ECONOMICS OF DEVELOPMENT
Enter the Dragon
Yu Yongding and Yao Yang
Is China ready to become a consumer society? How will Chinese sovereign investment and the rise of Chinese multinational companies affect the world economy? Can China tackle pollution and yet maintain growth? Will the effects of China’s one-child policy come to haunt tomorrow’s leaders?
If China’s recent history is any guide, another period of momentous change may be on the horizon. Every decade or so since Mao’s communists came to power in 1949 has seen a convulsive shift of gears – the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, the anti-government demonstrations of 1989 and their aftermath, and the emergence of China as a global economic power.
Today, if China changes, the whole world feels the impact. And who better to identify incipient changes and emerging trends in China’s surging economy than two men intimately connected with the country’s highest-level internal debates: Yao Yang and Yu Yongding.
Yao Yang is Director of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University. Yu Yongding is a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China and current President of the China Society of World Economics.
Every month in Enter the Dragon, written exclusively for Project Syndicate, Yao Yang or Yu Yongding examines the forces and trends that are shaping China’s economy – spelling out what they mean for the rest of the world.
