U.C. San Diego scholar to tackle economic reform in China in Sichel talk

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—An economics professor at the University of California at San Diego will address economic reform in China in a talk next month at Western Michigan University as part of the Werner Sichel Lecture Series.

Dr. Barry J. Naughton, the Sokwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California at San Diego, will speak at noon Wednesday, Nov. 11, in 2028 Brown Hall. His talk, titled "Is There a Xi Jinping Model of Economic Reform?" is free and open to the public. A light lunch reception will be available after the lecture.

Dr. Barry J. Naughton

Naughton earned his doctoral degree in economics from Yale in 1986 and was named the So Kuanlok Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California at San Diego in 1998.

He has been studying and analyzing the Chinese economy since the early 1980s and is considered one of the world's most highly respected economists working on China. He is an authority on the Chinese economy with an emphasis on issues relating to industry, trade, finance and China's transition to a market economy.

Naughton published his comprehensive and authoritative textbook and study, "The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth," and it has been translated into Chinese and Korean. His groundbreaking first book, "Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform 1978-93" won the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. More recently, he translated, edited and annotated a volume of essays by Wu Jinglian, China's foremost reform economists. He also writes a quarterly analysis of the Chinese economy for China Leadership Monitor.

Naughton's recent research focuses on regional economic growth in China and its relationship to foreign trade and investment. He has addressed economic reform in Chinese cities, trade and trade disputes between China and the United States and economic interactions among China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

About the series

The theme for this year's Werner Sichel Lecture Series is "The Impacts of China's Rise on the Pacific and the World." The series is organized by the WMU Department of Economics and named in honor of Dr. Werner Sichel, a longtime WMU economics professor and former department chair, who retired in 2004. The series is cosponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and the Timothy Light Center for Chinese Studies. The lectures are open to the public and formatted with the general public in mind.

Upcoming Sichel presentations

• Feb. 24: Dr. Mary E. Lovely, professor of economics and the Melvin A Eggers Economics Faculty Scholar in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, "China's Evolving State Enterprises."

• March 30: Dr. James G. Wen, professor of economics and international studies at Trinity College, "Why is the Exit Right the Key to the Birth of China's Land Market?"

• April 13: Dr. Xiaodong Zhu, professor of economics at the University Toronto, "Trade, Migration and Growth: Evidence from China."

This year's series is being organized by Drs. Wei-Chiao Huang and Huizhong Zhou, WMU professors of economics.

For more information, contact Huang at (269) 387-5528 or huang@wmich.edu, or Zhou at (269) 387-5550 or huizhong.zhou@wmich.edu or visit wmich.edu/economics/events.

For more news, arts and events, visit wmich.edu/news.