On the morning of November 8, 2015, session four of the “International Cooperation and Development in the New Normal: The One Belt One Road Initiative” of the Beijing Forum was held at the Sunlight Hall, Yingjie Exchange Center of Peking University (PKU). Xiao Geng, Professor from the University of Hong Kong, Xu Lixin, Officer from World Bank, Daniel Trefler, Professor from University of Toronto, Harry Clarke, Professor from University of Melbourne delivered their remarks, and Li Lianfa and Song Min, Professors from PKU provided commentary.
Based on the research of Foshan’s economic growth and social development accumulated in past years, Mr. Xiao Geng focused his talk on the Foshan story as a model for China’s evolving growth. He showed China’s model of governance, for which an improvement of policies and the balance of central and regional administration should be further promoted to achieve the institutional innovation. With China’s ever increasing competitiveness, resulting from a series of reforms which brought about huge benefits for both the state and markets, the highly-efficient development pattern of Foshan could be considered as an advanced and significant sample for further development.
However, challenges and problems still exist, according to the speakers. As an industrial city, Foshan’s secondary industry increases under the decline of China’s total development of secondary industry. Although currently, investments are efficient and credits are optimistic, more efforts are still needed in terms of pollution reducing, industry restructuring and innovation.
In the comment section, Mr. Song Min emphasized the role of the roads system for promoting urban construction, which was illustrated by the saying “prosperity starts from building roads”. He also pointed out that the key to high-efficient growth was competition as well as the establishment of rules of market, which also required the achievement of private sectors and its collaboration with local governments.
Then Mr. Xu Lixin presented his opinions about “Hayek, Local Information and the Decentralization of State-owned Enterprises in China”. Mr. Xu and his partners investigated hundreds of State-owned Enterprises(SOEs), which provided solid evidence to support Hayek’s opinion— with higher communication costs and growing uncertainty of companies’ future performance, it’s more likely for the government to decentralize the SOEs. Therefore, the ultimate decisions must be left to the people, which is the awareness of “we must solve it by some form of decentralization”. “The utilization of local knowledge and information is definitely a key for understanding efficiency of firms in particular”, said Mr. Xu. In addition, as for the limitation of decentralization, further work need to be done.
Following Mr. Xu, Mr. Daniel Trefler gave his speech on the topic of “Successful Transition From Low-wage to Innovation”, which has aroused the great interest of Chinese scholars. Firstly, by showing a picture of a window, Mr. Trefler addressed that low-wage and innovative could be likened to two windows for economy growth, yet it was impossible to open both. Although researches had shown that China’s speed of “opening windows” was faster than any other developing countries, the transition from evaluation based on mere total amount to quality and capability upgrading might be still frustrating. Then he gave specific suggestions on China’s economy transition around the construction of rule of laws and confrontation against corruption.
As for the One Belt One Road Initiatives, Mr. Trefler also emphasized the effective governance in the Middle Asia, and showed the example of Canada Style in the area of anti-corruption. Only to build an transparent framework and enhance international collaboration could the waste be reduced. He firmly stressed that whether the ambitions of China could be achieved was determined by the ability and determination to fight corruption.
In the comment section, Mr. Song Min pointed that the Going Out strategy nowadays meant fitting in different rules previously established and winning respect from all over the world. Meanwhile, multilateral collaboration should engage more participants with different cultures and background. As for anti-corruption, freedom of the press and proper transition of institution are of great importance.
The last speaker was Professor Harry Clarke, who focused on the climate change issue. He presented several solutions for this problem, including the anticipation for possibilities of policy failure and the establishment of basic evaluation rules.
At the end of the discussion, the floor was opened and questions were welcomed.
Written By: Wei Yuchen
Edited By: Liu Xiya
