Highlights
Distinguishing the Two Types of Liberalism
by SHENG Hong, Director of Unirule Institute of Economics
Translated by MA Junjie, Researcher, Unirule Institute of Economics
It is a shame that we don't have more time, but I thought the three previous presentations were very enlightening. Therefore, I would like to share my understanding of the issues raised earlier.
Firstly, as for Professor REN Jiantao’s remarks, the three models he mentioned earlier, namely, the British, the French and the German model, I think this distinction was addressed by European thinkers in modern times and somehow overlooked by Chinese intellectuals, especially the British model and the French model. I mentioned yesterday that Hayek had a similar categorisation, but Chinese intellectuals tend to overlook it. Hayek distinguished the two types of liberalism, the British liberalism that is common law-based empirical liberalism, and the French liberalism that is based on human reasoning. Of course, Hayek leaned towards the British liberalism, and he lamented how its significance waned over time, and how French liberalism flourished and was cherished by intellectuals around the world thanks to the ink shed for it generously.
This distinction is very important. However, putting it in a longer time period, what Professor REN Jiantao said lacks clarity if we put it against the modern standard, which is based on the British Model. From another perspective, Britain was a rather late established state, as the centre of the European civilisation was mainly on the European continent, in Eastern Europe. At first it was in Greece, then Italy, and till a very late era, France. Therefore, the European civilisation has a longer history and development to a rather mature stage. What I have in mind regarding Europe is just a hypothesis. Europe matured too early. The European civilisation had very matured laws brought by Christians, and it also formed a very matured Roman law system based on the Greek culture. Comparatively speaking, Britain was lagging behind as its common system only matured and developed in the 13-16th century.
During the development of the common law system, Britain was constantly under huge pressure from the Roman law system. “Why do we reject the Roman law system, and why do we adopt the common law system?” Common law is a British tradition, and a rather less-developed system compared to the Roman law system and the pressing European culture, as conceived by many British. However, many other British have been stressing the advantage of the common law system with countless works, including those of the famous thinker, Sir Edward Kirk. What they believed was a purely philosophical idea: we don’t trust those expressive legal clauses and moral regulations, what we trust is our experience. This is the essence of the common law system.
On the other hand, my hypothesis states that the continental Roman law system was also developed from practices and habits, but it matured too early. We know that the Greek and Roman conventions and habits date back over 2,000 years. They were rather developed by the Roman era with all the codes and clauses. This convinced many that these codes and clauses were laws, instead of practices and habits. As a result, the French abandoned their tradition on the continent. In fact, the process for these codes to become laws was key to despotic systems. The fundamental meaning of a code is that a legislative process was taken with everyone’s consent. But in practice, this process defies common people’s traditions, their wills, and their habits. This shows how laws are beyond habits, a manifestation that the will of the state is beyond the influence of habits. When Britain was modernised, the continent was still under absolute monarchism. But in the long run, this is a pattern.
I’m familiar with Mr. ZHANG Yan’s research and I agree with him on most things. As for Professor GE’s remarks, I don’t find any circumstances in which the emperor was supreme, at least according to the Confucian cultural tradition. There are many traditions in China, some are political ones, for example, Confucianism never emphasised that the emperor should be beyond any constraint. This is constant in the works of Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, and Dong Zhongshu. The more superior reign was the heaven, instead of emperors. This can be seen in the Analects, where Confucius mentioned the superiority of the heaven, the Dao, and the Li, instead of emperors, which constituted the Confucian tradition. Confucianism first and foremost assumes that the emperor is just a common person who errs, though he’s in an important position. What we must guarantee is that he makes as few mistakes as possible, and therefore, there’s a mechanism for special positions designated to correct the emperor’s errors. This mechanism guaranteed that the emperor was not allowed to give orders as he willed.
A harsh comparison can be made between this mechanism and an institution established by MAO Zedong. He ordered to set up a department to criticise and perpetrate others, that is the Central Propaganda Department. This department did nothing but perpetrating whoever criticised the chairman. Nothing like this has ever happened in China’s history, or in the tradition of Confucianism. Ideally, it is politically correct to criticise, and politically incorrect to suppress criticism.
Therefore, we come to the question whether China has gotten rid of Confucianism in modern times. I think the answer is affirmative. After the May Fourth Movement and the Cultural Revolution, China has turned away from the Confucian tradition. What’s left is mainly the superiority of the emperors, which is the useless residue of the Chinese culture, and the essence of Confucianism was all swept aside. That’s why we, including many intellectuals, tend to underestimate this tradition. Many Chinese intellectuals do not have the chance to read historian literature or establish a complete knowledge structure. The view we have got from the movement that criticised LIN Biao and Confucius has left us biased. That’s why I hold my views towards Professor GE’s remarks. I believe we need to explore the Confucian tradition, focus more on the essence of it, and try to preserve it.
To follow up on what Professor REN Jiantao said, what should we do then? As a late-comer, what can China do? I believe this is an issue of conceptions. When we talk about adopting the British model, we don't mean for China to become the same like Britain. What we mean is that we should treasure Hayek’s legacy, adopt the empirical liberalism and cherish our traditions, especially the good things in our traditions. As for those abstract and ambiguous parts, we should maintain cautious.
At last, I’d like to refer to Edmund Burke and remind everyone that when he wrote his critique of the French Revolution, he denied that the British were entitled to human rights, but that it was the people themselves who granted human rights, as these human rights were based and found in their traditions. It is important to preserve this valuable tradition and recognise that human rights come from traditions. He wrote that, if you think your direct ancestors did not have such a tradition, then you will find it among your previous ancestors. Thank you.
（This is Professor SHENG Hong’s comment on the occasion of an interdisciplinary seminar on “History and Institution Innovation Theoretical Advancement” held on June 25th and June 26th, 2016.）
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Current Events
A Book Reading Saloon on Law, Legislation, and Liberty(Volume 2, Chaper 7,8,9,10) with International Experts Held in Beijing
August 2nd, 2016, the reading salon is held at Unirule Beijing Office. During the morning session,
Professor LI Weisen gave an opening address. He introduced his encounter with Hayek’s works, his masterpiece Road to Serfdom. Professor LI Weisen thought Hayek’s works, his economic thoughts, and his philosophy, are relevant in today’s academic world. Hayek is a leading figure of the Austrian School of Economics. This book, Law, Legislation and Liberty, resembles Hayek’s similar ideas with Rowls'. He encouraged the readers to dig deeper and explore Hayek’s thoughts to try and solve real life problems.
Ms. LI Schoolland joined the discussion and introduced Hayek’s promotion of liberty, free market economy, and the rule of law. She linked her own experience of advocating these ideas in her own life with the reading of Hayek’s works.
Professor Christopher Lingle introduced a key concept of Hayek’s works, the spontaneous order. Every community is seeking for order continuously. The rules to guide people’s life. Hayek’s began to promote the idea of spontaneous order that evolutionary and came about from human interaction, instead of constructive order that is imposed. Therefore, there’s a difference of rule of law and legislative law that is legislative rules imposed through a legislature or parliament. The rule of law brings peaceful cooperation through voluntary exchange and human interaction, whereas, legislative law inevitably involves impulsive coercion and a certain extent of violence.
Professor Ken Schoolland introduced how Hayek perceived the decentralised and individual source of information that consolidates the foundation for market system. As long as there’s regulations and government intervention, this network of freely communicated information is compromised, which could cause distortion of information, and then malfunction of the market economy.
Professor Barun Mitra focused on the the idea of knowledge that constitutes Hayek’s philosophy. Hayek and his ideas did not assure freedom or market economy, but provided a framework that people could strive to achieve the grand ambitions of freedom and market economy. Another core of Hayek’s philosophy is individualism. An emphasis on the personal needs and individual perceptions of success, happiness, and justice constitutes an important facet of the society.
Professor JIA Xijin incited Rober Nozik’s ideas and made a comparison with Hayek’s ideas. She thought what’s more important is what the government should not do, instead of should do, to improve the society. She emphasised the role of the government as the provider of the fundamental framework to protect property rights and the human liberty as a just cause. (To read more.)
Unirule Development Forum 2016 Held in Beijing
August 4th, 2016, Unirule Development Forum was held at Unirule Beijing Office.
Mr. WU Si, President of Unirule, hosted the event in the morning. Professor ZHANG Shuguang, Chairman of Unirule Academic Committee, gave an opening speech. He introduced the current economic performance, and emphasized the problems of over-leveraging, over-capacity, and over stock. He introduced the development of the private sector, especially the high risks of the debt problem. Later, he closed with the issue of the state-owned enterprises that are not promoted by the central government to grow even bigger and stronger, which poses a severe problem for carrying out the reform measures issued by the state council.
Professor FENG Xingyuan moderated the first session. Professor Christopher Lingle presented on “Reforming Monetary Policy: Shifting Focus from Macroeconomic Aggregates to Microeconomic Realities”. He took issue on the central bank. He introduced the model based on which the central banks around the world were created. He also criticized the problems of macroeconomics that provides theoretical basis for most of macroeconomic policy that causes further economic problems. He then analysed the negative effect of macroeconomic policy, central bank, monetary policy, and the adjustment of interests rate.
Professor Ken Schoolland presented on “Redistribution: The Perversion of Economic Justice”. He introduced the current research trends regarding redistribution. He criticised the redistribution done by the government from three aspects: the practical one, the utilitarian one, and the moral perspective. He argued that those who have the most power are dominating the redistribution process that mostly benefit themselves. He then introduced why the monetary policy by central banks are mostly harmful to the interest of the common citizens.
Professor LI Weisen commented and presented on the above two topics. He talked about the quantitative easing of the US that resulted to huge debt and high financial risks. He analysed how the QE has helped exacerbating the financial system. And then he encouraged the participants to look into the incentives of the Chinese government in promoting similar policy schemes. (To read more.)
What Happened to China’s Private Enterprises— 2016 China Private Enterprises Survival and Development Forum Held in Beijing
As the latest statistics shows that investment by private enterprises has slowed down sharply for the first half of 2016, concerns over the private sector keeps mounting. In light of this, a forum on “What Happened to China’s Private Enterprises” was held at Unirule Beijing Office. Famous economists and lawyers attended the forum, including, Mr. MAO Yushi, Honorary President of Unirule; Professor ZHANG Shuguang, Chairman of Unirule Academic Committee; Professor Ningyue from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; famous lawyer Mr. CHEN Youxi; Mr. WU Si, President of Unirule; Professor YAO Zhongqiu from Beihang University; and Professor LI Weiguang from Tianjin University of Finance and Economics.
In the opening speech, Mr. MAO Yushi quoted John Locke and said that property should not be public owned, and power should not be private owned. He thought the only solution to China’s current economic conundrum was to start with the public ownership of private property and the private ownership of public power. He admitted that Unirule had always been concerned with the development of private enterprises, but Unirule’s capability was limited. However, it stood up anyway to do things right.
Mr. CHEN Youxi explained how the private enterprises were faring from legal cases. He thought as the law system became more and more explicit, the Chinese society was losing its vigour. In the past, legislation was thought to be better implicit instead of explicit. In the past 20 years, more and more legislation have taken a different guideline where they became more and more explicit, leaving little room for manoeuvre. Thanks to this, any reform moves could be halted due to breach of laws, depressing the economic development to a large extent. (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 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. 555: 12th Aug., 2016
Biweekly Symposium No. 556: 26th Aug., 2016
Previous Biweekly Symposiums
Biweekly Symposium No. 553: A Century of Economic Analysis in Given Conceptual Order.
Lecturer: SU Xiaohe
Host: Guping
Commentators: LIU Junning, LEI Yi, CHEN Yongqin, Ningyue
According to conventional historian research methodologies, historian studies are about find truth in history and put it in the record. However, Mr. SU Xiaohe believed that human beings were a medium of ideas. Everyone has their own preferences, and the complexity of their subjective ideas is beyond the objective facts. What’s more important, it is the ideas that drive people to reveal the truth, analyse it, and then establish a new order of ideas afterwards.
In this light, Mr. SU Xiaohe introduced his book A Century of Economic Analysis, its origin of ideas, and logical methodology. He stressed that this book is a double-direction narrative of a century of economy and enterprises, market order, and entrepreneurship. He illustrated the interaction between different market entities by adopting extensive case studies written by scholars from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, US, UK, France, and Japan. Therefore, this book is not a text of stories and tales, but a text of ideas.
Professor LIU Junning commented that economic affairs were about human beings’ pursuit of liberty, therefore, an economic history should be a history of human efforts to seek for liberty.
Professor LEI Yi did not agree with Mr. SU’s statement that China’s economy was free market economy in the late Qing Dynasty as there has never been full property rights in China’s history.
Biweekly Symposium No. 554: Economic Heritage of the War of Resistance Against Japan: State Power, Economic Restructuring and Development.
Lecturer: LI Feiyue
Host: Guping
Commentators: XU Jianming, GAO Yuan, ZHAO Wenzhe
Professor LI Feiyue introduced literature on the relation between state power and economic development. State power refers to the capacity of the government to extract resources and provide public services. However, economic development is, to a large extent, determined by the government’s capacity to undertake effective governance. If the government capacity to extract resources and to undertake effective governance are combined organically, economic development can be expected. He thought wars are an major source of state power, and judging from the Communist Party of China’s history, the War of resistance against Japan played an important role in nurturing local level organisations and cultivating government officials. This practice has a huge influence on China’s state governance system that is based on local government capacity and autonomy. He also analysed how the activeness of local governments and their interaction with the central government constituted a competitive relationship that supersedes the delegated powers.
Dr. XU Jianming said that we should remain cautious towards statement such as wars as sources of state power. He also criticised the presentation’s conclusion concerning governments’ role in providing public goods.
Professor ZHAO Wenzhe thought that better governance entails high expenditure in science, education, culture, and healthcare while economic expenditures decrease, which drove up economic development. However, this conclusion only applies to the 1990s, or even 2000s.
Editor: MA Junjie
Revisor: Hannah Luftensteiner
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