In a recent Critical Issues Confronting China talk, Yasheng Huang, Professor of Global Economics and Management at MIT Sloan School of Management, and discussant Yuhua Wang, Professor of Government at Harvard University, explore the roots of China’s present-day return to heightened political controls.
Professor Huang, author of The Rise and Fall of the EAST, How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to its Decline, argues that the crackdown on the democracy movement of 1989 sowed the seeds that eventually led to today’s rise in autocracy and the ultimate reversal of economic reforms. “Tiananmen was the turning point,” he says, while noting that, in the early 1980s, divisions among state agencies and Politburo members formed a check-and-balance mechanism of sorts. Following the crackdown, the drive toward capitalist-style reforms paired with a ban on political reform led to unprecedented growth—but also rampant corruption and crony capitalism. Inevitably, Huang argues, Communist Party leaders, fearing the collapse of the Party itself, turned to recentralization and a reinstatement of strong political control. The end result: Reframing economist Adam Posen’s argument that China has “Economic Long Covid,” Huang asserts that China has “Political Long Covid,” under which confidence wanes in three critical components of the economy: business, government, and households.
Watch the full talk via the Vimeo embedded video below or on YouTube.
The Rise and Fall of the EAST, How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and Why They Might Lead to its Decline
Yale University Press:
August 29, 2023
The long history of China’s relationship between stability, diversity, and prosperity, and how its current leadership threatens this delicate balance
“The rigours of imperial China’s civil-service examination system . . . are described in a new book by Yasheng Huang. . . . Arguing that the exams stifled innovation in ancient times, Professor Huang sees lessons for Xi Jinping’s China.”
— The Economist