are relatively scarce. Therefore, this paper evaluates the efficiency of public cultural services in China from 2013 to 2017 and analyzes the major factors affecting this efficiency based on the panel data of 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions (hereafter referred to as “provinces”) in mainland China. The super-efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM) model in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was adopted. The results show that the efficiency of the public cultural services in each province is significantly different, and the overall efficiency shows a downward trend from 2013 to 2017. The gross domestic product per capita, the education level of the residents, fiscal decentralization, and population density significantly impact public culture service efficiency. Based on these results, the following policy recommendations are proposed: (1) Optimize the input structure of public cultural services and adjust the service direction to satisfy the emerging needs for a more diversified and personalized public with economic development and the improvement of education level; (2) adjust the allocation of public cultural resources nationwide and facilitate the flow of public cultural resources from developed to underdeveloped areas; and (3) provide local governments with higher fiscal autonomy and appropriately introduce the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model to utilize private capital.

The rural pension system, co-financed by rural residents' contributions and government subsidies, is a remarkable institutional innovation in China. To better understand the establishment and policy design of this system, this article studies the local experimentation of (partly) government-funded new rural pension schemes prior to the national policy guideline issued in 2009. The focus is on the role of social learning as a crucial driving force in this process. Through a process tracing based on in-depth interviews in Daxing of Beijing and Baoji of Shaanxi Province, this article illustrates how local governments struggled to find suitable financing models for rural pensions, and relied primarily on hands-on experimentation and experiences. During the mobilization of participation in the schemes, the repeated and constant interactions between local officials and rural residents promoted a form of mutual learning that contributed to local policy adaptation and rural residents' internalization of the value and basic rules of contributory pension provision. The local experience had a cumulative impact on the ideational reorientation of the central officials regarding the state's financial role in provision. Specifically, the financing model in Baoji created new options that facilitated the reconciliation of a set of different concerns and objectives at the centre, notably fiscal affordability, wide coverage, and modest managerial burden, which, this article argues, was the major reason for the incorporation of this model into the national policy. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the establishment of the rural pension system and its provisions on rural state-society relations in China.

Abstract This study delineates adjustments to the eco-compensation pilot work of the Taihu Lake Basin and the Huaihe River Basin. The number and location of original compensation sites were adjusted based on the characteristics of the river network and of the water pollution status. A bidirectional eco-compensation system based on water quality exceeding multiple was then implemented. Under this scheme, the eco-compensation payments of each city under three different compensation standards were calculated. A suitable unified short-term compensation standard for the whole province is determined among several compensation payment schemes. The results obtained after implementing the most relevant scheme reveal that (1) the bidirectional eco-compensation system is highly flexible and is viable economically, as the payment of fiscal expenditures used to pay eco-compensation is reasonable. (2) In the southern Jiangsu Province, the ratio of pollutant flux at each compensation site to the total regional flux is relatively high and may, therefore, accurately reflect the water quality condition of the main rivers flowing into the Taihu Lake. (3) The ratio of pollutant flux in the northern Jiangsu Province is low, which highlights the need for further improving the number and location of eco-compensation sites, as well as the compensation methods and standards.

AbstractMany China scholars have explored shirking by local officials and “effective implementation,” but fewer have examined polices that are implemented with great enthusiasm. The Microfinance for Women Programme fits in this last category. Especially in Sichuan, targets for lending were set by the province, exceeded, raised by cities and counties, and then exceeded again. The immediate reason that lending took off in 2012 was the relaxation of collateral requirements that shifted the risk of defaults away from local authorities. But the surge in lending also had deeper roots in the policy's vagueness, institutional incentives, bureaucratic pressure, and local fiscal and organizational interests. Although enthusiastic implementation occurred (and generated much-needed revenues for local governments), the history of the programme also shows that it can be halted, as was the case when instability loomed and the authorities reversed bureaucratic pressure by calling for local cost-sharing and introducing uncertainty over whether interest subsidies would continue.

(1) Background: The housing environment is crucial to the health of older Chinese people and is becoming an urgent policy initiative. This study explores factors that facilitate or impede the adoption of policy innovation on major housing adaptation (HA) by Chinese provincial governments using the framework of policy innovation and diffusion theory. (2) Methods: This study constructs an event history dataset on HA policy related to elevator retrofitting in existing multifamily dwellings in China; the lack of elevators constitutes an insurmountable barrier in older adults’ daily lives in China. The hypotheses were tested by using a traditional event history analysis (EHA) model and a piecewise constant exponential (PCE) model, which is a modified EHA model. The dataset was summarized as “province-year” event history data on 30 Chinese provinces from 2008 to 2019. (3) Results: In addition to internal determinants (e.g., population aging level and financial dependency), diffusion mechanisms can significantly facilitate or impede the adoption of major HA policy innovation by provincial governments. Policy adoption by neighboring governments helps facilitate policy adoption by nonadopters, but policy adoption by subordinate city governments impedes provincial governments’ adoption of major HA policy innovation. (4) Conclusions: This study concludes that provincial governments’ adoption of major HA policy innovation should be given a higher policy priority. The central government can promote provincial governments’ adoption of major HA that primarily benefits older adults by using fiscal transfer payments and enhancing the legitimacy of such policy.

The rural land right has paved the way for the deepening of China’s agricultural land system, which is critical to the successful implementation of the rural revitalization plan in the new era. Based on the micro-survey data of farmers in Yunnan Province, we use an OLS model to empirically test the impact of rural land rights on farmers’ income in underdeveloped areas, and we use a stepwise regression method to test the mechanism role of land transfer willingness and behavior in the rural land right on farmers’ income. Benchmark regression results show that the implementation of rural land rights policy significantly increased the total income of farmers, which mainly comes from farm income. Although the rural land right policy has no significant impact on farmers’ non-farm income, the sign of right coefficient is positive. Mechanism analysis shows that the rural land right can increase the income of farmers by encouraging them to transfer to land. It shows that the property right of land is clear, which makes it easier for land to transfer and trade, and farmers can achieve a certain degree of scale operation, thereby increasing income. Finally, it is suggested that future fiscal funding in impoverished regions be directed toward land transfer links and that accompanying rules and regulations adequately protect farmers’ land contract management rights.

The introduction of land finance and foreign direct investment (FDI) lead to competition among provincial local governments in the background of fiscal decentralization. This paper analyzes the provincial data from 1999 to 2008 by a spatial econometric model. The main contents include the relationship between FDI policies in different provinces and the path dependence between FDI selection and land grant. The results showed that the FDI policies are significantly influenced by the similar policies of the surrounding provinces: the policy formulation and implementation is a complementary strategy between the studied province and surrounding provinces in the current year, and an alternative strategy in a lag. Land grant price significantly influent the entry of real estate. There is an obvious path dependence when FDI choose investment region. In this paper, these issues are analyzed with the actual situation in China.

Environmental inequality in animal husbandry is an important issue that matters in sustainable livestock production and environmental sustainability. In this context, the objective of this study is to measure and analyze the chemical oxygen demand (COD) discharge inequality from animal husbandry in the Liaoning province in China, as a case study in environmental inequality. Using the pollutant discharge coefficient method and environmental inequality indices, the study looks specifically at the impacts on unequal distribution and unequal economic efficiency in Liaoning in the period 2000 to 2016. The study explores the determinants of COD discharge inequality by constructing panel threshold regression models. The major findings are as follows. First, there is COD discharge inequality in distribution and in economic efficiency in Liaoning, and these were not reduced over time, despite a decline in the absolute quantity of COD discharge after 2013. Second, the impact of COD discharge inequality in economic efficiency lasted longer and was more serious across Liaoning compared with COD discharge inequality in distribution. Third, the quantitative upgrading of the agricultural industrial structure did not significantly reduce COD discharge inequality, and even led to a rise in inequality, especially in terms of economic efficiency. Ultimately, regional economic development turned out to be the key factor in inequality reduction. In addition, improvement in public fiscal support for science and technology also led to greater reduction in inequality.

ObjectiveTo identify the facilitators and barriers to implement family doctor contracting services in China by using Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) to shed new light on establishing family doctor systems in developing countries.DesignA qualitative study conducted from June to August 2017 using semistructured interview guides for focus group discussions (FGDs) and individual interviews. CFIR was used to guide data coding, data analysis and reporting of findings.Setting19 primary health institutions in nine provinces purposively selected from the eastern, middle and western areas of China.ParticipantsFrom the nine sampled provinces in China, 62 policy makers from health related departments at the province, city and county/district levels participated in 9 FGDs; 19 leaders of primary health institutions participated in individual interviews; and 48 family doctor team members participated in 15 FGDs.ResultsBased on CFIR constructs, notable facilitators included national reform involving both top-down and bottom-up policy making (Intervention); support from essential public health funds, fiscal subsidies and health insurance (Outer setting); extra performance-based payments for family doctor teams based on evaluation (Inner setting); and positive engagement of health administrators (Process). Notable barriers included a lack of essential matching mechanisms at national level (Intervention); distrust in the quality of primary care, a lack of government subsidies and health insurance reimbursement and performance ceiling policy (Outer setting); the low competency of family doctors and weak influence of evaluations on performance-based salary (Inner setting); and misunderstandings about family doctor contracting services (Process).ConclusionsThe national design with essential features including financing, incentive mechanisms and multidepartment cooperation, was vital for implementing family doctor contracting services in China. More attention should be paid to the quality of primary care and competency of family doctors. All stakeholders must be informed, be involved and participate before and during the process.

China’s support policy for renewable electricity belongs to a feed-in tariffs scheme. With the rapid development of renewable electricity industries, this set of policies brought about a heavy fiscal burden for the government. The exploration of whether current support policy provided excessive subsidies for renewable electricity is of great practical significance. We hold an idea that the internalization of positive externality is the only criterion for the government to support the development of a renewable electricity industry. The problem of whether the current policy provides excessive subsidies for renewable electricity industry can be solved by assessing whether its positive externality is internalized, as renewable electricity industry has a characteristic of externality. Our study object is an assumed biomass power plant in Jingning County, Gansu Province. A system dynamics model was built. Applying the environmental cost accounting method and net present value analysis method, we connected the techno-economic analysis of the biomass power plant with the measurement of positive externality of biomass power generation together. In this system dynamics model, we developed an indicator to reveal whether the subsidies provided by governmental policies can compensate the positive externality generated by the assumed biomass power plant. This study mainly draws the following conclusions: Firstly, China’s current support policy does provide excessive subsidies for the renewable power industry. The subsidies received by biomass power plants from the government are higher than the positive externality generated by them; secondly, the positive externality measurement of the biomass power industry is influenced by many regional factors; thirdly, without governmental policy support, biomass power plants cannot compete with traditional power companies; fourthly, as biomass power generation is concerned, the current price subsidy intensity is about US$0.0132 higher per kWh than a reasonable level. Furthermore, the parameters frequently applied in the calculation of the prices of pollutant emission reduction in Chinese research papers are relatively small, which is only half of their actual values. Jingning County, situated in inland west-northern China, lacks typicality. There is a limitation in judging whether the government’s support policy for renewable electricity is reasonable through a feasibility analysis of investment in a biomass power generation project. This may be the main drawback of this study.

The rapid economic development (ED) of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) has had a significant negative impact on regional ecosystem services (ES). Accurately understanding and properly handling the relationship between ES and ED is critical to achieving coordinated regional development of the YREB. Restricted by a minimal number of research units, traditional studies have not fully considered the spatial heterogeneity of the influencing factors, leading to results with poor accuracy and applicability. To address these problems, this paper introduces a spatial econometric model to explore the impact of influencing factors on the level of coordinated development in the YREB. For the 1013 counties in the YREB, we used the value equivalent method, the entropy weight method, and the coupling coordination model to quantify the coupling coordination relationship between the ecosystem services value (ESV) and ED from 2010 to 2020. The multi-scale geographically weighted regression model (MGWR) was adopted to analyze the role of influencing factors. The results showed the following: (1) The coupling coordination degree (CCD) of ESV and ED along the YREB demonstrated significant spatial heterogeneity, with Sichuan and Anhui provinces forming a low-value lag. The average CCD from high to low were found in the Triangle of Central China (TOCC), the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRDUA), and the Chengdu–Chongqing urban agglomeration (CCUA). (2) There was spatial autocorrelation in the distribution of CCD, with high–high clustering mainly distributed in Hunan, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang provinces. The counties with high–high clustering were expanding, mainly centering on Kunming City in Yunnan Province and expanding outward. (3) There was significant spatial heterogeneity in the impact of each influencing factor on CCD. Per capita fiscal expenditure was sensitive to low–low clustering areas of CCD; per capita, food production was a negative influence, and the rate of urbanization transitioned from negative to positive values from west to east.

Introduction: A number of provinces have implemented a fiscal reform of flattening government since the first decade of this century in China. This study aims to quantitatively analyze the influences of this government fiscal reform on county-level health expenditure. We also bring forward policy suggestions for improving county-level fiscal system and healthcare delivery.Methods: We collected a novel longitudinal county-level data from 2003 to 2010, including counties' socioeconomic data, fiscal revenue, and health expenditure. Jilin Province, Hebei Province, and Anhui Province were selected as representative samples for this policy evaluation. The study employed a time-varying difference-in-difference model specification to investigate the impacts of flattening fiscal reform on health expenditure.Results: The analyses find that the fiscal system reforms of the three provinces have a significantly positive impact on the health expenditure of county-level governments. However, we find no policy effects on the proportion of health expenditure to fiscal expenditure of county-level governments. The estimation results are robust after controlling several background variables.Conclusion: The results yield important policy insights that public finance and its reform significantly impacts health expenditures in China. The government may still need to strengthen the transfer payment system to guarantee the social welfare provision in healthcare.

Abstract How do subnational agents exercise policy discretion in the social welfare sphere? To what extent do they do so as a result of various bureaucratic and fiscal incentives? The literature has documented several explanatory frameworks in the context of China that predominantly focus on the realm of developmental policies. Owing to the salient characteristics of the social policy arena, local adaptation of centrally designed policies may operate on distinctive logics. This study synthesizes the recent scholarship on subnational social policymaking and explains the significant interregional disparities in China's de facto urban poverty line – the eligibility standard of the urban minimum livelihood guarantee scheme, or dibao. Five research hypotheses are formulated for empirical examination: fiscal power effect, population effect, fiscal dependency effect, province effect and neighbour effect. Quantitative analysis of provincial-level panel data largely endorses the hypotheses. The remarkable subnational variations in dibao standards are explained by a salient constellation of fiscal and political factors that are embedded within the country's complex intergovernmental relations and fiscal arrangements. Both a race-to-the-top and a race-to-the-bottom may be fostered by distinctive mechanisms. The unique role of provincial governments as intermediary agents within China's political apparatus is illuminated in the social policy arena.

Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2019, this study empirically analyzes the relationship between fiscal decentralization and carbon productivity using a spatial econometric model and calculates the direct effect, spatial spillover effect, and total effect of fiscal revenue decentralization and fiscal expenditure decentralization on carbon productivity through effect decomposition. The empirical results show that 1) the spatial agglomeration effect of China’s provincial carbon productivity is obvious, which shows an upward trend. The heterogeneity of carbon productivity among different provinces is obvious. The overall performance is as follows: Eastern provinces > Central provinces > Western provinces. 2) Fiscal revenue decentralization and fiscal expenditure decentralization can significantly promote the improvement of carbon productivity. Fiscal expenditure decentralization plays a greater role in promoting carbon productivity than fiscal revenue decentralization. 3) Fiscal revenue decentralization and fiscal expenditure decentralization have significant positive direct effects and negative spatial spillover effects on the improvement of carbon productivity. Increasing fiscal decentralization is conducive to improving the carbon productivity of the province, but it will inhibit the carbon productivity of neighboring provinces. Finally, it puts forward policy suggestions to promote the improvement of carbon productivity from the perspective of fiscal decentralization.

China has been promoting garbage classification in its rural areas, yet it lacks financial appropriation and fiscal decentralization to support waste processing projects. Though the existing literature has suggested fiscal decentralization strategies between different local government levels, few of the studies ascertain garbage classification efficiency from a quantitative perspective. To bridge the gap, this study examines the optimal fiscal decentralization strategies for garbage classification. It uses an optimization model while considering decision makers’ requirements regarding the fund allocation amounts at different government levels and the classification ratios in villages as constraints and decisions, respectively. A three-stage heuristic algorithm is applied to determine optimal landfill locations and efficient classification ratios for the garbage processing system in rural China, with an analytical discussion on the propositions and properties of the model. Our analytical results suggest that 1) the theoretically optimal solution is conditionally achievable, 2) the applied algorithm can achieve the optimal solution faster when the relationship between governance costs and classification ratios reaches some mathematical conditions, and 3) there is always a potential for increasing the retained funds between different government levels or for reducing the total appropriation from the county government. The numerical experiment on a primary dataset from 12 towns and 143 villages in the Pingyuan county of Guangdong province, China, does not only affirm the qualitative results, but it also provides insights into the difficulties encountered during the implementation of the garbage classification policy in China’s rural areas.

Medical service policy plays a prominent role in the development of a “Healthy China.” This paper constructs a three-dimensional framework for text mining of medical service policy using the elements of policy instruments, policy strength, and types of medical service activity. Taking Sichuan Province as an example, 221 medical service policy documents, issued by the government and related departments, are selected as the research sample; the policy instruments, policy strength, and medical service activity types are analyzed using ROST and Nvivo 11.0 software. It is concluded that the government needs to optimize the structure of policy instruments, to appropriately reduce the use of environmental policy instruments in particular, while increasing the use of demand-based policy instruments. It is necessary to strengthen the interaction between the various sub-policy instruments, and to increase the use of financial services, fiscal taxes, overseas communications, and strategic measures. An increase in the implementation of government policy assists the acceleration of the policy landing, the further improvement of the supervision system, and the safeguard mechanism of the three medicine policy linkage, which can improve the sustainability of the medical service policy, and further resolve the difficulty and expense of seeing a doctor.

Medical service policy plays a prominent role in the development of a “Healthy China.” This paper constructs a three-dimensional framework for text mining of medical service policy using the elements of policy instruments, policy strength, and types of medical service activity. Taking Sichuan Province as an example, 221 medical service policy documents, issued by the government and related departments, are selected as the research sample; the policy instruments, policy strength, and medical service activity types are analyzed using ROST and Nvivo 11.0 software. It is concluded that the government needs to optimize the structure of policy instruments, to appropriately reduce the use of environmental policy instruments in particular, while increasing the use of demand-based policy instruments. It is necessary to strengthen the interaction between the various sub-policy instruments, and to increase the use of financial services, fiscal taxes, overseas communications, and strategic measures. An increase in the implementation of government policy assists the acceleration of the policy landing, the further improvement of the supervision system, and the safeguard mechanism of the three medicine policy linkage, which can improve the sustainability of the medical service policy, and further resolve the difficulty and expense of seeing a doctor.

The main purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of social capital level on environmental governance efficiency in economically developed areas. We choose China’s richest province Guangdong. Compared with other Chinese provinces, Guangdong’s local governments are in better fiscal status, and they can allocate environmental spending in line with the trend of gross domestic product per capita. We want to observe the important factors related to social cognition other than capital investment to gain a more profound influence on the efficiency of local environmental governance. This article assumes that the degree of local social capital will have a great positive impact on the efficiency of regional environmental governance. Super-efficiency slacks-based measure method of data envelopment analysis is adopted to calculate the environmental governance efficiency by considering the expected output and the nonexpected output. Then, short-panel regression was used to analyze the relationship between social capital and environmental governance efficiency. Through an empirical analysis of urban panel data of Guangdong province from 2001 to 2019, it is found that the degree of social capital does have a significant positive impact on the efficiency of local environmental governance. After the research conclusion, we propose some policy suggestions to local governments.

This research analyzes the local implementation of China’s central clean water policies over the recent decades. Based on a series of panel data analyses on Chinese provinces between 2004 and 2015, this study empirically examines the impact of decentralization and interest groups on water policy implementation, leading to three main findings. First, fiscal decentralization has a significant positive effect on policy output as measured using per-capita provincial expenditures on industrial wastewater. But it has no significant influence on policy outcome as measured by per-capita emissions of chemical oxygen demand. Second, while increasing environmental decentralization at the provincial level tends to increase provincial expenditures, wastewater discharge also increases. Third, increased industrial contributions to the provincial economy are associated with increased environmental spending from the province, yet foreign trade and environmental petitions do not have the expected impact. The results suggest that China’s decentralization reforms appear to have increased provincial policy responses without improving the actual environmental outcomes. Experiences from authoritarian China may provide lessons for other countries.

Abstract Background The shift towards integrated care (IC) represents a global trend towards more comprehensive and coordinated systems of care, particularly for vulnerable populations, such as the elderly. When health systems face fiscal constraints, integrated care has been advanced as a potential solution by simultaneously improving health service effectiveness and efficiency. This paper addresses the latter. There are three study objectives: first, to compare efficiency differences between IC and non-IC hospitals in China; second, to examine variations in efficiency among different types of IC hospitals; and finally, to explore whether the implementation of IC impacts hospital efficiency. Methods This study uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate efficiency scores among a sample of 200 hospitals in H Province, China. Tobit regression analysis was performed to explore the influence of IC implementation on hospital efficiency scores after adjustment for potential confounding. Moreover, the association between various input and output variables and the implementation of IC was investigated using regression techniques. Results The study has four principal findings: first, IC hospitals, on average, are shown to be more efficient than non-IC hospitals after adjustment for covariates. Holding output constant, IC hospitals are shown to reduce their current input mix by 12% and 4% to achieve optimal efficiency under constant and variable returns-to-scale, respectively, while non-IC hospitals have to reduce their input mix by 26 and 20% to achieve the same level of efficiency; second, with respect to the efficiency of each type of IC, we show that higher efficiency scores are achieved by administrative and virtual IC models over a contractual IC model; third, we demonstrate that IC influences hospitals efficiency by impacting various input and output variables, such as length of stay, inpatient admissions, and staffing; fourth, while bed density per nurse was positively associated with hospital efficiency, the opposite was shown for bed density per physician. Conclusions IC has the potential to promote hospital efficiency by influencing an array of input and output variables. Policies designed to facilitate the implementation of IC in hospitals need to be cognizant of the complex way IC impacts hospital efficiency.

AbstractSustainable development of agriculture is the basis for achieving social sustainable development. As the basic industry of national economy, green development of agriculture has become an important support for building an environment-friendly society. Agricultural fiscal expenditure is a direct channel for the government to support agriculture and promote agricultural transformation. It is important to analyze the impact of agricultural fiscal expenditure (AFE) on agricultural green total factor productivity (AGTFP) for sustainable agricultural development. Therefore, this paper employs the random effect model and spatial Durbin model to empirically analyze the direct effect and spatial spillover effect of AFE on AGTFP by using the agricultural panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2008 to 2020. Then, by taking the policy proposal as the time node, this paper also conducts a time heterogeneity analysis to measure the impact of policy enactment on AFE and AGTFP. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) AGTFP exists significant positive spatial spillover effect. The "radiation effect" of agricultural green development is significant. (2) AFE can significantly reduce the AGTFP in the local area, that is, 1% increase of AFE in the local area will reduce AGTFP by 0.037%. At present, agriculture is still yield-oriented. The improvement of AFE in the local area will lead to the expansion of local agricultural production and increase pollution emission. (3) AFE has a significant negative spatial spillover effect on AGTFP, that is, for every 1% increase in AFE, the AGTFP will decrease 0.123% in geographically similar areas, while the AGTFP will decrease by 0.116% in economically and geographically similar areas. It is obvious that AFE will promote the optimization of agricultural production conditions in the province, with the "demonstration effect" on the surrounding areas, the enthusiasm of production in the surrounding areas will increase, thus expanding the pollution emission. (4) According to the analysis of different periods, AFE has a negative impact on AGTFP mainly before the reform innovation is proposed in 2015. It indicates that reform policies have a significant impact on agricultural sustainability.

Abstract Solving the problem of agricultural water use efficiency is an effective means to understand the agricultural ecological civilization and food security. In order to balance the relationship between agriculture water efficiency and regional economic size, this study examines the agricultural water use efficiency in China based on the Super-SBM model of unexpected output. At the same time, the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) was introduced to analyze the spatial spillover effect and try to find ways to improve agricultural water use efficiency from the perspective of influencing factors. The present study used the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 1998 to 2018 for obtaining empirical results. The results show that (1) China's agricultural water resources’ utilization efficiency in 21 years has not remained high, the results showed that it was 0.496 in 1998, 0.572 in 2008, and 0.657 in 2018, but it is slowly rising which explains that the low efficiency is mainly caused by the low pure technical efficiency; (2) the overall agricultural water use efficiency in China is in a situation of spatial agglomeration but there has been a trend of shifting positive correlations to negative correlations among neighboring provinces, The study found that compared with 1998 in 2018, high–high agglomeration type and low–low agglomeration type down from 20 provinces 12 provinces, And low – high agglomeration type and high–low agglomeration type’ is increased from 10 provinces to 2018, which specifically manifested as a negative spillover effect; (3) during the research period, the province's agricultural fixed asset investment, fiscal expenditure on agriculture, forestry, and water affairs, the number of years of education of rural residents and the increase in crop sown area have positive impacts on the efficiency of agricultural water use in the province. While the transfer of labor and increase in the disposable income of rural residents reduced the efficiency of agricultural water use in the province. Fixed agricultural investment, labor transfers, and financial expenditures for agriculture, forestry, and water affairs in neighboring provinces have negative impacts on the province's agricultural water use efficiency. The impact is specifically manifested as a negative spatial spillover effect. As a result, China's agriculture will move towards healthy and green development. Therefore, the efficiency of agricultural water use needs to be comprehensively improved.

In China’s latest school funding reform, the central government remarkably increases input in basic education. However, this fiscal re-centralisation of education provision is implemented through a highly decentralised administration structure and yet local governments have long been criticised by the public for their inefficiency and misconduct. This paper depicts a snapshot of how school funding policies are practiced in rural China at grassroot government levels. It also discusses the implication of such praxis, drawing on the concept of equity underpinning Australia’s recent review on school funding. Selecting Shandong Province as a case study, this paper firstly analyses publicly accessible online documents on funding policies, released by the state, provincial, prefecture and county governments, to map out the procedures and models of school funding in rural areas. The second set of data was collected through interviews and focus groups with officials from local education authorities and school principals, so as to create a real-life portrait of policy implementation. This empirical study discovers that waste of resource coexists with insufficient funding: biased funding reinforces school hierarchy, improper means are employed to identify students with financial needs, disabled children have strikingly limited access to education, and students with learning difficulties are largely ignored. This paper argues these deficiencies can be explained by local governments’ operational preference. In short, local governments’ active involvement in school funding process may have aggravated inequity.Â

In 2006, a seminal report from the World Health Organization1 provided an all-encompassing definition of health workers as “all people engaged in actions whose primary intent is to enhance health,” whether involved in direct service provision (e.g., physicians, nurses, midwives) or administrative/support functions (e.g., administrative professional or driver in a healthcare facility), and with or without compensation (e.g., volunteer health workers, family caregivers). Because of limitations on data availability and measurement, however, technical and academic discussions about health workers, or more formally, human resources for health (HRH), focus on those under the formal sector.2 By and large, HRH is considered a vital pillar of a functioning health system3 because the health sector is a labor-intensive industry4 that relies on a substantial number of highly skilled staff to provide services to target populations, and consequently, the attainment of national and global health targets (e.g., Sustainable Development Goals). One challenge confronting HRH management is the issue of geographical imbalance, which means that health workers are attracted to work and settle in urban more than rural areas for a variety of individual, organizational, institutional, economic, political, and cultural factors.5,6 In the Philippine context, the Department of Health (DOH) reported in 2018 that there still exists a maldistribution of HRH in the country, particularly in “hardship” posts where municipalities could not entice, nor retain, HRH.7 For example, a separate analysis of institution-based HRH data in 2017 showed that the National Capital Region had significantly more physicians, nurses, and medical technologists than the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.8 The paper by Tejero et al.9 in this issue of Acta Medica Philippina adds further evidence to the underlying reasons for the geographical imbalance of HRH in the country. Based on interviews with officials and health workers from 76 rural municipalities across the Philippines, the researchers found that, in general, while local government units attempted to implement strategies to help recruit and retain health workers in their areas, such a response has mainly been inadequate and has failed to bridge the HRH gap confronting their locality. At its core, the financial obligations tied to the recruitment and retention process appear to be a significant driver of this situation since most rural municipalities are dependent on their share of national revenues by way of the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), which in turn is based on population (50%), land area (25%), and equal sharing (25%).10 That is to say, rural municipalities can only commit so much financial resources in their annual budget to fund the salary of health workers, given the other equally important social and development programs that need to be implemented. Even the impact of the expected increase in IRA based on the Mandanas Doctrine promulgated by the Supreme Court in 2019 revising the computation of national revenues may be modest at best since some programs, projects, and activities previously supported by the national government will have to be assumed again by local government units.11 The devolution of health services following the promulgation of the Local Government Code of 199112 with its promise of creating a governance structure that is more responsive to the needs of communities has resulted in a paradox whereby local government units are constrained in their strategies and initiatives by, among other things, the financial resources that are available at their disposal. To this end, two important points need to be considered by local government units to address the issue of the geographical imbalance of HRH. First, augmentation of available human resources for health through national-level initiatives (e.g., DOH HRH Deployment Program 8, Medical Scholarship, and Return Service Program 13) as well as private sector support (e.g., project-specific HRH for the tuberculosis control program 14) should be maximized, but with a clear intent that, as we have argued in past publications, these be regarded as temporary measures to rectify the issue in the short- to intermediate-term.14–18 Second, and more importantly, there is a need to explore, mobilize, and maximize non-financial incentives (e.g., housing) and extrabudgetary sources (e.g., share from the feed paid by social health insurance), as more long-term tactics.1,17 Unless and until a viable fiscal environment is put in place, coupled with implementation of a comprehensive policy and framework across the phases of the working lifespan1 , the challenge of HRH maldistribution will continue to persist. Carl Abelardo T. Antonio, MD, MPH Department of Health Policy and Administration College of Public Health University of the Philippines Manila, Manila, Philippines Department of Applied Social Sciences The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon Hong Kong SAR, China REFERENCES World Health Organization. The World Health Report 2006: Working together for health [Internet]. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2006 [cited 2022 May 4]. Available from https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43432 Al-Sawai A, Al-Shishtawy MM. Health workforce planning: an overview and suggested approach in Oman. Sultan Qaboos Univ Med J. 2015 Feb; 15(1):e27-33. World Health Organization. The World Health Report 2000. Health systems: improving performance [Internet]. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2000 [cited 2022 May 4]. Available from https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/42281 Buchan J. What difference does (“good”) HRM make? Hum Resour Health. 2004 Jun 7; 2(1):6. doi: 10.1186/1478-4491-2-6. 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