Stress-testing China’s Financial Resilience: The Omicron Wave and Depleted Local Fiscal Resources

Professor Victor C. Shih (Associate Professor & the holder of the Ho Miu Lam Chair in China and Pacific Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego)

Topic

China’s “zero Covid” policy has been among the most successful containment efforts in the world since 2020. However, in the face of the Omicron wave, cracks are emerging across dozens of cities. In addition to the emerging human tragedy related to the Covid infection and the lockdown, the spread of the variant also means intense fiscal stress at the local level, born of revenue collapse and expenditure spikes simultaneously. Given the high indebtedness already facing most local governments, how will additional fiscal stress affect local governance, as well as local and central fiscal balances?

Biography

Victor C. Shih is an Associate Professor and holds the Ho Miu Lam Chair in China and Pacific Relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. He has published very widely in highly rated journals. He is the author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation (Cambridge University Press), and the editor of Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability: Duration, Institutions and Financial Conditions (University of Michigan Press). His new book, Coalitions of the Weak: Elite Politics in China from Mao’s Stratagem to the Rise of Xi , by Cambridge University Press, will be released soon. He is currently working on several papers using quantitative data to analyze the Chinese political elite and China’s defense industry. He also served as a principal in The Carlyle Group’s global market strategy group and continues to advise the financial community on China related issues.

Organiser: SOAS China Institute

Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk