Financial Sector Reform in China, by Yasheng Huang, Tony Saich, and Edward Steinfeld, editors. Published by The Harvard University Asia Center, 2005. Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Preface and Acknowledgments: The chapters in this book first saw the light of day as papers for the conference Financial Sector Reform in China, held at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, from September 11 to 13, 2001. They have been through a number of itera-tions since and we are grateful to the comments of the participants at the conference and for readers on behalf of the press who have helped us improve their quality.

The conference was the first in a series of Asia Public Policy workshops organ-ized by the Asia Programs at the Center for Business and Government either solely or in collaboration with others. The second workshop looked at financial reform in Asia more broadly, drawing lessons from the process of recovery after the Asian Financial Crisis. The third of the workshops shifted away from looking at financial sector issues to social developments and more specifically at the question of HIV/AIDs in China. This edited volume is also the first publication of the Asia Public Policy series under the auspices of Harvard University’s Asia Center. We hope that it will be the first of many looking at public policy challenges in the Asia region.

Asia Programs at the Center for Business and Government encompasses several programs, projects, and executive education initiatives focusing on China, Taiwan, Viet-nam, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan. The mission is to support the training of officials in the region in an effort to enhance their capacity to manage policy in rapidly changing domestic and international public environments; engage in capacity building in region to further the teaching and analysis of public administration and public policy issues; and promote superior research and policy dialogues on current developments in region and those issues central to relations with the United States. In terms of training, we have run a number of specific executive programs for officials from the region at the Kennedy School, including those for Chinese local government officials and senior officers from the People’s Liberation Army. In terms of capacity building, the program oversees the Fulbright Economics Training Program in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and works closely with the School of Public Policy at Tsinghua University, China, to help it develop its new degree program in public administration.

For the support of the original conference and the publication of this book, we would like to thank State Street, especially Bob Williams; Dow Jones & Co., Inc.; the Folger Fund and Lee Folger; and the Harvard University Asia Center. Without their fi-nancial support, we would not have been able to put such an interesting conference to-gether. We would also like to thank both the former director of the Center for Business and Government, Ira Jackson, for his enthusiastic support for all our programs, and Dow Davis, the executive director. For the conference, the support of Edward Cunningham and Sarah Cao was indispensable.

This edited volume would not have seen the light of day without the help of Melanie Strauss, who has been a tower of strength in organizing us down the final stretch. Finally, we would like to thank William Kirby, now dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who, while Asia Center director, was very encouraging about setting up a new publication series.

Tony Saich

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Introduction: Most scholars on China would accept, as a general proposition, that sustained Chinese growth depends critically on reform and development of China’s financial sector.1 How-ever, even if one accepts this general proposition, many issues remain unsettled in our knowledge and understanding of China’s financial sector. One set concerns basic empiri-cal detail. Despite the comprehensive and pioneering work of Nicholas Lardy (1998), ba-sic issues remain highly uncertain and debatable, such as the current stock and flow of non-performing loans (NPL) in China’s banking system, or the impact of the stock mar-ket on state-owned enterprise (SOE) behavior....

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The Harvard University Asia Center was officially established on July 1, 1997, to reflect Harvard's deep commitment to Asia and the growing connections between Asian nations. The center is an active organization with varied programs focusing on international relations in Asia and comparative studies of Asian countries and regions.

Harvard's study of Asia is spread across the University's departments and schools, and a wide array of disciplines come together under the auspices of the Asia Center. Through such a convergence, the Center brings a layered, multi-faceted approach to the scholarly description of events to probe questions of history and culture, of economics, politics, diplomacy, and security, and the relationships among them.

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