Recently, the U.S. sanctions against ZTE have attracted public debate about the role of the government in industrial development. In this regard, at the 2018 academic annual meeting hosted by Tsinghua University CIDEG on April 22, Wu Jinglian, a well-known economist and chairman of the CIDEG Academic Committee, shared his views. He said that this kind of debate has given nationalism an advantage, that is, using greater administrative power to support relevant industries, such as a slogan called "developing the chip industry at all costs."
Wu Jinglian also revealed that he once worked in an information consulting agency, and the government attaches great importance to the chip issue. He appealed, "As a researcher, we should observe calmly, scientifically and objectively to find the root of the problem and propose some correct corresponding strategies that are indeed beneficial to our country and the development of the world economy."
The following is the full text of Wu Jinglian's speech:
There are many issues in this discussion and design today, and the content is very rich. I don't want to repeat the issues that have been discussed. I still want to talk about the issues I raised at the beginning of our meeting this morning. In the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has made great achievements in economic development. However, the more advanced the economic development is, the more contradictions it encounters and the more problems that need to be solved in the international environment. Especially since the beginning of this year, our research center has studied three areas: industrial development, environmental governance, and institutional change. On all three issues, it appears that some challenging problems have been encountered.
I talked about a few things this morning. The first is about environmental governance.
At the beginning of this year, major actions were taken to change our air pollution situation, and we paid a great price. Therefore, during the two sessions, we finally came to a conclusion that although we paid a great price, in the case of coal-to-gas conversion, etc. problem, but finally ushered in the blue sky. But within a few days, serious pollution occurred before the two sessions were over, and this wave lasted longer than in the past. Until yesterday, it was swinging between severe pollution and moderate pollution. This shows that there are many issues that need to be further studied.
Simple administrative measures may achieve short-term results, but in the long run its basic problem has not been solved. Where is the basic problem? My hypothesis is that the problem of growth mode and growth model mainly depends on resource input, not on efficiency improvement. So to fundamentally solve this problem, to solve the problem of the transformation of China's growth model, and how to change China's growth model? There are many conditions required, mainly institutional and policy conditions, and we need to do in-depth research on the issue.
Then there is the issue of the trade war, the issue of the ZTE incident. This also involves whether the opening to the outside world should be continued, and how can domestic reforms be deepened to solve some major problems in our system. But judging from the reaction of society, I don't think that the main issue is the debate with the Trump administration, as some of our spokespersons said just now.
For us as Chinese, the main question is whether this debate can promote the implementation of our own reform and opening-up policy. From the reflections on the Internet, there seems to be a danger. This danger is that this debate has made this kind of nationalism more successful. The advantage is to use greater administrative power to support our related industries. For example, there is a slogan called "developing the chip industry at all costs".
I myself have worked in an information consulting agency. In fact, the government attaches great importance to this chip issue. The problem does not seem to be that the money is given or not. The size of the semiconductor chip fund established three years ago is 400 billion yuan. The acquisition is also aimed at building great achievements in chip development, but the effect is not good. There are many deep issues that need to be discussed, and our research center is shouldering such a responsibility. As a researcher, we should observe calmly, scientifically and objectively to find the root of the problem and propose some correct corresponding strategies that are indeed beneficial to our country and the development of the world economy.
What makes people happy in today's discussion is that they candidly explain their observations and opinions. Unfortunately, there is not enough time. There are many issues that need to be discussed in depth. Let me just give an example, what is the supply-side structural reform?
In fact, since the central government raised this question, although everyone has accepted this sentence, there are actually very different understandings. An understanding that may be dominant, and one I disagree with, says that the so-called structural reform is structural adjustment, and such issues need to be discussed in depth, because it involves basic viewpoints and basic theoretical issues.
I have heard a lot of comments, speeches or questions, and it seems that there is an idea behind it, that the government will know what is the best structure, as long as it is sold by the government, it will definitely create a good structure. The basic issues of economic observation, these issues cannot be discussed once or twice to reach a correct conclusion, a conclusion that everyone can agree on, so we need to continue our discussions of this type, not only at our annual meeting, but also at our annual meeting. We should create more opportunities to deepen the research on these issues in the discussion of our project opening report and closing report.
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