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Lockdowns in centres of commercial activity and no clear national strategy for living with COVID-19 is the latest challenge confronting the People's Republic of China’s (PRC) economy. The potential for geopolitics to spill over to disrupt the PRC's trade and investment has also increased after Beijing refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And none of the structural headwinds facing the PRC economy – US-PRC strategic competition, unfavourable demographics, rising debt, amongst others – have disappeared. For all of these reasons many analysts see Beijing’s growth target of 5.5 percent this year as being increasingly unrealistic. Add in an energy transition towards less carbon-intensive growth and a campaign of economic coercion unleashed against around a dozen Australian exports since May 2020 and not surprisingly there are assessments that the best days of the Australia-PRC economic relationship are behind us. Yet the PRC economy has consistently proved such predictions wrong in the past and there remains the fact that in 2021, the PRC's purchases of Australian goods hit a record high of $179 billion, accounting for 39 percent of the total. 

Does Beijing still have the capacity and the will to inject short-term policy stimulus at a cost of necessary structural reforms? To what extent is economic policy in the PRC these days constrained by politics, whether it be geopolitical spats with the US over COVID-19 or the upcoming 20th Party Congress later in the year? What do we know about the sensitivity of economic transactions to political tensions, particularly between the PRC and Australia and its strategic friends? Is there respite on the horizon for Australian companies hit with disrupted market access? 

The Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS:ACRI) in partnership with the University of Sydney China Studies Centre hosted a webinar with Professor Yiping Huang, Deputy Dean and Sinar Mas Chair Professor of Finance and Economics at the National School of Development at Peking University; Professor Jane Golley, UTS:ACRI Advisory Board member and Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University; and Su-Lin Tan, Asia correspondent for the South China Morning Post, on a panel moderated by Professor James Laurenceson, UTS:ACRI Director, to discuss these questions and more. This discussion was followed by audience Q&A. 

Time: 12.30pm - 1.30pm AEST

 

About the speakers

Professor Yiping Huang

Yiping Huang is Sinar Mas Chair Professor of Finance and Economics, Deputy Dean of the National School of Development, and Director of the Institute of Digital Finance, Peking University. Currently, he is also Deputy Secretary-General of the China Society of Finance and Banking, Chairman of the Special Committee on Fintech Development and Research of the National Internet Finance Association of China, Chairman of the Academic Committee of the China Finance 40 Forum, a member of the Chinese Economists 50 Forum, Editor of China Economic Journal, an Associate Editor of Asian Economic Policy Review, and an independent director of the Ant Group and China Life Insurance.

His key research interests are macro economy and financial policy.

Previously, he served as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the People’s Bank of China between 2015 and 2018. He was also a policy analyst at the Research Center for Rural Development of the State Council, Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University, General Mills International Visiting Professor of Economics and Finance at the Columbia Business School, Managing Director and Chief Asia Economist for Citigroup, Managing Director and Chief Economist for Emerging Asia for Barclays.

Professor Huang received his Bachelor of Agricultural Economics from Zhejiang Agricultural University, Master of Economics from Renmin University of China and PhD in Economics from Australian National University.

Professor Jane Golley

Jane Golley is a Professor and economist at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University and a member of the Advisory Board of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.

Professor Golley is an ANU graduate (BEc, Hons, 1993) whose life-long interest in China began with a brief stint in the Asia Section of the Australian Commonwealth Treasury in 1993, before she left for the University of Oxford in 1994, where she completed her Mphil and Dphil and taught undergraduate economics through to 2002. She returned to the School of Economics at the ANU in 2003, taking up a position at the Crawford School in 2008 and then moving to the Australian Centre on China in the World (2011-2021), before joining the Crawford School in 2022.

Professor Golley’s research has covered a wide range of topics centred around the Chinese economy, often intersecting with other disciplines. Her early work on regional development focused on the uneven patterns of economic geography in China’s industrial development, spurring ongoing research into other sources of inequality, including rural-urban and gender inequalities in education and income. Another long-term research agenda has explored the economic impacts of demographic change in China, including the global impacts of the one- and two-child policies and rising gender imbalances. Other research projects have examined the interplay between the economy and the environment, such as the relationship between income inequality and carbon dioxide emissions associated with China’s pursuit of ‘green growth’. Her latest inter-disciplinary endeavours have taken her towards politics and international relations, with topics ranging from China’s growing geoeconomics capabilities and ‘geoeducation’ strategies, to the impact of its bilateral political relations on its patterns of trade.

Professor Golley has taught the Masters-Level Chinese economy course at the Crawford School since 2016. She is actively engaged with politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats and the media in public policy debate regarding China’s rise and the Australia-China relationship. She was the co-editor of the China Story Yearbook series from 2016-2021, including Crisis, published in 2021. She has served as the President of the Chinese Economic Society of Australia (2010-2012) and the Chinese Studies Association of Australia (2020-2021). She is currently an Executive Member of the Australia-China Business Council (ACT) and the ACT representative on the NSW State Advisory Council of CEDA.

Su-Lin Tan

Su-Lin Tan joined the South China Morning Post in 2020 after The Australian Financial Review where she covered housing and commercial property, Asian business and street talk and investigations. She is a qualified accountant and worked in investment banking and funds management both in London and Sydney before becoming a journalist.

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