China’s Forty Years of Reform and Development: 1978-2018

On the 40th anniversary of China’s ‘reform and opening’, a group of leading economists working on China in China, the US and Australia come together to review the main components and features of reform and assess their progress and achievements. The metrics applied range from gross domestic product to standards of living, income distribution, institutional change and technological advancement, and the sustainability and desirability of the Chinese path.

Part I: Forty Years of Reform and Development

Ross Garnaut AC, University of Melbourne

Professor Garnaut is a Professorial Research Fellow in Economics at the University of Melbourne. He is a leading economist specialising in policy and international relations in Australia and the Asia-Pacific. His recent books include The Great Crash of 2008 (with David Llewellyn-Smith, 2009) and Dog Days: Australia After the Boom (2013).

Dwight Perkins, Harvard University

Dwight H. Perkins is the Harold Hitchings Burbank Research Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus at Harvard University, USA, where he also received his PhD in economics. He has published widely on economic history and development in East and Southeast Asia. He has served as an advisor to various governments in Asia and been a long-term consultant to the World Bank, Ford Foundation, and various U.S. government agencies.

Fan Gang, National Economic Research Institute (China)

Fan Gang is one of China's most renowned economists and a leading expert in China's fiscal policy especially regarding financial systems reform, international trade and currency, and China's regional integration within Asia. Besides serving as Director of the National Economic Research Institute, he is a university professor (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Peking University HSBC Business School), and a member to the Monetary Policy Committee of the People's Bank of China.

Yao Yang, Peking University

Yang Yao is Director and Professor at the China Centre for Economic Research (CCER) and the Dean of the National School of Development (NSD), Peking University. He is an Asia Scholar at the University of Melbourne. He has published widely on institutional economics and economic development in China, and has won numerous awards for his work.

Part II: Reform in Key Sectors

Nick Lardy, Peterson Institute 

Nicholas Lardy is the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is an expert on the Chinese economy, and has served in professorial and directorship roles at the Brookings Institution, University of Washington, and Yale University School of Management. His forthcoming book, The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China? will be published in early 2019, and his most recent book is Markets over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China (2014).

Christine Wong, University of Melbourne

Christine Wong is Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne, and a leading authority on China's public finance. Her work has been widely cited, including several major World Bank studies for which she was principal author. She has taught at the University of Oxford, University of Washington, University of California (Santa Cruz and Berkeley), Mount Holyoke College, and also held senior staff positions in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and is a member of the OECD Advisory Panel on Budgeting and Public Expenditures.

Yiping Huang, Peking University

Yiping Huang is Professor of Economics at the China Center for Economic Research, Peking University. He is an expert on macroeconomic policy and rural development in Chinese and Asian Economies. He was previously Managing Director and Chief Asia Economist for Citigroup in Hong Kong, and has held several senior positions at Columbia University, Australian National University, and at the Research Center for Rural Development of the State Council in Beijing.