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Rural taxation and government regulation in China
Author(s) -
Tao Ran,
Lin Justin Yifu,
Liu Mingxing,
Zhang Qi
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.29
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1574-0862
pISSN - 0169-5150
DOI - 10.1111/j.1574-0862.2004.tb00254.x
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , economics , china , context (archaeology) , enforcement , public economics , government procurement , distribution (mathematics) , rural area , income distribution , procurement , political science , geography , inequality , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics , management , archaeology , mathematical analysis , law
This paper places the problem of Chinese rural taxation in the context of government regulation and seeks to present an integrated theoretical framework of Chinese rural development in the past two decades. Our theoretical framework reconciles the seemingly contradictory facts that the average level of rural taxation relative to rural net income did not increase quickly from 1990, but rural taxation became a very serious problem in this period. Our findings suggest that this is in large part due to increases in rural income disparity from 1990 and uneven tax distribution among different income groups. We argue that differentiated enforcement of government regulations such as grain procurement and birth control play an important role in the rural taxation problem, and more generally, the problem of local government expansion and rising rural income disparity. The empirical findings support our hypotheses.