CANCELLED: The Return of China to the World Stage: The Difficult Road it Faces

Guest lecture by Wing Thye Woo, University of California, Davis

Tirsdag, 27 april, 2010 - 14:30 to 16:00

We are sorry to inform that due to the vulcanic activities in Iceland, Professor Wing's trip to Europe has been cancelled. He hope to be able to invite him at a later time this year.

Asia Research Centre & Department of Economics

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Professor Wing Thye Woo,

Department of Economics, University of California, Davis

on

The Return of China to the World Stage: The Difficult Road it Faces

The 6th Plenum of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China concluded on October 11, 2006, with the commitment to establish a harmonious society by 2020. The obvious implication from this commitment is that the present major social, economic and political trends are not leading to a harmonious society or, at least, not leading to a harmonious society fast enough.

Analytically, if the Chinese economy is depicted as a speeding car, there are three classes of failures:

  • a hardware failure from the breakdown of an economic mechanism, a development that is analogous to the collapse of the chassis of the car (e.g. the vulnerability to fiscal crisis from recapitalization of the state banks);

  • a software failure from a flaw in governance that creates frequent widespread social disorders that disrupt production economy-wide and discourage private investment, a situation similar to a car crash that resulted from a fight among the people inside the speeding car (e.g. social disorders caused by outmoded governance) and;

  • a power supply failure from hitting either a natural limit or an externally-imposed limit, a situation that is akin to the car running out of gas or having its engine switched off because an outsider reached in and pulled out the ignition key (e.g. trade disputes from China's chronic trade imbalances and the physical constraints posed by China's rapidly deteriorating natural environment).

Wing Thye Woo is Professor in the Department of Economics, University of California at Davis, the Director of the East Asia Program within The Earth Institute at Columbia University, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has published over 130 articles in professional economic journals and books on topics like exchange rate economics, current account determination, technological innovation and competitiveness, state enterprise restructuring, financial crises, economic management in Indonesia and Malaysia, competing interpretations of China's growth mechanisms, and comparative economics. His article "The Monetary Approach to Exchange Rate Determination under Rational Expectations: The Dollar-Deutschemark Case," Journal of International Economics (JIE) , February 1985, was identified by JIE in 2000 to be one of the twenty-five most cited articles in its 30 years of history.

Wing Thye Woo has advised a number of governments on economic policy. During 1997-1998, Wing Thye Woo served as a special advisor to the U.S. Treasury; duties included accompanying Secretary Robert Rubin to meetings in China, and to the IMF-World Bank annual meeting in Hong Kong. In July 2005, he was appointed to the International Advisory Panel to the Prime Minister of Malaysia; and in April 2009, he was appointed Chairman of the International Economic Advisory Panel of Penang state, Malaysia.

In 2004, the University of California at Davis awarded Wing Thye Woo its Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award, and the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia appointed him a Distinguished ISIS Fellow. In November 2004, he delivered the Chang Chi Ming Cambridge Public Lecture on Chinese Economy at the University of Cambridge. In March 2006, he was appointed a Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) Scholar (by the Ministry of Education of China based on nation-wide competition among universities) at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, China. In July 2009, the Governor of Penang conferred on him the chivalry order of Darjah Setia Pangkuan Negeri (DSPN), which bestows on him the title Dato, for his academic achievements, professional leadership, and public service contributions.

Participation is free of charge and everybody is welcome.

Arranged by the Department of Economics and the Asia Research Centre, CBS.

Sidst opdateret: Communications // 11/10/2012