My Story
I got in on the ground floor for study of China’s economic reforms doing dissertation research at Nanjing University in 1981-82. On finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, I landed a plum job in the only economics department in the US that takes study of Asia as central to its mission -- at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I got tenure and could easily have lived out a comfortable life in paradise. But worldly adventure beckoned and in 1994 I jumped into the sea (the Chinese expression for leaving the security of state employment for the wilds of the private sector), taking up residence in Beijing to pursue freelance consulting and observe China’s transformation up close. Major projects included work for the Asian Development Bank on improving China’s cross-border economic relations with Central Asia and developing survey techniques to measure small-scale industrial activity for the GDP accounts.
The door to China closed to me in 2003 when I became persona non grata along with others who contributed to an academic volume on Xinjiang, China’s westernmost region (reported here and here; offending chapter here; commentary on July 2009 riots here). But another door opened, at the National University of Singapore where I went on to spend four years, the first at the East Asian Institute, the second in the Economics Department, and finally two at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
Since August 2008 my teenage daughter and I have made our home in Los Angeles. I am currently a Visiting Scholar at the USC US-China Institute and previously held visiting positions at the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies and Claremont McKenna College's Robert Day School of Economics and Finance.
A breakthrough on the visa came in December 2010, followed by another in 2012. March 12 - April 5 I'm teaching at the IES Abroad program affiliated with Beijing Foreign Studies University.
I am currently working on a textbook -- "Macroeconomics for Emerging East Asia" co-authored with Charles Adams, described here. A recent working paper with Carl Bonham analyzes Chinese saving behavior as a function of GDP growth and the dependent share in population (January 2012 version here). On the consulting front, I contributed four chapters to a report for the US Defense Department titled "US-China Economics 2010-2035: Strategies for Contentious Competition," released September 2011 and available on request.