China academics accelerate efforts to promote Beijing’s government-led economic model

Academics have launched the Journal of Government and Economics, an English-language publication that seeks to explore the proper roles of government and free markets in economic development

Beijing’s confidence in its economic decision-making has grown, given its ability to withstand the impacts of the US trade war and coronavirus shock

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David Daokui Li, who received his PhD from Harvard and was a member of staff at the University of Michigan in the 1990s, now serves as co-editor of the international journal with Eric S. Maskin, a Harvard professor and Nobel Prize laureate. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 12:15am, 6 Jun 2021Updated: 12:15am, 6 Jun 2021

China’s leading academic institutions are accelerating efforts to promote the study of the role of government in economic development, given that the nation’s own government-led rise in the last 40 years has been hailed internally as a miracle but interpreted by many Western countries as state capitalism.

The moves come as Beijing’s confidence in its economic decision-making has grown, given the Chinese economy’s ability to withstand the impacts of the trade war with the United States and coronavirus shock and stage a strong economic rebound ahead of other major economies.

Late last month, leading academics launched the “Journal of Government and Economics”, an English-language publication that seeks to explore the proper roles of government and free markets in economic development.

“China’s development in the past 70 years has conveyed a basic lesson: we must handle government-market relations well,” said David Daokui Li, who founded the Academic Centre for Chinese Economic Practise and Thinking and the Society for the Analysis of Government and Economics at Tsinghua University.

This new discipline is set to broaden the vision of international economic research, let the rest of the world better understand China and accordingly accept some of China‘s effective methods

David Daokui Li

Li, who received his PhD from Harvard and was a member of staff at the University of Michigan in the 1990s, now serves as co-editor of the international journal with Eric S. Maskin, a Harvard professor and Nobel Prize laureate.