New Era and China’s Economics Research

Nov 29-2023   

On November 27, Prof. Yao Yang gave a lecture titled New Era and China’s Economics Research as part of the NSD Academic Afternoon Tea Lecture Series, which was initiated in the autumn of 2022 to facilitate cross-disciplinary exchange and academic collaboration among NSD faculty and students. Prof. Yao, Dean of the NSD and its BiMBA Business School, set off from historical perspectives to systematically comb through the socio-economic logic in the new era and lay forth future researcher directions for China’s economics scholars.

Prof. Yao explained that the topic stems from his thoughts on issues related to China’s modernization drive as well as the calling of the new era for economics scholars to construct proprietary knowledge systems. China’s modernization process requires new theories, he said. How to contemplate logical frameworks for China’s modernization and how to explain the multitude of new phenomena and problems in the new era are important directions for China’s future economics research, he pointed out.

After summarizing the century-long modernization journey that China has traversed, Prof. Yao said that China has entered a new era whose goals, as far as the internal environment is concerned, are to tackle the issues and conflicts that have arisen during the reform and opening-up period. Externally, the world has entered a new round of contraction and European countries and the US have been rebuilding their industries, re-thinking immigration policies, and experiencing religious rejuvenation.

Amid the fusion and transformation of Chinese and Western thoughts, Prof. Yao proposed two goals for new-era thought systems. One is to combine the basic principles of Marxism with China’s practices, and integrate the basic principles of Marxism with China’s excellent traditional culture, so as to achieve the theoretical transition of the party. Another goal (a concept first formulated by Chinese scholar Gan Yang) is to realize the fusion of Marxism, China’s traditional culture, and Western liberalism, in order to spur and complete China’s modernization.

In the new era, Prof. Yao believed that Chinese economics scholars should establish their own agenda as great economics theories are responses to the socio-economic phenomena of their respective times. He also encouraged researchers to think from the vantage point of China’s modernization and discover major issues the benefit China and economics. That include revealing the logic behind the inception of China’s modernization journey and the logic behind its economic success, solving major issues that pester China’s economic operation such as wealth gap, and uncovering fresh topics from new phenomena like digital economy and new energy industry. He then used his own research areas to share thoughts on new research directions for political economics.