Development of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in China

There is no hard and fast definition of public private partnerships. One way that PPPs may be defined is as the partnerships between the public sector and the private sector for the purposes of designing, planning, financing, constructing and/or operating projects which would have been regarded traditionally as being within the remit of the public sector. PPPs take many forms. Examples include private finance initiatives, design-construct-maintain, build-own-operate, build-own-operate-transfer, buy-build-operate, sale-leaseback, etc. The spectrum of possible PPPs extends from businesses almost entirely controlled by the private sector at one end, to those almost entirely controlled by the public sector at the other. PPPs have been increasingly used in many countries as an alternative approach for the procurement of public facilities and services. While PPPs are relatively new in China, there is a great potential for their application due to the strong demand for public facilities and services. This paper is to examine the development of PPPs in China.