FCC club lunch with Yasheng HUANG

Speaker: Yasheng HUANG
Professor, Political Economy and International Management
Sloan School of Management, MIT

Topic: Rethinking reforms: Chinese economy facing global challenge

Professor HUANG will explain the roots of China’s economic success and the reasons why it is facing substantial challenges today. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the main argument of the talk — based on the book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, is that economic liberalism contributed to China’s initial economic success but the policy reversals in the 1990s led to a combination of fast GDP growth but low household income growth. China’s current vulnerabilities to external slowdown are a direct result of these policy choices in the 1990s.

Professor Yasheng HUANG teaches political economy and international management at Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His most recent book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, is a detailed narrative account of history of economic reforms in China. The book predicted and discusses in detail the current economic challenges facing China, and was selected by the Economist magazine as one of the best books published in 2008. In collaborations with other scholars, Professor HUANG is conducting a major research project on production of scientific knowledge in China and India. Professor HUANG founded and runs China Lab and India Lab, which aim to help entrepreneurs in China and India improve their management. He has held or received prestigious fellowships such as National Fellowship at Stanford University and Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Fellowship. He is a member of MIT Entrepreneurship Center, a fellow at Center for Chinese Economic Research and Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University, a fellow at William Davidson Institute at Michigan Business School, a World Economic Forum Fellow, and a non-resident fellow for the OECD’s global development outlook project.