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 I took on 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 had contributed to an academic volume on Xinjiang, China’s westernmost region (reported 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. I continue to hold the position of Research Associate at EAI and spent the summer of 2009 in residence producing two briefs for the Singapore government: "Explaining China's High Saving" and "Economic Corridors for the Greater Mekong Sub-Region".
Since August 2008 my teenage daughter and I have made our home in Los Angeles. I am teaching a course on the Chinese economy at Claremont McKenna College in spring 2010 and hold a Visiting Scholar position at the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies. My research currently focuses on Chinese saving behavior and macroeconomic imbalances. A Wall Street Journal Asia op-ed of Jan 7, 2010 argues in support of China's exchange rate policy. A 2009 paper in the China Economic Quarterly makes the case that households and government, not enterprises as is commonly believed, are behind the rise in the saving rate during the 2000s.