Economic Policies for a Harmonious Society: A Symposium: Editorial Introduction

• Author: John Knight,Xiaolan Fu
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-124X.2014.12058.x
• Date: 01 March 2014
• Published date: 01 March 2014

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China & World Economy / 1–4, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2014

©2014 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Economic Policies for a Harmonious Society:

A Symposium

Editorial Introduction

John Knight, Xiaolan Fu*

China’s remarkable economic growth has produced dramatic structural and socioeconomic change.

Economic growth has solved many problems but the accompanying changes in the economy and

society have brought new problems to the fore. This has been recognized by China’s Government

in the recent emphasis that it has placed on the need to create a “harmonious society.” The new

leadership will wish to devise new policies for the current challenges and those ahead.

In June 2013 a China Policy Forum was held in Oxford to discuss some of these challenges

and their implications for future policy.1 Among the various topics that might have been

chosen, four were selected and relevant experts were invited to make presentations in order

to start the discussions. The topics chosen for this, the first Forum, were: policy against

social instability; policy against rural poverty; technology policy; and policy for the aging

population. After the very successful Policy Forum the four experts were invited to revise

their presentations in light of the discussions, and to prepare them as papers for journal

publication. Three have responded. We, the Guest Editors, are grateful to the Editors of

China & World Economy for providing an excellent outlet for these (peer-reviewed) papers.

The papers differ somewhat from most journal articles in economics in that the

contributors were asked to divide their space roughly equally between an economic analysis

of the main issues and the policy implications of that analysis. However, the contributors

were not expected to come up with a cut-and-dried list of policies to be implemented.

Rather, they were invited to present a reasoned set of policy options, based on their

economic analysis, for government consideration. In this Introduction we highlight the

main points of each paper, concentrating on the policy implications.

Social instability is a surprisingly uncommon research topic for an economist, because

concern about social instability can lurk behind much policy-making. China’s leadership

views social instability as a threat both to the political order and to the continued rapid

*John Knight, Emeritus Professor, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Email:

john.knight@economics.ox.ac.uk; Xiaolan Fu, Professor and Director, Technology and Management for

Development Centre, Oxford University, Oxford, UK. Email: xiaolan.fu@qeh.ox.ac.uk.

1Held at St Edmund Hall, a college in the University of Oxford, and generously funded by the Oxford

Chinese Economic Programme (OXCEP), which is chaired by Dr Frank Hwang.