Qian Yingyi's talk

[mavaro...@gmail.com]

Summary of Qian’s talk

Two parts, First part is about how to interpret Chinese economy’s
“spectacular growth” and “extremely flawed” execution. Second part is
about how to distinguish “universal principle” and “Chinese
characteristic”.

First part, for “spectacular growth”, Qian used data to show it’s not
that abnormal. Compared to 1,000 years world data, to other east Asian
countries with appropriate chosen durations, he showed in certain
angle, Chinese economy is still lagged and catching up.

For accuse of “extremely flawed” system, Qian used some naïve
statistical way to demonstrate. First, he showed Chinese system is
indeed flawed in terms of some regulation, corruption indexes.
However, when those data are aligned with PPP, it can be seen China’s
not-so-good rankings actually fit into its current stage.

Second part, Qian wanted to discuss which perspective China’s high
growth should be attributed to, some universal principles or Chinese
characteristics. His view is something in the middle. Three principles
are considered by him to be fundamental: incentive, market and
opening. Speaking of Chinese characteristic, he used SOEs as example.
Since he is independent director of ICBC and Netcom, he listed some
his own experiences. There are three types of work he was involved:
audit, pay levels and nomination. In this exact order, he labeled the
three functionalities’ reform progress as, aligned with world leading
benchmark, half-way and no change at all. In short, he didn’t answer
the question directly, only provided some materials to stimulate
people’s thoughts on this issue.

Comments about his talk will follow up.