For Immediate Release
Contact: Anthony Flint 617-503-2116
BEIJING (May 14, 2013) – Local public finance in rapidly growing cities in China will be examined in a symposium jointly organized by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy, and the Research Institute for Fiscal Sciences at the Ministry of Finance on May 20 in Beijing.
The event will mark the translation into Chinese of the book, Financing Metropolitan Governments in Developing Countries, a chronicle of needed reforms in the governance of metropolitan regions that are the engines of economic growth and booming centers of rapidly increasing populations.
Joyce Man, director of the Lincoln Institute’s China program and director of the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy will open the program along with Gregory K. Ingram, president of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
Deborah Wetzel, country director for Brazil at the World Bank and Roy Bahl, founding dean of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, co-editors of Financing Metropolitan Governments in Developing Countries (along with Johannes Linn of the Brookings Institution), will survey the international experiences in municipal public finance. Christine Wong, professor and director of Contemporary Chinese Studies, Oxford University, Liu Zhi, Lead Infrastructure Specialist, the World Bank, and Tao Ran, professor at the School of Economics, Remnin University, will lead a discussion about paying for urbanization in China.
Roundtable discussions will consider what international experiences in local public finance may be applicable to China, the role of land-related taxes in financing urban development in China, and the decentralization of governance in metropolitan areas. Jia Kang, director of China’s Ministry of Finance, will conclude the event.
The Center for Urban Development and Land Policy is celebrating its fifth year. The center seeks to develop institutional capacity in China to address the many challenges of rapid growth, with the goal of strengthening expertise in land policy and planning for urban development, through research, fellowships, and training.
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is a leading resource for key issues concerning the use, regulation, and taxation of land. Providing high-quality education and research, the Lincoln Institute strives to improve public dialogue and decisions about land policy.
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