Highlights

Who’s Providing for Whom?

Recently there has been criticism within the party towards those who are not in line with the party stance. The accusation is odd, stating that those rebellious people are eating the food provided by the Party and smashing the pot for cooking. And some disagree: Who is eating the food provided by the Party? It is the taxpayers who provide for the party and government officials.

The majority thinks that tax payers are feeding the government and party officials. However, the questions remains. It may seem to be easy, however, basic rules of economics is involved, that is the creation of value. Let me ask again, then: who creates value? Those who create value need not to be fed by others. Only those who don’t live on those who create value. These people live on the value created by others, which makes them exploiters.

We normally think that those who are paying provide for those who are receiving. Therefore, we usually uphold that the customers should be treated as god since they provide for us by buying our products. Deducing from this, it can also be said that as tax payers pay tax which provides for the government and party officials. However, this is wrong if put in the context of economics.

The fallacy can be recognised once a comparison between parenting and taxpayer providing for officials. The former reflects affection and selfless love, while the latter is an exchange of labour (or service) by the government officials for money. There is no reason for us to say that capitalists are provided by workers as they are paying the workers. In the same light, it does not hold water to say that tax payers provide for government and party officials as they are paying taxes. Now it can be established that government and party officials are not provided for by tax payers. They are providing for themselves.

Many false statements can be made in this regard which need to be clarified. For instance, everyone needs to eat, therefore everyone is living upon the crops grown by farmers. However, one with rational thinking may question: as farmers sell their grains to those who eat, and those buyers pay to get the grain, therefore, those buyers should be the god of the famers. That is to say farmers are living upon the buyers of their grains. Who is providing for whom? Is it the buyers are providing for the farmers who grow crops, or the other way around? It can be concluded that to decide who is providing for whom is a false argument.

In the era of agrarian economics, exchanges seldom took place. People were self sustained. Everyone needed to eat, therefore, everyone was working in the field and ate off what they grew. Later, rudimentary division of labour emerged where some people did not have to work in the field but they traded grains for a living when the majority of the population were stuck in agriculture. In the times of market economy, only a limited amount of people are growing crops when the majority of the population are operating in other industries. People demand more than crops. They want better accommodation, more convenient transportation, and more diversified entertainment. That is when the society is running according to the principle of “one for all and all for one”. It is also when it gets impossible to tell who is providing for whom. But one thing is clear, everyone needs to make money to sustain themselves.

In market economy, making money refers to the creation of wealth. By providing valuable labor, right use of assets, or subletting natural resources such as land, people are creating wealth. However, the illegal incomes from corruption and embezzlement, drug smuggling, and producing and selling counterfeited products can not be considered as wealth creation. In modern societies, a particular service is needed due to the complexity of the organisation, that is the public service, including police, court, public transportation, national defence, environmental conservation, and urban planning. The society may go into chaos without such services. In order to fulfil the need of the public, professional personnel are hired by the government and paid according to their services. This payment comes from taxes collected from the citizens. Such labor relation bears little difference from that between corporate and workers. This relation is also based on exchange, that is exchange between labor and salary. The salary involved is a part of the wealth creation process, which is the income of the labour providers.

What’s said above is based on the assumption that the government and party officials are hired according to the principle of fair competition in order to provide their services to the government. However, in reality, some officials are hired not to serve the tax payers, but to interfere with people’s liberty, even violate citizens’ constitutional rights. They interfere with citizens’ freedom of speech and publication, freedom of demonstration and protests, and violate citizens’ private property, some even control the liberty of citizens. These government and party officials think they hold big powers and are beyond the jurisdiction of the law. They have get used to it and do not see any improperness.

As China is not a democracy, the arrogance of power has been a common practice of officials. If the citizens do not stand up against it, the hope for China to be a country of rule of law will diminish. As for these officials who interfere citizens’ liberty, they have become the parasites of the society. What the government needs to do is to fire these parasites, which can also lead to the decrease of the stability sustaining fee. Taxpayers will never be willing to hire such people to interfere with their lawful rights. A decrease of the stability sustaining fee is also a reduction of the tax burden.

June 13rd, 2015

MAO Yushi, Honorary President of Unirule Institute of Economics

Current Events

Unirule Salon for Young Scholars(IX) Held in Beijing

This session was proud to present Professor Ng Yew Kwang, Albert Winsemius professor in economics, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Professor Ng Yew Kwang has published multiple papers and articles on internationally renowned journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economics, and the Social Choice & Welfare. This time, Professor Ng Yew Kwang spoke on “Economics Mistakes of the Great: From Nobel Laureates to Piketty”.
 
Professor Ng Yew Kwang started with his experience as a scholar and introduced how he came to find the mistakes made by the great economists. In his speech, Professor Ng Yew Kwang stated that: 1. there exists contradiction between the decrease of Marx’s rate of capital return and the absolute poverty of workers; 2. Tobin’s theory regarding the irrelevance of price for goods in fixed supply; 3. Stiglitz’s idea that all taxes induce distortions; 4. Coase’s ignoring of an asymmetry of external effects when he refuted Pigou. At last, Professor Ng Yew Kwang commented on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. He pointed out that the major function r>g (i.e., the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term) is neither the sufficient nor the necessary condition for the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. Professor Ng Yew Kwang also introduced his theory concerning the sufficient and necessary condition for the increase of the capital income to the national income: dα/α = (dK/K) + (dr/r) – g. An extensive illustration can be found on the European Journal of Political Economy.(https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/poleco/v38y2015icp82-86.html)
 
Present at the Salon were Mr. MAO Yushi, Professor FENG Xingyuan, and Professor MO Zhihong. Mr. MAO Yushi spoke highly of Professor Ng Yew Kwang’s speech and expressed his hope for the young people in China to dedicate to economic studies and take an example from Professor Ng. Professor MO Zhihong commented on the methodology employed in the neo-classic economics and mathematical economics. Professor FENG Xingyuan joined the discussion with Professor Ng on the understanding and implication of the Coase’s theorem and Piketty’s theory.
Over 20 participants from universities, international organisations and the press attended the Salon and joined the Q&A session. Unirule Salon for Young Scholars from the East and the West is organised by Professor MA Junjie, Project Researcher and Assistant to the Director of Unirule International Cooperation Centre, and hosted by Mr. ZHANG Lin, Project Researcher of Unirule.
 
Unirule Saloon for Young Scholars from the East and the West is an open and free platform for academic discussion; it encompasses a wide range of social, economic, political and cultural topics; held once a month, the working language of the saloon is English. We believe that discussion will bring about the light of thoughts, and we hope in free discussion, young scholars from both China and the west will harvest inspiration, thoughts, and wisdom. We look forward to having young scholars from home and abroad join us. Please follow our website for the upcoming events.(To read more)

Unirule Seminar on Land Issues Held in Beijing

On the morning of June 17th, Unirule Seminar on land issues was held at Unirule office in Beijing.

Professor James Riddell, former UN FAO expert and professor of Wisconsin University, gave a presentation on “US Experience in Land Administration: Law in Practice, Law on the Books”. By combing through the history of American land administration by introducing regulations and laws, major events, and the evolution of land administration and the concept of property. In the early stages of American history, people obtained land from nature, then there was a period when people traded their loyalty to the government for the protection of their private property rights, and now there is the arrangement of zoning and planning in contemporary land administration, which imposed new challenge to people’s understanding of property rights. Professor Riddell also mentioned the influence of the Magna Carta on American history. He mentioned that the concept of property has been changing. Property rights used to be considered an inalienable right, but now it is dependent on people’ imagination of their future. Both the US and China are in a transition period.
In the seminar, Professor ZHANG Shuguang, Chairman of Unirule Academic Committee, commented on the influence of the Magna Carta on America’s land development. Professor YANG Junfeng, non-resident researcher of Unirule, introduced the common phenomenon of private ownership of land in the history of China. Mr. ZHENG Zhenyuan, former director of the Ministry of Land and Resources, commented on the concept of property rights in China and the US.

Over 20 participants from the press, academia, and the society were present in the seminar. Mr. MA Junjie, Assistant to the Director of Unirule International Cooperation Center, interpreted for the seminar.

Interdisciplinary Conference for Advance in the Research of Law and Politics Held in Xushui

From May 30th to 31st, “Interdisciplinary Conference for Advance in the Research of Law and Politics” was held in Xushui. This conference was collaboratively held by Unirule Institute of Economics, Institute for Public Policy of Zhejiang University, and Dawu Enterprise Culture Institute.

Over 60 scholars and experts attended this conference, including leading scholars in economics, laws, and politics such as JIANG Ping, GUO Daohui, MAO Yushi, XU Zhangrun, WEI Sen, CHEN Youxi, WANG Jianxun, XU Jilin, WU Si, ZHANG Shuguang, SHENG Hong. The representatives of the organisers spoke at the beginning of the conference, including MAO Yushi, FAN Bonai, and SUN Dawu. Professor ZHANG Shuguang gave the closing speech.
 
The conference was conducted in a rather intense manner where there were 17 units, 9 hours of discussion every day. 17 scholars gave keynote speeches during the conference, about 80 comments were presented. The attendees of this conference discussed various issues against the backdrop of the current political and social transitions with a focus on the area of law and politics. (To read more)

News

Unirule 10-D Spatial Simulation Planning Model (SSPM)

The Unirule 10-D Spatial Simulation Planning Model (SSPM) is a mathematical and computational model based on economics. It is developed by a Unirule research team led by Professor SHENG Hong. SSPM is designed to simulate the development scale, economic density, industry distribution, resource constraints, ecological preservation, institutional influence, policy effect, and the evolution process in the next ten to twenty years or even longer period for a region. SSPM provides reference for the regional economic development strategy making, which can be directly adopted in the planning on regional economic development, population, land use, industry development, townships, water and ecology.

So far, SSPM has been adopted in the industry planning of Qianhai Area, Shenzhen, and the economic development planning of Yangcheng County, Shanxi Province.

Learn more about the SSPM

Current Researches/ Consulting

Improving China’s Implimentation and Supervision Institution of the Constitution

At present, research on the implimentation and supervision institution of China’s constitution is insufficient. Multiple problems exist in the current studies, such as the lack of a cultural perspective, and empathetic understanding of China’s political tradition; a lack of authentic Chinese perspective and an indulgence of Westernized framework of analysis; and a lack of reflection of the reality and the existing political framework.

The research on China’s constitution review institution should put the protection of civil rights and constitutional construction first, with a reflection of China’s reality and take in the advantages of external researches. A plausible research approach is as follows: 1. This research ought to provide a right relief mechanism; 2. It should take into account that China is a vast country with imbalanced regional development realities which foster unique and differentiated conceptions of the law and politics in general; 3. It should be built upon the current constitutional structure and take into account the interactive system of the power of the party, the National People’s Congress, etc. in order to make it a progressive research, which can enable the elements of constitutionalism to supplement the current constitutional framework; 4. Scrupulous examination should be given to constitutional practices in other regions and cultures, especially those influenced by the Chinese culture or with a similar institutional set-up, such as Taiwan and France; 5. Observations should be made in regard to the traditional Chinese institutions, such as the institution of the expostulation system (“谏议制度”, or giving advice),  supervision system, and the institutions established in this light, e.g., Taiwan’s Control Yuan.

Improving Entrepreneurs' Survival Environment: Abolishing Death Penalties in Relation to Fund-Raising Cases in China

In recent years, environment for private enterprises has been taking a deteriorating turn, which attracts attention from the media and the academia. The causes are complex and multi-faceted, including: 1, the abuse of powers by government officials as the government powers expand; 2, “the private-owned deteriorating with the state-owned advancing” (guojin mintui) worsens the picture where the survival environment for private enterprises gets more and more squeezed; 3, external demands of enterprises decrease while internal cost increases; 4, financial suppression escalates with the industrial restructuring and updating lagging behind; and 5, the fluctuation of macroeconomic policies by the government poses uncertainty for production and investment. Moreover, many innocent entrepreneurs were labeled and persecuted for their “gangster behaviors” by the policy and law enforcements in Chongqing city, which was just a glimpse of similar occasional “gangster crashing” movements in the country. Many entrepreneurs are suppressed and sanctioned in the name of “illegal fund-raising”. According to active law, the court can sentence entrepreneurs to death penalty with this charge.

Unirule Institute of Economics is planning to undertake research on the problems of the crime of “illegal fund-raising” and specific methods to abolish this charge.

It is fit for Unirule to carry out this research project. Unirule Institute of Economics is a non-profit, non-governmental organization, which focuses on institutional economics with expertise in economics, laws, and politics. It has been dedicated to independent research on China’s institutional reforms and public policies as well as the reform of private finance. In 2003, 2011, and 2013, Unirule held seminars on the cases of Mr. SUN Dawu, Ms. WU Ying, and Mr. ZENG Chengjie. These seminars have been very influential before and after the close of the cases.

Unirule Institute of Economics has undertaken research projects in corporate finance and private finance in recent years. Over the years, Professor FENG Xingyuan has been carrying out pioneering research on private finance and private enterprises. He has gained rich experience and published many publications and papers on relevant topics, including “Report on the Freedom of China’s Corporate Capitals”, “Report on the Survival Environment of China’s Private Enterprises 2012”, research on the risks of private finance, etc. In August 2013, Professor FENG Xingyuan and his research team completed and released the “Report on Private Enterprise Fund-Raiding in West Hunan and the Case of Mr. ZENG Chengjie”, which analyzed and assessed the process, nature, problems, and causes of a series of events and proposed policy recommendations concerning the fund-raising activities in West Hunan and the case of Mr. ZENG Chengjie.

Business Ethics Declaration of Chinese Entrepreneurs

Over the last three decades, China’s economy has been embracing rapid growth with entrepreneurs being a key drive. The biggest and most significant structural change is the rise of entrepreneurs who constitute the pillar of the society nowadays. Today, the biggest, and the youngest group of entrepreneurs are going international, bridging China and the world.

However, because of the abnormal political, social and ideological environment of China for the last five decades, Chinese entrepreneurs happen to be widely confused and for the last thirty years, the emerging group of entrepreneurs has been suffering from severe anxiety over identity:

Firstly, due to the long time anti-market ideological propaganda by the authorities, many entrepreneurs believe they have the “original sin”. They are led to believe that their profits are based on exploiting the workers, which further leads to their confusion and anxiety over the ethical justification of their fortune and profits.

Secondly, this anti-market ideology also affects the public; leading the public to envy the fortune of entrepreneurs while disrespect them since their deeds are “unethical” and “dishonest”. This public opinion, in return, affects entrepreneurs’ self-identity. They, therefore, can’t convince themselves of the contributions they make to the society, or identify themselves within the social hierarchy.

Thirdly, Chinese entrepreneurs, especially those whose enterprises have gone international, are bothered with this severe identification anxiety. Chinese people stand out in entrepreneurship, so do Chinese enterprises. But what are the driving forces behind? Thanks to the long time culture break-up from the traditions, and the anti-tradition propaganda, Chinese entrepreneurs find it hard to comprehend and identify their cultural and social roles. This leads to the chaotic and restless mental state of entrepreneurs. This also results in the lack of a cultural supportive pillar for enterprise management in China.

“Business Ethics Declaration of Chinese Entrepreneurs” aims to provide answers to the anxiety over identity for Chinese entrepreneurs, to re-identify them by providing authentic and orthodoxical conceptions, to help them mature their thoughts and corporate social responsibilities.

This research project is committed to establishing a value system for Chinese entrepreneurs. To confront the anxiety over identity for Chinese entrepreneurs, this project provides answers to the three questions below:

1.Do Chinese entrepreneurs have the “original sin”?
2.What do Chinese entrepreneurs contribute to the society?
3.How do Chinese entrepreneurs gain respect?

An Economic Research of Chinese Urban Smog Management

The issue of smog has been on the spotlight in China that no matter government officials, ordinary citizens, or journalists and the press have expressed serious concern and anxiety towards it. Unirule Institute of Economics takes on this research topic and is conducting an economic research on China’s urban smog management.

The urban smog is attributed to multiple factors with many interest parties involved, which also makes it an economic issue. Unirule seeks to find a solution to the management of smog by the design of institutions from an economic point of view.

Fairness and Efficiency of Financial Resource Allocation

The first scale problem of the fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation is whether the overall tax bearing standard falls within the optimal interval, whether the design of tax kinds and the mechanism will harm the development of the economy. The second scale problem is whether the expenditure structure of the existing financial resource allocation, especially transfer payment, obeys the principal of justice, and the efficiency of financial expenditure especially the general administrative costs.

Unirule Institute of Economics is going to undertake research on the fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation with the emphasis on the second scale problem. In order to fulfill the ideal of justice in a society, the involvement of financial resource allocation is one of the methods, and a universal one. A state can promote justice by implying financial expenditure in two ways: the direct and the indirect way. When applying the direct way of implying financial expenditure measures to promote justice, financial expenditure is directly distributed to individuals to fill the gap of incomes between individuals.

Among the financial expenditure items of China are pensions and relief funds for social welfare, rural relief funds as well as social insurance funds. The indirect way is by governments' increase in expenditure used for supporting agriculture and villagers, construction of infrastructure, education and medical treatments. This research is on the justice of financial resource allocation and it deals mainly with whether the transfer payment of financial resources obeys the second rule of Rawls's theory of justice, which states that when violation to the first rule has to be made, resource allocation can be towards the poorest group of people. Besides the justice issue, efficiency is also involved in the financial resource allocation. The administrative costs of China have long been above the average standard of other countries in the world, therefore, a big amount of public financial resources are wasted (trillions of RMB per year as estimated). In regard with the efficiency issue of the financial resource allocation, this research deals mainly with the change of ratio of administrative costs by government agencies (in addition to other costs, such as medical treatments of government officials covered by public budgets, and housing subsidies) of financial income. The reform of the fiscal and taxation system is one of the core issues in China's on-going reforms. This research aims not at a comprehensive examination of the fiscal and taxation system, but a specific aspect which is the "fairness and efficiency of financial resource allocation", and evaluating the status quo of China's financial resource allocation.

Research on China's Urbanization on the Local Level

Urbanization is one of the most essential economic and social policies of the new administration. The emphasis of this policy is posed on medium and small cities as well as townships. As noticed, there are thousands of industrialized townships in China with their social governance lagging far behind their economic development.

Firstly, a big population is located in between the urban and rural level, which can't transform into citizens. Hundreds of millions of people have left their villages and moved to commercialized and industrialized towns. They are in industrial and commercial occupations and it is highly unlikely that they would go back to their villages. However, they are not entitled to local Hukou registration, which further leads to the deprivation of various rights, for example, the right of education.

Secondly, public governance in such industrialized and commercialized towns, in general, is at a rudimentary level. The number of officially budgeted posts is asymmetric with the population governed, which leads to the employment of a large number of unofficially budgeted staff and unjustified power to govern. There is a lack of financial resources for the local government to carry out infrastructure construction or to provide public goods sufficiently. Thirdly, the urbanization results in imbalanced development of the structure of society. Since the industrialized and commercialized townships are unable to complete urbanization, urbanization in China has basically become mega-urbanization which is dominated by administrative power. Local governments centralize periphery resources with administrative power and construct cities artificially, which impedes townships and villages from evolving into cities by spontaneous order. Fourthly, industry upgrading can't be undertaken in those industrialized and commercialized townships and the capacity for future economic development is greatly limited. The industry upgrading is, in essence, the upgrading of people. Enterprises ought to draw and maintain technicians, researchers, and investors, to meet their needs for living standards, which cannot be satisfied by townships. Similarly, the lagging urbanization reversely sets back the cultivation and development of the service industry, especially the medium and high-end services.

Unirule Institute of Economics is going to carry out research on urbanization of China on the local level, aiming at improving public governance of the industrialized townships, optimizing the urbanization methodologies, and improving the "citizenization" of migrant workers, therefore further pushing social governance towards self-governance and democracy.

Research on the Public Governance Index of Provincial Capitals

At the beginning of the year 2013, Unirule conducted field survey, including more than 10 thousands of households in 30 local capital cities. According to the field survey, the Public Governance Index was derived. The main conclusions of the PGI report as below:

Three statements summarize the status quo of public governance in provincial capitals. Firstly, public services have generally just gotten a pass. Secondly, protection to civil rights is disturbing. Finally, governance methodologies need improvements. These statements point out the solution: the structure of the society needs to be altered from that with a government monopoly to a civil society with diverse governance subjects. The ranking of provincial capitals in the public governance assessment from the top to the bottom is as follows: Hangzhou, Nanjing, Urumqi, Tianjin, Chengdu, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanchang, Xi'an, Xining, Shijiazhuang, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Yinchuan, Hohhot, Chongqing, Shenyang, Changsha, Jinan, Kunming, Nanning, Haikou, Fuzhou, Guiyang, Harbin, Hefei, Changchun, Zhengzhou, Taiyuan and Lanzhou.

Generally speaking, all provincial capitals are graded comparatively low in the three public governance assessments from 2008 to 2012. Even those that ranked the highest in performance have just barely passed the bar of 60 points. Few provincial capitals with poor public governance got over 50 points.

There is a certain amount of correlation between the changes of ranking and improvements in public governance in provincial capitals. In the short term, should the capital cities be willing to raise their rankings, they can achieve this by increasing transparency in government information and civil servants selection, encouraging local non-governmental organizations, or promoting wider participation in local affairs. There is but a weak correlation between public governance and the local GDP level. However, a strong correlation exists between the rankings and the equity of local fiscal transfer payment. That is to say, a region gets a higher ranking in public governance if subsidies to local social security, medical care, education and housing are distributed more to the poorest residents in that region. On the contrary, a region's ranking falls if such resources are distributed with prejudice to the groups with high incomes. This phenomenon shows that equity is of significance in the assessment of the government by the people.

When residents are not satisfied with medical care, elderly support system, water supply and electricity supply, the situation can be improved when they complain to the government. But when similar situations take place in public transportation, environment greening, heating systems, and garbage management, whether by collective actions or filing complaints to government agencies, residents can hardly be satisfied with what the government does.

According to the three public governance assessments carried out from 2008 to2012, we discovered that the Gini coefficient of residents in provincial capitals was decreasing and the income fluidity was improving. From 2010 to 2012, citizens' comments on protection of civil rights are deteriorating, especially in terms of property and personal security. The request for freedom of speech is also increasing. For the moment, citizens in provincial capitals have a low evaluation on the cleanness and honesty of local governments.

Research on Disclosure of Government Information

Room for reforms is getting narrower as the opening-up and reforms deepen. It also leads to a more stabilized vertical mobilization of the demographic structure with the conflicts in the distribution of interests exacerbating. A collaborative system centering the political and law system and involving close cooperation between the police, courts, petition offices, and the city guards (Chengguan) is developed to deal with social unrest. This system is operated by local governments and finalized as a system of maintaining stability (Weiwen). There have been Internet spats over the amount of Weiwen funds. It is unsustainable to maintain such a Weiwen system, and the disclosure of government information is the most significant approach for this end. The essence of public governance is to dissolute conflicts instead of hiding and neglecting them. And one way to achieve this is by sufficient communication. Public and transparent appraisement and supervision cannot be achieved without transparent government information, otherwise the result will be the exclusion of citizens from public governance.

Unirule Institute of Economics has been undertaking research on the disclosure of government information since 2011. This research is carried out not only from the perspective of the regulations for the disclosure of government information which evaluates whether governments of various levels are obeying the regulations and their performances, but also by examining information disclosure laws in developed countries while looking at the status quo in China. There are seven aspects where government information disclosure can be improved, namely, information disclosure of government officials, transparency of finance, transparency in the decision-making mechanism, transparency in administration, transparency in public services, transparency of enterprises owned by local governments, and transparency in civil rights protection.

Upcoming Events

Unirule Master Thoughts Class(2014)

Unirule Biweekly Symposiums

Unirule's Biweekly Symposiums are known in China and throughout the world for their long history of open and in-depth discussions and exchanges of ideas in economics and other social sciences. Over 380 sessions have been held and over 15,000 scholars, policy makers, and students, as well as countless readers on the web, have directly and indirectly, and participated in the Biweekly Symposium for close to 20 years.

Biweekly Symposiums begin at 2 p.m. every other Friday and are free and open to the public.

Schedule
Biweekly Symposium No. 526: 3 rd July, 2015
Biweekly Symposium No. 527: 17th July, 2015

Previous Biweekly Symposiums

Biweekly Symposium No. 524: The Establishment of the National Debt and Fiscal System of the UK

Lecturer: Dr. LIU Zhongjing

Host: ZHAO Nong

Commentators: WANG Chaocai, SHI Cheng, JIANG Hao

Dr. LIU Zhongjing though most of the research on the British fiscal system was technical. A key factor of the micro-ecological system change should be take into account rather than a certain structure, institution, or measure.

In the early 17th and 18th century, UK did not invent a unique fiscal technique, or financial technology. In the 200 years during the Renaissance, the British national debt evolved rapidly, where the repercussions led to the destruction of the republic policy of the UK and the national debt system. The public debt institution was not merely a financial institution, or an economic institution, but an outcome of the political conglomerate’s evolution.

The stage of development made it necessary to introduce in the national debt system. After the two incidents of solvency in 1693 and 1697, according to the 1697 program, the national bonds could be converted in the Ministry of Treasury, or can be substituted by tax. That is to say, when tax was collected, people could submit the bond as a substitution. The establishment of the sinking fund of UK was a critical creation. After its foundation, a system of periodical debt payment system was built. Bonds were issued in times of war, and relieved in times of peace. With the market extending beyond UK, more and more processes were established which ensured the stability of the bonds. This pool is now connecting the majority of countries, especially those advanced economies.

Biweekly Symposium No. 525: A Millennium After The New Culture Movement: Consciousness of the Civilization or the Culture?

Lecturer: Professor XU Jilin

Host: Professor ZHANG Shuguang, Chairman of Unirule Academic Committee

Commentators: MA Yong, REN Jiantao, SHENG Hong, ZHAO Nong

The New Culture Movement in 1915 swiped China. How to treat this movement has complex and significant implications for China today.

Professor XU Jilin thought the New Culture Movement was an enlightening movement. Two issues were addressed, that is the awareness of civilisation and of culture.

Professor XU thought there were two questions that needed to be answered. Firstly, how to integrate the good part of the civilisation into the widely recognised culture of China. Secondly, how to transform our culture into a universal one.
Professor XU concluded that China needed to reestablish itself as a player of the world with a subjective cultural identify. It should also integrate its unique culture in the framework of the universal standards.

Editor: MA Junjie
Revisor: Hannah Luftensteiner