China has entered into a period of unprecedented economic uncertainty and rising geopolitical tensions.

This is a presentation of the trajectory of the Chinese reforms and economic performance since the early days of reforms and examines the current economic challenges in the context of China’s economic growth model. It argues that China needs to drastically revamp its growth model to get back to a sustainable and equitable growth path.

About the speaker:
Yasheng Huang is a professor and holds the Epoch Foundation professorship of global economics and management at MIT Sloan School of Management. From 2013 to 2017, he served as an associate dean in charge of MIT Sloan’s global partnership programs and its action learning initiatives. His previous appointments include faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School.

Professor Huang is the author of seven books in English and another six books in Chinese and of many academic papers (such as on regulatory transparency, historical autocracy, statistical falsifications, tax, financing, sectoral and regulatory biases, history of reforms and strategy, political economy of controls, etc.) His book, The Rise and Fall of the EAST: How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to its Decline, published by Yale University Press in 2023, was selected as a Best Book of the Year in 2023 by Foreign Affairs magazine and is available in Japanese, traditional Chinese, Korean, Polish, and Bulgarian editions. His 2008 book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, was selected as a Best Book of the Year in 2008 by the Economist magazine.

He is collaborating with other scholars on a book project, Reframing the Needham Question, based on a comprehensive database on Chinese historical inventions (forthcoming from Princeton University Press). His book, Statism with Chinese Characteristics, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, examines economic reforms and economic performance of China since 1978. Professor Huang is a co-Principal Investigator in a large-scale multi-disciplinary research project on food safety in China.

Outside of his academic research, Professor Huang has written for New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs, and Project Syndicate, Caixin and Caijing. He is working on several policy projects related to US-China relations. He was one of the coauthors of MIT’s report, “University Engagement with China: An MIT Approach” and he is a co-chair of an implementation committee of that report. He is a member of a taskforce at Asia Society on US-China policy and a member of Brookings-CSIS Advisory Council on Advancing US-China collaboration. During 2023-4, he was a visiting fellow at the Kissinger Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC.

Professor Huang founded China Lab, ASEAN Lab and India Lab, which have provided low-cost consulting services to hundreds of small and medium enterprises in these countries. He has served as a consultant at World Bank, Asian Development Bank and OECD, and serves on advisory and corporate boards of non-profit and for-profit organizations. He is a founding member and is serving as the president of Asian American Scholar Forum, an NGO dedicated to open science, protection of rights and well-being of Asian American scholars.

Chair: Professor Steve Tsang, Director, SOAS China Institute
Event Date: 16 December 2024

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