Original Source: Aisixiang
Translated literally as “Enjoying Intellectual Discussion,” Aisixiang is an aggregator of scholarly writing on a range of topics from top Chinese experts.
One of China’s top demographics and labor scholars analyzes how labor markets will be transformed by the emergence and industrial integration of artificial intelligence (AI). He provides several policy recommendations for Beijing to manage this transition with minimal social disruption. These include improvements to the social welfare system and household registration systems, both of which he sees as necessary to address inevitable disruptions to the human capital landscape.
Yao Yang, dean of the National School of Development (NSD) at Peking University, identifies three near-term challenges to China’s economic development. The first two—insufficient consumer demand and declining interest in real estate purchases — have both been affected by declining consumer confidence amid the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown measures. The third challenge is the risk of recession in key export markets such as the United States and Europe, which may negatively affect Chinese exports. To address these challenges, Yao emphasizes the importance of policies designed to stabilize the real estate market, as well as measures to shore up consumer confidence (which he calls “more precious than gold”), such as direct payments to Chinese citizens. Yao suggests that Beijing should lead by example and implement a more “rational” approach to COVID-19 prevention and control. This speech was delivered to the China Economic Observation (CEO) conference just prior to the November 2022 protests across China opposing the Chinese government’s “dynamic zero-COVID” measures.
A prominent scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences argues that addressing barriers to social mobility is key to curbing rising income inequality in China and avoiding the middle income trap. He promotes hukou reform as a potential remedy, advocating for a change in “the method where the supply of public goods treat[s] people differently based on household registration status.”
This 2019 analysis by Zheng Yongnian, a highly influential political scientist, argues that China is at risk of falling into a “middle-income trap” domestically and a “Thucydides trap” in its relations with the United States. He maintains that, “once a cold war begins, security considerations will dominate the United States’ relationship with China, and the United States will have to abandon the Chinese market for the sake of security.”
Liu Zhaojia, the vice president of the National Association for Hong Kong and Macau Studies argues that Beijing has moved towards its own position of “strategic clarity” on Taiwan policy following the publication of a dedicated white paper in August 2022 and the performance of a large-scale military exercise around the island following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit. These developments, according to the author, make clear that Beijing “will not wait indefinitely for Taiwan’s return to China.” This departure from a “passive” stance by Beijing, Liu holds, will render the U.S. position of “strategic ambiguity” to be “no longer tenable” and force the U.S. to “clarify its intentions and plans” regarding Taiwan.