How High Is Too High? Investment Share and the Chinese Economy

Speaker: Zhang Jun, Fudan University with Barry Naughton, IR/PS

Date: Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014

Time: 4:30 – 6 p.m.

Location: IR/PS Robinson Building Complex,

room 3202

A high investment to gross domestic product ratio, or investment share, has been a noticeable feature of China’s unbalanced growth over the past 20 years. In the last decade, however, fixed assets investment has risen to around 75 percent of Chinese GDP while the fixed capital formation has only increased to about 48 percent of GDP.

Why has such a divergence appeared? Why has fixed capital formation been growing so much more slowly than fixed assets investment? How high is too high?

Leading economist Dr. Zhang Jun will demystify this conundrum and explain why China’s investment share is most likely to be over estimated by the China National Bureau of Statistics.

IR/PS Sokwanlok Professor of Chinese International Affairs Barry Naughton will introduce Zhang.

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Zhang Jun is the Chang-Jiang Chair Professor of Economics at Fudan University and director of the China Center for Economic Studies. He is one of the leading economists in China, with dozens of publications in both Chinese and English, including in the China Economic Review, the Journal of Asian Economics, the Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, the Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, and the East Asian Review.

Barry Naughton is one of America’s most highly respected economists working on China. Naughton has written the authoritative textbook “The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth,” which has been translated into Chinese. His ground-breaking book “Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993” received the Ohira Memorial Prize.

Directions and parking instructions for IR/PS. For questions please contact 21st Century China Program.

This event is cosponsored by the 21st Century China Program.