On the morning of October 20, 2018, the Chinese Economic Circle Annual event MDASH; MDASH; the 4th Fudan Chief Economist Forum was grandly opened at Fudan University.Professor Zhang Jun, dean of the School of Economics and Director of the China Economic Research Center of Fudan University, delivered a keynote speech.
Dean of Zhang Jun Fudan University School of Economics and Director of the China Economic Research Center
The following is the full text of the speech:
Thanks.It's so late, I really can't bear to talk about it again, but I have carefully prepared these pictures and want to share with you, so please tolerate it.
I think I have gone through the past 40 years, but I did n’t have many opportunities to participate in reform in the 1980s like Mr. Watson. At that time, I was still studying quietly in Fudan at that time.Ten years ago, when we reforming for 30 years, I wrote a book, trying to record the wonderful journey of those major reforms in the 1980s and 1990s with the eyes of a third party.Now 10 years have passed. I have just made up and revised this book recently. Unfortunately, the publishing house has not been printed before this forum, but I think it should be able to hold the 40th anniversary of the 3rd Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee.Published before the days.
At this time 10 years ago, in order to commemorate the 30th anniversary of reform and opening up, I was invited to attend an academic conference on market -oriented reform held in the suburbs of Beijing.At that time, it was rumored that Mr. Wu Jinglian was a spy cloud, but Wu Lao appeared at that meeting (laughs).The meeting invited Mr. Zhang Wuchang to give a keynote speech.However, Mr. Zhang Wuchang was questioned in the face of some economists present in his speech. Of course, Mr. Zhang Wuchang was very unhappy, so he went away after the speech.
On September 12, 2008, Nanfang.com issued a whole version of the conference report, but the title was written like this. Zhang Wuchang: He has never seen such a good system in his life.I remember Mr. Zhang Wuchang said in that speech in that speech. He said that when he was 70 years old in 2005, he wrote a very important papers, that is, the famous Chinese economic system.I checked it. In the article, he said such a good system of life. Among them, it can be modified. The structure of this contract, each region is equivalent to a company in competition, and promotes the division of farmers through layers of contracting.
After Mr. Zhang Wuchang left the meeting, it was Mr. Wu Jinglian's lecture. Wu Lao did not agree with Zhang Wuchang's judgment.In fact, Wu Lao also expressed similar views on many occasions, thinking that China's economic system is very bad.In Wu Lao's view, China's economic system is very uncomfortable. Not only does the market develop well, but more importantly, most of the resources are still in the hands of the government.The lack of power in power has caused government -business transactions and corruption, and the negative impact on the economy is very great.
So why did Mr. Zhang Wuchang evaluate this economic system so high?I have suggested that the best system that Zhang Wuchang mentioned is best to change to the most wonderful system. I guess this should be Mr. Zhang Wuchang's original intention, because the place where he called the case is actually the central government and local governments at all levels.The value -added tax system, and this system is very similar to the land rent sharing contracts in agriculture studied by his Ph.D. in the 1960s.This is where he was shocked.In his opinion, the rent of taxes comes from land.
For economists, there are two questions here to answer.First, how did this controversial economic system come?Second, if this system is bad, why can our economy grow so fast?
To answer how this economic system is formed, we must review the course of China's economic reform.For most economists and politicians, the strategy of China's economic reform has undergone a great change in the first 10 years.A few days ago, I encountered some politicians who studied Chinese in Germany and talked about this problem.Everyone generally believes that 1989-1992 has been a turning point in the transformation of China's economic reform strategy in recent years.In early 1992, the Southern Tour speech delivered by Deng Xiaoping in early 1992 expressed a very aggressive market-oriented reform idea, and it was true that Vice Premier Zhu Rongji promoted structural reforms in 4-5 years after 1994.However, unlike the reform strategies around the central government in the 1980s, reform after 1994 is more like a reform of the central government's re -concentration of power.This sounds like a contradictory thing.Western political scholars often interpret this seemingly contradictory approach as the result of political compromise reached between the reform of the Chinese party and the conservatives, and reflected in the Third Plenary Session of the Fourteenth Central Committee held on November 4, 1993.Through the decision to establish a socialist market economy system.In fact, the emergence of the socialist market economy reflects Deng Xiaoping's ultra -wisdom as a politician.Deng Xiaoping's 1992 Southern Tour speech surpassed the discussion of the academic world, and settled the relationship between plans, marketing, socialism, and capitalism.This is indeed because with this speech, we can incorporate the market economy into the socialist system in the 1993 resolution, and draw an endless debate.
We do not know about the party's disputes on reform and decision-making in 1989-1992. Waiting for decryption in the future.However, political scholars and economists must realize that the political storms in 1989 and the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have undoubtedly greatly affected the choices of China's supreme leadership in reform ideas and methods.Professor Barrynaughton, the Barrynauton of Barrynaughton, a Chinese economy in the Chinese economy: transformation and growth said that due to the concerns and different opinions of conservative party reform, the reform of the reform in the 1980s was veryBe careful, and once the economy encounters malignant inflation and macro imbalances due to reform, it often has to step back to avoid conservative challenges. As a result, a more obvious political cycle phenomenon of reform has been formed.
The decision of the Third Plenary Session of the Fourteenth Central Committee of 1993 clearly stated that China's reform began to bid farewell to the 1980s stage and entered a completely different stage.At this stage, we see that the main reform solutions including the tax division system actually re -concentrated power to the central government, which greatly enhanced the authority of the central government and the ability to control the economy.At the same time, the power of the central government's appointment and deployment of local officials and the personnel control of large state -owned enterprises and bank leaders.
China's economic system is gradually taking shape from this time.Since the economic system after 1993 actually strengthened the government's authority and the pivotal role played by the government in the allocation of resources, Mr. Wu Jinglian and many economists were obviously suspicious and criticized for this economic system that formed this on the basis of this.Essence
It stands to reason that this seemingly internal contradiction system is unlikely to help economic growth.But after 1994, the Chinese economy was like Nirvana's rebirth. It quickly got rid of the extremely difficult period in the past few years and began to switch to high -speed growth for 20 years.
how to explain?This problem has troubled me for many years.In addition to strengthening central authority elsewhere to help achieve macro stability, there is only one answer to think about it, that is, this economic system is likely to have a lot to do with high -speed growth in 20 years.Because if there is a causal relationship, it challenges many common sense of economics.
What does it have to do with it?I think it is related to our GDP growth is the incentive changes facing local officials at all levels.In other words, economic growth is related to the governance system we implement.Without the unique governance model of China, it is difficult for that economic systemexcitation.However, because of the organizational personnel, the local economic growth has been included in the assessment of the performance of the higher -level government officials and influenced the promotion of official positions.Raise -based competition.
This is very clear. If we look for the reasons for explanation from the economic system, we will be confused and controversial. Once we pay attention to our governance system and incentive from organizing personnel, the reasons for growth are clearly visible.In fact, after the 1990s, the changes in China's governance system and the introduction of corporate governance models were introduced in the organizational personnel system. The incentives faced by local officials have undergone fundamental changes. This is independent in other countries.
Some economists have paid attention to the decisive impact of this governance and incentives on economic growth over the past 10 years.The most important mechanism of this impact is the competition between local officials to strive for a relatively better GDP growth rate.Competition is a kind of competition. Of course, competition has a very positive impact on economic growth and uses the role of market.The situation is a championship similar to sports competitions, so the competition will be a very excessive competition.For example, the local will magnify the economic growth goals set by the central government layer by layer, but it will also sacrifice other social welfare goals, including the environment for GDP growth, including the environment.
A few days ago, we invited the economic scholars of Shanghai Jiaotong University to make a report. They used China to study what kind of officials did the prefecture-level city database from China 2006-1995 more easily won in the competition and very interesting.According to their data observations, about a quarter of the mayor of more than two hundred prefecture -level cities in 10 years was promoted to major provincial officials.This shows that the competition is harsh.Considering the cruelty of the competition and the probability of the promotion of positions, most of the underlying officials who are in unfavorable conditions will combine economic growth with the small goals of personal or families.The spread of corruption at the bottom.
When it comes to political and business relations, Professor Pranabbardhan, a Department of Economics of the University of California, recently came to the Fudan Economic College to report. He said that statistics show that the number of Chinese mines is almost 15 times that of India.Of course, there are many reasons to explain this, but some scholars have done good empirical research and found that the existence of political and business relations can partially explain the probability of mining difficulties, because the collusion between government coal can allow the mining owner who does not meet the safety standards to avoid safety supervision.This is a side effect or price of the competition.
Our dilemma is here.Inspiration for officials is essential to increase, but incentives have side effects.It is easy to speculate that in order to eliminate side effects and weaken incentives to officials, it should have a negative impact on GDP growth.Recently, my students have made a statistical calculation and found that the growth goals of various places have been reduced year by year in recent years, but there are still a considerable high -proportion of prefecture -level cities.From the perspective of provincial -level data, in recent years, the weighted average GDP growth rate of all provinces is very close to the national growth goals. It is no longer as before 2013 and 2014.In fact, it has become the lower limit of the national economic growth rate.But now it is different. The weighted average GDP growth rate of all provinces is almost equal to the goal set by the central government's growth rate.I think this is related to the weakening of the central government's incentives to local officials.At present, the central government does not encourage local GDP championships, and the organization department has included the goals of multiple social welfare into the assessment of local officials, especially for pollution emission indicators.This is a very obvious change in our governance system and inspiration in recent years, and this change has significantly affected the growth of GDP.This in turn has proved that the main affecting our GDP growth is our governance system and incentives for officials.And our economic system has not changed.
In addition to changing the assessment goals, the Supreme Leaders have called on local government officials to establish a clear political and business relationship to reduce corruption of officials in recent years, but the anti -corruption movement has also significantly weakened the motivation of local economic growth.According to reports, local officials tend to be lazy and exacerbate the style of bureaucracy.If GDP no longer measures their relative performance, how can the central government effectively evaluate officials and implement effective incentives?This also shows that there is a causal relationship between GDP growth and officials in motivation.
After decades of successful catch -up, the Chinese economy is entering different stages. Economic decision makers are increasingly facing various risks of risks caused by various technological innovation and rapid market changes.In this case, the existing governance and incentive models also face major challenges, and it is more necessary to transform to more mechanisms to disperse risks and market errors in the market.
In this sense, in 2013, the decision to deepen the economic system reform by the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was very important. It made the economics community full of expectations. It can be seen as a correct direction that exceeded the 40 years of reform heritage.China must further reform the economic system to ensure that the market play a decisive role in resource allocation.Decide to the first reform of our governance system.These two aspects are of course very important reform directions.
To establish a market economy system that allows the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation, then the control of resources or property rights need to be confirmed and respected and effectively protected by the government.Therefore, the definition and protection of property rights becomes very important.If the various property rights of the private sector, including the right of land, the spirit of entrepreneurs, and creativity, will not be effectively defined, respected, and protected, and the market mechanism will be difficult to play a decisive role.To reform the governance model and change the current championship system, we first need a market economic system to have a decisive impact on economic growth.thank you all!
(Combined according to the recording of the speech, there are modifications and deletions, and remove the chart.)