Early modern Europeans, particularly during the Enlightenment, looked outwards to foreign lands to satisfy their curiosity, enhance theories or support nationalist or religious agendas, as well learn from other advanced civilizations. This dissertation examines British and French views of China's political economy during the Enlightenment until the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. It studies the construction of knowledge on China's political economy by British and French primary travellers, geographers and philosophers, which results in several conclusions. First, while certainly evident in eighteenth century encounters with China, the sinophilia/sinophobia dichotomy is a flawed way to assess early Enlightenment perceptions of China's political economy. Rather there was a striking degree of consensus among sources that have been conventionally divided. Second, Europeans did not possess comfortable assumptions of superiority in the area of political economy and expressed a great degree of civilizational relativism. Finally, Enlightenment commentators and observers displayed a genuine interest in what could be learned from China. At times, Europeans used China as a mirror for self-evaluation and exploration, such as when considering views of economic culture. In other instances an active engagement with the Chinese model existed, as philosophers analysed how aspects of the Chinese system could be reconciled with - and even be used to improve - their own burgeoning theories of political and economic organization. China's military weakness and scientific stagnation offered insight on pitfalls to avoid. Europeans often viewed China's history, geography and population as unique and thus argued that Chinese practices could not be replicated in a European setting. On topics such as foreign trade and the form of government, China was dismissed as a useful model, not on normative grounds, but rather because its uniqueness and singularity meant it could not comfortably be worked into the universal models that characterized European Enlightenment thought.

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China is one of the most significant 'transitional' economies in the world. It is widely accepted that China's economic governance, having already experienced a series of modifications, will probably require even more changes in the future. However, there are two considerations, of growing significance, with regards to any alterations in its system of economic governance; whether or not the current economic trajectory is sustainable and whether social unrest can be prevented. Previous research relevant to this topic has focused on the role of the central government. This thesis provides an alternative view on China's economic governance by focusing on its intermediate levels. The variation in local economic governance including its violation of central government decisions, during the process of implementation and the regionalisation of state-private sector relations are two primary foci of this thesis.

On December 11, 2001, the People's Republic of China officially joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO). More than 15 years after it had announced the resumption of its status as a contracting party, the country that had since then become one of the largest telecommunication market in the world, would finally abide by a set of internationally defined norms and rules. In the course of the WTO accession, its telecommunication sector has undergone an extensive reform process, introducing competition and the foundation of a legislative framework. Yet, China's telecommunication commitments have been notably weaker than those negotiated in other service sectors. The restructuring of the telecommunications sector - which started along the lines of global liberalisation programmes - could have been buttressed by the accession to the WTO. It was however shaped and blocked by diverse interests emanating from the fragmented Chinese political structure and resulted in an environment fraught with substantive regulatory issues. This thesis seeks to answer two inter-related questions: why did the government fail to reform in-depth the telecommunication sector and what mediated the impact the WTO accession process had on the sector's reform. It argues that the Chinese government's failure to create a regulatory regime to implement a policy of telecommunication liberalisation represents essentially a problem of institutional change. The thesis demonstrates that the bargaining approach to policy-making in the telecommunication sector has allowed, and even facilitated, the first stage of reforms but that it is ill-suited for participation in a supranational framework.

New Argonauts are defined as American-educated scientists and engineers who have set up technology companies since returning to their home countries such as China, India, Israel and Taiwan (Saxenian, 2006). This thesis has developed Saxenian's New Argonauts to those who have become venture capitalists (VCs) in China. The aims of the thesis are three-fold: (1) to identify the role of New Argonaut VCs in China's venture capital industry; (2) to examine how New Argonauts use their transnational networks in their portfolio investments; and (3) to assess the impact of their investments on China's economic development. Semi-structured interviews with 33 returnee VCs and 3 returnee business angels were collected to address the above first and second research question. Furthermore, four case studies (two cases were sourced from the semi-structured interviews and two from the secondary data) were employed to address the second and third research question. The use of four cases allows for an swering them in much more depth and in greater detail. And as a result, to obtain an insight into the venture capital process used by these New Argonaut VCs and their significant contributions to the effective venture capital industry in China. The findings of case studies further corroborate the proposed relationships tested by 36 in-depth interviews. Transnational networks between New Argonaut investors and the American VC industry and business communities play a vital role, enabling New Argonaut investors to raise funds from the American market successfully, to evaluate the state-of-the-art knowledge of technology, to have co-investment opportunities with foreign VC firms who are unfamiliar with the Chinese market, to create relationships between their portfolio firms and overseas customers, suppliers and strategic partners, and to help their portfolio firms to exit successfully especially in the U.S. equity market. New Argonaut VCs therefore facilitate the rapid econ development in China.

The notion of creative cluster has been imported to China and endorsed in the official cultural policies in the recent years. Despite the overwhelming practice of creative clusters designation in China, especially capital cities, relatively little has been known about how it works in China and in what ways it produces creativity. Based on a comparative study of two creative clusters in Shanghai, Tianzifang and M50, using Henry Lefebvre's theoretical framework on the production of space as the main thread, complimented by other theories including Pierre Bourdieu on capital, habitus and field, and Becker on art worlds, this thesis investigated the production process of creative clusters in China context, the various management models of creative clusters and their effects on the creativity production, and the reasons for different performance of creativity in the two clusters. This thesis suggested that the production of creative clusters in China not only involving the production of physical space, but also the mental and social space. Creative clusters in China were acted on by policy, represented the party ideology and became the representation of political performance of local authority. Meanwhile, new social space for artists has been formed in the clusters. Concerning the various strategies of production, each cluster presented a different performance on delivering perceived creativity. TZF has adopted a government dominated model, and has developed tourism as well. This has been successful in fostering commercial environment by allowing the cultural and commercial functions to co-exist easily, but also has led to the capitalization of space and there seemed to be less evidence of creativity. M50 has to date been commercially managed with an enterprise model. It has been successful in cultivating the creative milieu through managing the ratio of different creative organizations in the cluster and has shown more ability in producing creativity.

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The present study examines both the impact of foreign direct investment, mainly in the form of MNCs, on technological capability 1) within their affiliates (including joint venture), and 2) of related firms in the same chain of production (with a focus on backward linkages via subcontracting), and the learning progress of locals under the existing economic policy in China. Using the automotive and elevator sectors as samples, the study investigates the choice of contractual arrangements for technology transfer by the MNCs, Volkswagen AG(VWAG) and Schindler Elevator(SE); the transfer of technical and non-technical skills from MNCs to locals under such arrangement; the creation of backward linkages between their affiliates and domestic firms; and the constraints on technological effort of these firms. The study finds, on the basis of empirical studies in China, that the compromised arrangement --- joint venture chosen by VWAG and SE as the 'first best' strategy provides a business framework for technology transfer. Gaining access to the technologies of product and production from MNCs under such business framework is significant for filling the gap between existing technologies in old plants and technologies in the 1980s. Moreover, the study finds that backward linkages by MNCs can be important to the host country for increasing local production and upgrading local industrial capacity. The study also finds that the failures of technological effort in China can be traced directly or indirectly to economic policies. It appears that the same set of policies has resulted in some of its achievements. However, it is likely that these failures would have been less weighty, if a different set of policies had been adopted in a properly balanced way.

China began its current economic reform in the late 1970s. Since initiating its reforms, China has restructured its banking sector from the old Soviet-style and monopoly banking system. Meanwhile, since China launched its equity market in the early 1990s, selling new stocks and bonds appeared to be another significant channel for enterprises to raise investment funds. This thesis investigates the influence of financial development on economic growth in China mainly by examining the banking sector and stock market performance. This study employs a consolidated dataset covering 30 provinces for 18 years to conduct the panel technique. Meanwhile, a monthly dataset of 10 years has also been established to explore Granger-causality tests of the financial development and economic growth linkages. The main findings of the research are that at first China's economic growth is driven by the quickly accumulated capital stock attributed to the rapid increase of fixed assets investment while the contribution of labour input to GDP growth is statistically modest. Secondly, on aggregated level, the Granger-causality estimated result does not support the hypothesis that China's banking sector has been playing a leading role in the process of economic growth. Meanwhile, based on the introduction of five banking sector indicators, the panel estimation result indicated that China's banking sector has not statistically generated any contribution to the economic development. Thirdly, the Granger-causality estimated results concluded that economic growth is the Granger-cause of the stock market capitalisation while no causality relationship exists between stock market development and economic growth when in term of market liquidity and volatility. The causality relationship was finally testified on the basis of investigating the whole financial market, in which circumstance the estimated result further confirmed that financial development is the effect rather than cause of China's economic growth. Overall, the thesis presents enough evidence to support the argument that the financial sector development has been acting the demand- following role in economic growth process in the context of China.