The rise of Asia is regarded in most of the world as primarily an economic phenomenon. Asian economies have rebounded robustly since the 1997 financial crisis, with growth rates in many countries greatly exceeding the global average. Yet corruption remains a problem throughout the region, significantly cramping the extent and potential of Asia's "rise."

In the 2005 "Corruption Perceptions Index" produced by the watchdog group Transparency International, most of the 22 Asian nations received low rankings and scores. Indonesia, for example, is ranked 137th among 159 nations. India and China fare only somewhat better, ranking 88th and 78th respectively. (The United States, by comparison, ranks 17th in the world.) Corruption -- defined by the United Nations Development Program as the abuse of public power for private benefit through bribery, extortion, influence peddling, nepotism, fraud, or embezzlement -- not only undermines investment and economic growth; it also aggravates poverty. In India, even the

poor have to bribe officials to obtain basic services.

Graft also undermines the effectiveness of states. The World Bank, for example, has estimated that the Philippines government between 1977 and 1997 "lost" a total of $48 billion to corruption. Why is graft a serious problem in Asian countries? Can their leaders minimize it and thereby further improve and sustain economic growth -- or is this task hopeless? My research suggests that curbing corruption in most Asian nations is difficult, mainly because of a lack of political will. However, it is not an impossible dream, as the examples of Singapore and Hong Kong demonstrate.

In this report I provide a summary of the work that I have been doing on China’s vegetable economy over the past year. This work, in part, was supported financially by the Western Growers Association (WGA). The funds provided by the WGA were mostly used to support a survey of vegetable producers and wholesale procurement traders in rural China. It also went to support the procurement of a data set that could aid in the analysis of the productivity of China’s vegetable producers. The work that I summarize here, however, is from far more different sources. I greatly appreciate the support of WGA and look forward to continuing to interact with the management and members in the coming years.

To make the material more accessible, I plan on organizing this report by asking a question and then summarizing the answer. In this way I can cover a lot of ground without getting lost in the details. I am more than willing to try on any given aspect of the final report to expand on the issues.

The project studies the impact of China's current economic transition on its agricultural economy with special reference to the consequences of trade liberalization and of changing trade flows. The project will track impacts on social conditions and on the environment in China's rural areas as well as on markets in the rest of the world, with particular emphasis on the EU. For this, the research considers (a) the dynamic, rapid pace of the transition; (b) the size and geographical diversity of the country; and (c) the effect of the changes on the rest of the world. The research opts for a quantitative approach, supplemented by qualitative investigations, and focuses on three themes: trade, social conditions, and environment. On trade, the research aims to account for the size of China's trade and take a closer look at trade between the EU and China with scenario simulations over the period 2000-2030, by establishing a linkage between (a) the Chinagromodel, a spatially explicit equilibrium model that comprehensively depicts China's farm sector in 2433 counties, while connecting these through trade and transportation flows; (b) the GTAPmodel of world trade; (c) FEA-27, a model of EU-agriculture for 27 members states. The research on social conditions proceeds by linking geo-referenced household surveys to a population census of China and a detailed geographical data set, relying on a suitable adaptation of poverty mapping methodology, so as to trace impacts at household level. Finally, we use agro-ecological assessment tools to quantify the environmental pressures resulting from intensified livestock industry as well as from intensified horticulture production. Findings on the three themes are subsequently integrated to arrive at policy suggestions that account for efficiency, equity and sustainability considerations. Throughout the project, a policy dialogue and dissemination program, conducted in both China and the EU, maintains communication with policy makers.

The supermarket revolution has arrived in China and is spreading as fast as or faster than anywhere in the world. As the demand for vegetables, fruit, nuts and other high valued products have risen, urban retailers are finding new venues from which they can sell to the increasing prosperous city residents. However, the experience of many developing countries suggests that there could be serious distributional impacts of the rising of supermarkets. There is concern among policy makers and academics that poor, small farmers might be excluded from market. The main goal of our paper is to understand what types of farmers have been able to participate in the horticultural revolution, how they interact with markets and how supply chains affect their production decisions. Using a unique set of spatially sampled communities in the Greater Beijing area, in contrast to fears of some researchers, we find small and poor farmers have actively participate in the emergence of China's horticulture economy. Moreover, there has been almost no penetration of modern wholesalers or retailers into rural communities. In the paper we document seven characteristics of China's food economy that we believe account for this set of findings.

In this paper we set out to accomplish three objectives. First, we wanted to track and describe the way the fiscal reforms have been implemented in China's townships. Second, we have tried to identify the effect that the fiscal reforms have had on the fiscal health of the township. This objective was pursued in three contexts: the effect on the average township; the effect on townships in different provinces; and the effect on townships in poor and rich townships. Finally, we sought to assess the impact that the fiscal reforms had on village fiscal health and farmer satisfaction.

Although farmers certainly have expressed their support for tax and fee reduction through a variety of media, our results show that the fiscal reforms are far more complicated and complex than tax reduction policies. They include a large set of policies that have sought to reassign expenditures, realign responsibilities (for control over resources that flow from county to town and town to county), reduce the importance of extrabudgetary and self raised funds, and increase investment into the public goods infrastructure in rural areas. When assessing the broad impact of these policies on township fiscal health, we find the average township has not fared well. Although county to town transfers have risen, the targeted transfers to offset the decline due to the tax and fee reduction policies do not nearly cover the losses of fiscal resources in the system as a whole. In addition, many policies are putting increasing control in the hands of the county financial office. through changes such as increasing requirement to hand up town to county transfers and expenditure reassignments (even though the fiscal resources come out of the township's budget). Hence, overall the fiscal condition of township's operating budget has clearly deteriorated between 2000 and 2004.

The bright side of the fiscal reforms has come in the area of capital budget management and flows of fiscal resources into new infrastructure investment. Between 2000 and 2004 there has been a veritable explosion of investment into the rural economy, mostly in roads, but also into irrigation, drinking water and to a lesser degree into clinics. The investments have risen largely due to the rising allocation by upper level governments. While we show that the rising investment from any source increases farmer satisfaction, there are some concerns with the new effort to improve rural infrastructure. First, in many places (and especially in Jiangsu and other richer townships) as investments from above have risen requirements for matching funds apparently have led to an increase in township debt. Second, the increasing reliance investment from above also has a drawback. While any investment from any source is shown to increase the satisfaction of farmers, ceteris paribus, when the investments come from above, they appear to reduce farmer satisfaction. Apparently, when villages are less involved with the project selection, design and implementation, the projects leave farmers less satisfied.