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An iconic billboard in the quintessential boom city of Shenzhen features Deng’s famous statement that China's “basic line will not waver for 100 years.” If Deng was right, we are less than one-third of the way into the era of “reform and opening.” But four challenges identified by Premier Wen Jiabao in 2010, that growth becomes “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated, or unsustainable,” threaten the boom. The key to balance lies in increasing the consumer share of GDP, allowing China to create a modern consumer economy. Stability will depend on the government's ability to address grievances as the gap between winners and losers widens. Coordination is the great test facing the ruling Communist Party, of whether it can manage the politics of growth without fundamental changes to the system. Sustainability is an issue that has global implications, as citizens of a warming planet watch anxiously to see if China is successful in greening the boom. The fifth great challenge, left out by Premier Wen, may be the external one: whether the world is successful in making room for China.

Reform Transformed the Countryside

Period: Prospects | Winners and Losers

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  • A Government Monopoly on Finance Loosens

    Mao Yushi

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    Song Bing

  • China's Intellectuals Aim for Social Justice

    Victor Yuan

  • Winners And Losers

    Ai Weiwei

  • Reform Transformed the Countryside

    Xu Xiaonian

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Meettheexpert

Xu Xiaonian

Professor of Economics and Finance, CEIBS

Xu Xiaonian is professor of Economics and Finance at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), an international business school located in Shanghai. He has worked for China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC) since 1999 as Managing Director and Head of Research. Xu was ranked the No. 1 economics researcher among domestic brokerage firms in 2002 by Chinese institutional investors. Prior to joining CICC, Dr. Xu was Senior Economist with Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific based in Hong Kong, and a consultant for the World Bank in Washington, DC before that.

Xu obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Davis and an MA in Industrial Economics from People's University of China. He received the prestigious Sun Yefang Economics Prize in 1996, the highest Chinese award in the field, for his research on China's capital markets. Xu was also named one of China's Most Powerful People by BusinessWeek in 2009. His research interests include: macroeconomics, finance, financial institutions and financial markets, transitional economies, and China's economic reform.

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I was stunned to see the poverty in the countryside of China, and such a low standard of living. And the agricultural technology was not so different from what I saw in the museum. The tools they used were so backward...the economy, and the farmers barely made enough to keep their family going. It's just so poor. Their families and their village, and the area, so under-developed, it's really an education. And Mao Zedong sent us to the countryside to receive reeducation from the farmers, and I think that is a very valuable education for me, but at a very heavy cost. So, ten years, I didn't study high school. I didn't get a chance to study high school. I just graduated from elementary school and was sent to the countryside, away from my parents, from my sisters, on my own. So, that was an extraordinary experience for me, but I learned a lot about what the real China looked like and how people lived in the small villages. And after that, I went back from time to time to visit my family, friends and their children and grand-children. And just a few months ago, I went back again. Of course, after thirty years of economic reform, the living standard now is much higher than thirty years ago when I lived there. They made tremendous progress. In Yenan, when I was there, no running water, no electricity and people in that village never saw trains or airplanes. They had no idea whatsoever about the modern world. And today there is running water, electricity, school, hospital. Economic reform brought them from a primitive economy into the modern economy. And the rural economy integrated so much with towns and cities. So farmers' income is ten times as high as what they received thirty years ago. And the farmers all use televisions and mobile phones now. But when I was there, there was no phone, no video. So, it's very hard to imagine and the shock[ing] contrast between now and then.

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“Reform Transformed the Countryside | Xu Xiaonian | Prospects | The China Boom Project.”
The China Boom Project.
The Asia Society Center on US-China Relations.
1 June 2010.
Web.
09 May 2025.
<https://chinaboom.asiasociety.org/period/prospects/32/172>.
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