China a pragmatic doer fueling the economy: Nobel Prize laureate

Nobel Prize-winning laureate Michael Spence, an economic heavyweight at New York University, recognized the Chinese government as a pragmatic doer for its ability to engineer a miraculous transformation and navigate the economic situation. 

“One of the great strengths of Chinese government has been the ability to react quickly and pragmatically in identifying domestic demand and carrying out economic progress,” Professor Spence said in an exclusive interview with People’s Daily Online on the sidelines of the China Development Forum in Beijing on March 23, 2019.

Though there is never a simple formula that directs specific roadmaps for economic development, Spence stressed “this is where capacity of China shows its empowerment.”

“It’s a function of a fact that public sectors have traditionally attracted very talented people, and they are encouraged to keep the vigor to each other. There’s somebody that makes decisions, and other get on with it. In some ways, it can be best function as the behavior at the corporate level.”

China is now aiming for a high quality development , with an agenda for higher level all-round opening up.

As Spence elaborated: “In the early stage of the 40-year process, China’s focus was essentially on itself. And with the emerging initiative that eyes to cooperate with many other global players, the Belt and Road Initiative for example, the attended focus on development is what innovates changes and the opening-up.”

China has been an immense growth engine, and market-based economic development is happening in an idiosyncratic Chinese manner.

“Chinese economy is going well as it innovates structural changes in the configuration of economy,” Spence stressed.

Spence also praised China’s contribution in sharing valuable experiences for the global economy. “China as world’s second-largest economy, as its capacity to invest can be enormous,” he said.

“The position of China to which is really helpful, not only with the financing of it, but of the expertise of how to invest,” Professor Spence continued.

As automation becomes more commonplace, Spence elaborated, the ecosystem built around the digital-oriented moves in China are fairly substantial such as e-commerce platform, mobile payment and FinTech. “Here’s also what China needs to exploit in the future,”he concluded.