Working under Zhou Lisan 周立三, a pioneer in the field, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences beginning in 1985, Hu made his way up from a researcher to the director of Tsinghua University’s Center for China Study 国情研究中心. Often presented in the media as an public intellectual, Hu is believed to be a member of a small group of elite economists who are tapped by senior Chinese leaders to be heavily involved in the formulation of China’s public policy. The annual reviews that Hu compiles provide one of the most comprehensive assessments of China’s state capacity 国力 and power status and have been regularly incorporated into China’s Five Year Development Guidelines.

As an economist who spends much of his time concocting forecasts of China’s future, Hu is noted for his consistent optimism about the country’s socioeconomic transformation and historic reemergence as a world power. Since at least early 1990s, he has been touting the idea that China will eventually ascend to the status of superpower on par with the US.

A proponent of the idea of peaceful rise, Hu contends that such a goal can be achieved without adopting the belligerent policies seen during the rise of most other powers. In his book China in 2020, A New Type of Superpower 中国2020：一个新型超级大国, Hu contends that timing, geographic location and popular sentiment are in China’s favor, and he exuberantly states that ‘history is now providing China with the same opportunity to thrive that the United States enjoyed between 1870 and 1913, Japan between 1950 and 1973, and Korea between 1965 and 1996.’ Hu’s optimism, undiminished by the serious challenges facing the country, leads to triumphalist statements that sometimes verge on callousness. In 1998, when a devastating flood swept southern China, Hu wrote an article arguing that the natural disaster was beneficial because it boosted demand and helped to pull China’s economy out of stagnation.

Hu is often called a statist and a New Leftist for his pro-SOE (state-owned enterprises) statements and for his advocacy of a strong and powerful state. As a reaction to the government’s radical liberalisation ushered in by Deng Xiaoping, the New Left emerged as an intellectual trend in the early 1990s and presented the strongest rhetorical challenge to economic libertarianism. The latter’s central viewpoint, which holds that the state must shrink its control of economy in order to facilitate a growing market economy, is criticised by members of the New Left for its potential to cause negative outcomes such as large-scale layoffs, a rising income gap and the collapse of the socialist welfare network. Hu has expressed his belief on multiple occasions that a strong state is necessary for market reform and that China should develop an alternative to the liberal market economy and build a welfare state that would include the 800 million-strong rural population who have not reaped the benefits of China’s reform to the extent their urban cousins have. In response to recent criticism claiming that SOEs are growing too fast and often at the expense of the private sector, a situation summed up in the expression ‘the stage advances while the people retreat’ 国进民退, Hu contended that the relationship of the two is a mutual beneficial one rather than a zero-sum game.

Recent years have seen Hu switching his focus toward China’s energy policy. He believes that energy consumption is becoming a bottleneck preventing China from fulfilling its aspiration to become a superpower. Quipping on former leader Deng Xiaoping’s famous cat metaphor, Hu argued in an article for the 21st Century Business Herald on 6 March 2010 that China has become world’s biggest ‘black cat’ – the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide – and it should strive to be a ‘green cat’ by achieving great energy efficiency.

Hu Angang also withdrew his support for population policy and began to urge the government to loosen birth control in order to prolong the demographic dividends of the reform era (for more on the ‘demographic dividend’ and its limitations, see Jane Golley’s chapter in China Story Yearbook 2012 online here).

A fierce defender of China’s political institutions, Hu argues that China’s current political model deserves more credit than reformists who urge speedier democratisation often allow. The proof for this, according to Hu, lies no further than the economic growth of the past decades. In an article published on the front page of the People’s Daily’s Overseas Edition on 3 July 2012, Hu called China’s Politburo Standing Committee a ‘collective presidential system with Chinese characteristics’, as opposed to the ‘Western individual presidential system’. After elaborating on the merits of the two, he concluded that the former is superior. China is too big and too complex for the Western ‘bipartisan system, tripartite system, presidential system and bicameral system’, which are ‘too simplistic, too limited and too defective’. A collective presidential system, with multiple leaders heading different leading state organs, not only guarantees a wider consensus ‘through sharing of decision-making wisdom and expertise’”, but also ‘prevents an individual from making decisions on major issues and allows timely correction of mistakes’. (For a more detailed examination of Hu’s political analysis in a historical context, see Geremie Barmé’s essay Cicero’s Advice to China’s Would-be Leaders in The China Story Journal, 7 November 2012.)

The post Hu Angang 胡鞍钢 appeared first on The China Story.

He Weifang made his first mark in the judicial reform scene with an article published in Southern Weekly in 1998. In the article, ‘Decommissioned Servicemen Find Their Way to Court’ 复转军人进法院, he criticized the practice of the state assigning demobilized army officers with no legal training to work as judges at courts. The article, which likens the practice to deploying untrained soldiers to perform surgery, drew strong criticism from PLA publications. The resulting political pressure was so intense that Southern Weekly was forced to issue an apology. However, He’s view was subsequently vindicated when the government released a policy denying ex-officers the privileges he had criticised and stipulated that those of them who wished to pursue careers in the judicial system undertake the national law exam.

He’s view on judicial reform can be summed up as follows: 1. Support for judicial independence and the professionalization of Chinese law; and, 2. Precedence of judicial reform over political reform. Recently, his emphasis on independence has shifted from a focus on interference from the government to interference from public opinion and the media. This is, as he has commented, because ‘people’s feelings are not always reliable and can change rapidly. Therefore it is not viable for judgements to be made on the basis of people’s feelings’. He’s wariness of public opinion puts him at odds with He Bing 何兵, another prominent Chinese law scholar, who has called He’s ‘judicial independence’ a euphemism for ‘judicial dictatorship’. He Bing claims that He Weifang’s ideal judicial system would be one that pays no heed either to the party-state or the people.

He Weifang is a consistent and bold advocate for democracy. He was a signatory of Charter 08, a manifesto drafted by Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波 and initially signed by over 350 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists. During the heyday of Bo Xilai (for more details, see The China Story Yearbook 2012), He Weifang published an open letter criticizing the Chongqing Model.

He’s hopes for China’s future were best expressed at what was later dubbed the ‘New Xishan Meeting‘ 新西山会议, a closed-door meeting attended by some of the country’s most distinguished intellectuals. At the meeting, He Weifang expressed a belief that China should follow the model of Taiwan, that the Chinese Communist Party should split into different alliances or factions according to their various political inclinations and that Party control over the military should be terminated. He’s speech, which was supposed to be off record, was later leaked and provoked the ire of the ‘leftists’. They denounced the lawyer as ‘One of China’s Ten Biggest Traitors’ as well as being a trojan Party member whose clandestine mission was to sabotage the organisation.

One thing that sets He apart from his peers is his enthusiasm for public debate. As a ‘public intellectual’ rather than merely an academic, he sees enlightening the public as being more important than theoretical research. Since publishing his essay in Southern Weekly, he has established himself as a social commentator; he is a frequently-quoted source on a wide range of topics in the mainstream media. He also blogs and microblogs actively.

In a 2006 interview, He Weifang explained his view of the role of the public intellectual:

I think that public intellectuals should reach beyond narrow disciplines and see the world in a broader perspective. Academic disciplinary divides should never be social divides. The divides within scholarship are created to facilitate our perception of the world. Over-emphasis on such intellectual divisions can only limit us, allowing us but an incomplete perception of the world. As a public intellectual, one should not only have interest in his own discipline but also show interest in general social affairs and have the ability to see things from different angles. An academic background creates the possibility of the public intellectual.

…

Law is a very social discipline. Society is our laboratory, one in which all our theories get tested. If you say that your discipline is not connected to society, or rather, when you remain silent in the face of society’s shortcomings, observing things that harm the rule of law, I think you lack concern for society, and your credibility as a legal expert should be questioned.

Aside from teaching and writing about law, He is also a prolific essayist who writes on a wide range of subjects from higher education to such diverse topics as the Cultural Revolution and Nazi Germany architecture. His cool-headed prose appeals to liberal-minded readers and often displays his equal knowledge of both China and the West. An essay collection co-authored with the controversial memoir writer Zhang Yihe 章诒和 became a best-seller list and was enthusiastic received among Chinese readers overseas.

He Weifang’s extramural activities have been controversial. In 2011, Fang Zhouzi 方舟子, the science writer known for his anti-fraud campaigns (for more on vigilante Fang, see Chapter 6 in The China Story Yearbook), charged He with failing to satisfy the requirements of scholarly publication, and said that He’s list of recent work was dominated by literary works and opinion pieces rather than serious academic papers.

He’s departure from Peking University in 2008 to take a position at Zhejiang University prompted students to petition the PKU administration to do whatever was necessary to keep him on. When Zhejiang University later revoked its offer for undisclosed reasons, He returned to PKU via a two-year stint at a branch campus in Shihezi, Xinjiang, an appointment viewed by his supporters as retribution from authorities for his general disobedience.

Additional links

• He Weifang’s Sina microblog and blog
• He Weifang, Nothing has Greater Reformist Significance Than Judicial Reform 没什么比司法改革更具改良特色

The post He Weifang 贺卫方 appeared first on The China Story.