KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Professor Jonathan Unger
College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University
Prof. Unger is the academic staff member of the UK's Institute of Development Studies, University of Kansas, University of Washington and Leiden University before going to ANU in 1986. In the early 1970s, he had served in Asia as a foreign correspondent covering China.
He is one of the two co-editors of The China Journal, one of the world's leading journals on modern China, and he also served as editor and then co-editor of The China Journal from 1987 until 2005. His research interests are social stratification in China; rural Chinese social, political and economic change; urbanisation; workers and factory life; Chinese nationalism and Cultural Revolution history. His major publications are Education Under Mao: Class and Competition in Canton Schools, University of Columbia Press, 1982.; (co-author) Chen Village Under Mao and Deng, University of California Press, 1992.; (ed.) Chinese Nationalism. Armonk, M.E. Sharpe, 1996.; The Transformation of Rural China. Armonk, M.E. Sharpe, 2002.
19/12/2016
The Grassroots Turmoil in China’s Cultural Revolution: A Half Century Perspective
After Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, vast numbers of students, workers, peasants and other ordinary people divided into hostile groups that violently fought against each other for more than a year and a half. Each group claimed it was fighting out of loyalty to Mao’s teachings. But research by the speaker that included well over a hundred in-depth interviews in the 1970s and 1980s with former participants in these conflicts revealed that the fighting between groups was actually the consequence of mounting tensions within Chinese society prior to the Cultural Revolution. The upheavals in the Cultural Revolution pitted those who had earlier been favoured by Communist Party policies against those who had been disfavoured. But the nature of grievances and antagonisms differed from group to group—be they students, workers, peasants or government office workers. As a result, there were a number of different types of upheavals, generated by different reasons, in different sectors of society. Examining these provides insights into the complex fabric of Chinese society under Mao.
Professor Yanrui Wu (吴延瑞)
Business School, University of Western Australia
Prof. Wu is an economist specializing in development economics, international trade and applied econometric modelling. His research interests include the Chinese and Asian economies, productivity analysis, economic growth, resource and environmental economics. He has published extensively in these fields. His work has appeared in many SSCI-listed journals such as Energy Economics, Energy, Applied Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Empirical Economics, China Economic Review, Economics Letters, Pacific Economic Review and Resources Policy.
He is the author of several books such as Productive Performance in Chinese Enterprises (Macmillan, 1996), China’s Consumer Revolution (Edward Elgar Publishers, 1999), The Macroeconomics of East Asian Growth (Edward Elgar Publishers, 2002), China’s Economic Growth (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), Productivity, Efficiency and Economic Growth in China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and Understanding Economic Growth in China and India (World Scientific Publishing, 2012). Prof Wu is on the editorial board of Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies (Routledge, UK), China Agricultural Economic Review (Emerald, UK)and East Asian Policy (NUS, Singapore). He is also the General Editor of Advances in Chinese Economic Studies book series published by Edward Elgar Publishers, UK. His teaching interests include international economics, business econometrics and development economics. His research interests are Chinese and Indian economies, Energy and resource economics, Economic growth and Productivity analysis.
20/12/2016
Can China Avoid the Middle Income Trap?
After decades of high growth, China has now become a middle income country with per capita GDP over US$8000. As the country’s economic growth has slowed down since the outburst of the global financial crisis, some policy makers and scholars are speculating that the Chinese economy may fall into the so-called middle income trap (MIT). This paper contributes to this debate by looking at the positive developments as well as challenges in the economy. In particular the author focuses on the assessment of services and innovation development in China. Policy implications are also discussed.