The young economists in China

In September 1984, a group of young economists held a series of meetings at Mogan Mountain, a tourist spot located in Zhejiang Province, and mapped out the direction for China's economic development. This meeting was regarded as a "groundbreaking event in the intellectual history of economic reform" as well as the "first collective voice" of young economists.

Thirty years after, another meeting was held in memory of its predecessor and aiming at discussion of China's reform and opening up today choosing the same venue as 30 years ago, which aroused widely concerning from the media. The question is what is the difference between young and middle-aged scholars of those days and of today? Some media even titled their coverage as “The youth, please go beyond us", which implied that the young economists today seem to be not as competitive as the youth of those old days.

In terms of the level of participation in the policy decision, the young economists today are absolutely not as such involving as of 30 years ago. The participants of the former Mogan Mountain Meeting were not merely young and middle-aged scholars, but also staffs working at the central government. That year, many of the scholars are friends to those staffs of central government, therefore, they were provided with more opportunities to engage in policy making.

Back to today, we can frequently encounter the illustrations in the writings of participants of the former meeting about how young scholars of those days took part in reform. The most basic reason that those scholars got such opportunity was, no doubt, because they were excellent. But what should also be noticed is that China was then in the early stage of transformation from planned economy to market economy. As for what was the pathway for future, no one had confident answers; and the leadership from war days was not of much experience also. So, everyone was then at the starting line of learning. It is because quite so that the youth were given such opportunities--they were young and equipped with more theoretical knowledge, which was just what the old generation of policy makers was lacking in.

Then why is that the youth today seldom have such opportunities? As for me, there are two possible reasons: the first is that a lot of scholars might have been engaged in such issues, but they are refrained from revealing it to the public due to confidentiality; the second lie in that since the supreme decision making level of today has already been equipped with comparatively complete consultancy institutions for decision making, thus the margin for the youth are really few. After 30 years of development, the research base in China is extremely sufficient now. It is much more difficult for the youth of today than young scholars of those old days to stand out.

But does this indicate that the young economists today are inferior to those of 30 years ago? I am not positive about this. For instance, most of the young participants of today's Mogan Mountain Meeting are doctor degree recipients, some of which are even doctors graduating from first-class universities overseas. Given that, what is impeding them in sharing ideas and suggestions as their predecessors?

I believe that the primary reason lies in the changed society. At that time, some fundamental problems such as the formation of market price and the independent operation right of enterprises are still unresolved. Naturally, when young scholars initiated discussions on such topics, they became quite influential. If we look back at the then research findings, we might think they were somewhat weak and some of them could not even be called as academic studies if strictly speaking, but just policy proposals.

In addition, although young and middle-aged scholars still try to cast their eyes on social problems, more of their attentions are put into their own professional fields. Professionalization is an inevitable product when social development enters certain stage. However, professionalization is also believed to build up walls blocking it from public affairs. Because it is certainly not a rare phenomenon that professional researchers belittle their colleagues who write for public media. In fact, those elites among researchers rarely appear on public media, because they care more about the comments and reputation gained from their peers.

So it does, the economic researchers of today are overly technical and which results in the blaming from those senior scholars or media that the youth today lack of public concern. Nevertheless, technicality is but the product of social labor division, or the result what the economic insiders of 30 years ago use to advocated for. From this view, the youth of today have already overleaped their predecessors 30 years ago.

Published in Southern Metropolis Daily  | 2014-9-26