The Eighth International Conference on Government and Market Economics was held online on May 27, 2026. The event was jointly organized by the Society for the Advancement of Government and Market Economics (SAGE), the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua University, and the Academic Center for Chinese Economic Practice and Thinking (ACCEPT) at Tsinghua University.
Distinguished attendees included Eric Maskin, Adams University Professor at Harvard University and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics; historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, author of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind"; Dong Zhiyong, Standing Committee Member of the Party Committee and Vice President of Peking University, and Editor-in-Chief of "Economic Science"; Zheng Jianghuai, Dean of the School of Economics at Nanjing University; Qiu Bin, Distinguished Professor and Director of the International Economics Research Institute at Southeast University; Li Tao, Vice President of the Central University of Finance and Economics; Zhang Zhiming, Vice President of Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics; Yang Yuzhen, Vice President of Henan Normal University; Fan Shide, Professor and Dean of the School of Economics at Nanjing Audit University; Li Daokui, Dean of ACCEPT at Tsinghua University and Editor-in-Chief of "Research on Government and Market Economics"; and Liu Peilin, Co-Director of the Institute of Government and Market Economics at the Center for Regional Coordinated Development at Zhejiang University. Wang Hongwei, Vice President of Tsinghua University, delivered opening remarks, and the conference was chaired by Li Ke'aobo, Executive Vice Dean of ACCEPT.
Wang Hongwei noted that over its eight years, ACCEPT has focused on building an independent knowledge system based on Chinese economic practice with international applicability, producing influential research. It established the international society, launched an English academic journal, and a Chinese journal in 2025 that has already published work by three Nobel laureates, with its citation rate rising rapidly. He expressed hope that the center would seize historical opportunities, serve the nation, conduct influential international research, build an academic high ground, enhance international discourse, lead China's economics reform, and help establish Tsinghua as a leader in building an independent knowledge system for philosophy and social sciences.
Li Daokui outlined the core ideas, disciplinary progress, and future direction of Government and Market Economics. He stated its fundamental task is to incorporate the government, a key participant in the modern market economy, into economic analysis, studying government behavior and its underlying incentives to realize an effective government and efficient market. He emphasized that a discipline has more vitality than a school of thought. The discipline's significance lies in serving the theoretical construction of Chinese modernization and China's independent knowledge system, transforming Chinese economic experience into theoretical contributions with international explanatory power for global promotion. Methodologically, he advocated a trinity research paradigm of case studies, theory, and statistics.
On artificial intelligence, Li Daokui argued that AI not only enhances economic research capabilities but also raises major issues the discipline must address. AI is gradually forming a "silicon-based society." Humanity must study not only how AI affects economic operations but also the relationship between silicon-based and human societies, including the behavioral rules, institutional arrangements, and governance mechanisms within silicon-based societies. He proposed establishing an AI Development and Governance Committee with both developmental and regulatory functions, involving scholars, entrepreneurs, and government, endowed with a clear mission, professional capability, and regulatory authority to balance AI development and governance effectively.
Eric Maskin discussed the social impact and governance framework of the AI revolution. He noted that AI diffuses faster and more broadly than past industrial, computer, or internet revolutions, affecting nearly all social domains and employment sectors. On one hand, AI can replace much routine, repetitive, and even some cognitive labor; on the other, it brings risks like job displacement, deepfakes, and profound crises from potential loss of control as autonomy increases.
Regarding governance, Maskin emphasized that research into AI's operational mechanisms and social impacts is a public good; the private sector may underinvest due to spillover benefits, necessitating government research funding and institutional incentives. He further advocated applying mechanism design principles to AI governance institutions, ensuring they promote AI development while preventing misuse through rational allocation of authority, responsibility, professional capability, and incentives. He favored a dedicated AI department akin to a Treasury model over a highly independent, single-mandate model like the Federal Reserve.
Professor Zheng Jianghuai pointed out that China's economic development stage has fundamentally shifted from application-oriented to basic research-oriented. However, the current investment structure is severely imbalanced, with a very low national share of R&D expenditure. Regionally, there is a mismatch between innovation input and output: the eastern region's share of R&D spending has declined while its share of invention patent grants has risen; the western region's share of R&D spending has increased, but its share of invention patent grants has fallen. Universities, as upstream players in the innovation chain, face a disconnect between basic research and supply, downstream low-level repetitive competition, and a very low rate of成果转化. Local governments prefer investing more in development research as it boosts GDP and political performance.
Basic research has dual externalities. First, "asymmetric horizontal spatial externality": the intensity of knowledge spillover from basic research has a U-shaped relationship with regional innovation gaps. The central and western regions have weaker actual innovation capacity; even with rising R&D investment shares, their innovation output is siphoned by the eastern region. Second, "vertical linkage externality": upstream basic research sectors do not capture all benefits. The叠加 of horizontal and vertical externalities leads to insufficient supply of core technologies, resulting in technological bottlenecks. The response lies in a new national system, which should be endogenous, overcoming both market and organizational failures: first, vertical integration to internalize linkage externalities by increasing R&D investment in existing basic research entities,充分覆盖 the breadth of basic research, and institutional innovation; when basic research investment is sufficient and coverage broad enough, externality effects can be diluted. Second, horizontal coordination to internalize cross-regional and cross-entity spatial externalities through interest coordination. Building a national unified market requires跨地区的 risk-sharing and benefit-sharing, posing new challenges for central-local relations and differentiated subsidy policies.
Yuval Noah Harari's分享 centered on "Human Choices in the Age of AI." He noted that AI is no longer just an辅助性 tool; it is increasingly参与 and influencing decision-making in critical areas from power grid operation and transportation systems to financial transactions and healthcare. AI's autonomous decisions are playing important roles, even beginning to replace human decision-making authority. He emphasized that the key issue in this transfer of authority is the "opacity" of algorithms: humans are recklessly ceding important decision-making power over resource allocation, opportunity access, and risk assessment to AI systems, equivalent to abandoning understanding and control of the decision-making process itself, potentially harming social fairness and posing significant risks.
From a historian's perspective, he believes technological change undeniably brings greater well-being; the negative aspects often lie not in the change itself but in the human process of adapting to and embracing it. When society embraces new technologies and progress too rapidly without effective审查 and纠错 mechanisms, it can lead to catastrophic consequences at critical moments. Therefore, AI development must not follow a "deploy first, regulate later" approach; institutional arrangements capable of constraining AI systems must be established to ensure their operations and decision-making processes can be audited, corrected promptly when problems arise, and human intervention capability is retained in critical domains.
Professor Dong Zhiyong切入 from the core perspective of "Government and Market Economics," delivering a systematic speech titled "Can Poverty Alleviation Foster Ambition? - Examining Government Policy and Individual Choice Through the 'Lazybones' Problem." The discipline focuses on the synergistic complementarity of government intervention and market mechanisms in resource allocation, and the "lazybones" issue in poverty governance is a典型议题 of how policy design and market incentives affect individual behavioral choices under this视角,其本质 concerning the intervention boundaries of government poverty alleviation policies, the incentive efficacy of market mechanisms, and how both jointly破解 the难题 of individual low-effort equilibrium.
The speech noted the "lazybones" problem has persisted since the early days of reform and opening up, and can be defined from moral, economic, and behavioral science dimensions, clarifying its core is an individual low-level equilibrium of low participation, low expectations, and low effort, resulting from intertwined structural and individual困境, not merely a moral character issue. Professor Dong used budget constraint lines and indifference curve models to analyze key influencing factors: the former constrained by variables like收益, risk, and opportunities; the latter related to immediate consumption preferences, loss aversion, and socio-cultural mechanisms. On policy responses, he proposed dual short-term and long-term paths: short-term adjustments to the budget constraint line through policies like务工补贴 and产业奖补 to increase effort收益 and reduce participation costs; long-term focus on "fostering ambition through poverty alleviation," shifting the indifference curve outward by stabilizing expectations, lowering learning participation costs, and establishing responsibility constraints and reward mechanisms to stimulate endogenous motivation. Finally, by addressing the long-term nature of the "lazybones" problem, estimating long-term costs and benefits of incentive policies, defining boundaries between government and market, and mentioning experiments on employer-employee expectations regarding compensation-effort differences, Dong pointed the way for future深化 of this research from the Government and Market Economics视角.
During the roundtable discussion, Qiu Bin stated that as researchers, while领会 the spirit from relevant documents, maintaining关注 on major societal issues is equally important: examples include the expansion of the Nanjing地铁及都市圈, manufacturing investment differences between the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta, cultural tourism economy, pension finance,科技金融, and green finance. He believes that those who gain future industries gain the world, those who gain talent gain the world, and those who gain the post-00s generation gain the world. It is necessary to正视 current downward pressures in economic operations but also oppose certain Western views that恶意唱衰 China's economy and人口问题.
On research methods, while returning to classics remains important, Qiu Bin认为 traditional theories like Adam Smith's absolute advantage and David Ricardo's comparative advantage are难以适配 China's current development. The concept of deriving comparative advantage from China's independent system, proposed by Huang Xianhai, Dean of the School of Global Development at Zhejiang University—where concentrating on a certain factor enables going from zero to best—better explains the vibrant phenomenon of industrial investment attraction today.
Li Tao stated that research on Government and Market Economics is of great significance for modern government governance and market economy development. The government is a key participant in the modern market economy, and its behavior directly affects or even determines the quality of economic operations. How to design institutions to make government incentives more rational, thereby promoting prosperous market economy development, is a core课题 in contemporary economic research that cannot be ignored.
Building on this, Li Tao proposed three understandings of China's independent knowledge system in economics: first, academic originality, forming knowledge, theory, and methods based on Chinese practice; second, international recognition, avoiding封闭化 development; third, focusing on discipline construction, encompassing scientific research, knowledge innovation, talent cultivation, international cooperation, and cultural传承, with particular emphasis on cultivating young research talent. Li Tao认为 Government and Market Economics has achieved突出 results in these three aspects, making a positive contribution to China's independent knowledge system in economics.
Yang Yuzhen discussed her understanding of Government and Market Economics from macro governance and regional经验 levels. She noted that the key issue in Chinese modernization is economic governance, and the core proposition of economic governance is precisely the relationship between government and market. She believes that in a large economy like China's, different localities do not simply exhibit a "strong government, weak market" relationship; various combinations like strong government-strong market or weak government-weak market can occur. Therefore, the relationship between local governments and market vitality itself holds important research value.
Professor Yang stated that Henan Normal University established a Government and Market Economy Research Center较早, hoping to rely on this platform to cultivate students who understand markets, understand government, are cultured, and have moral自觉. She invited scholars to Henan and Henan Normal University for research exchanges,挖掘 research topics for Government and Market Economics from local economic phenomena with充分现实感.
Zhang Zhiming stated that Government and Market Economics has great potential in China's frontier ethnic regions. Compared to eastern regions with relatively developed market economies and effective government intervention, many government members in frontier areas have limited understanding of economics. Their market interventions sometimes do not meet the requirements of an effective government, easily negatively affecting market order, leading to a very common phenomenon of强政府,弱市场. Therefore, Government and Market Economics has significant推广 space and value in frontier areas, and he hopes the discipline can be promoted更多 among relevant governments and universities.
Zhang Zhiming pointed out that frontier ethnic regions are of great importance to the nation; if the frontier prospers, China prospers; if the frontier is stable, China is stable; only when frontier regions achieve modernization can China achieve overall modernization. However, the economic operational规律 of frontier regions differs from inland areas, and the前提假设条件 in economic analysis should also differ from eastern regions. He sincerely invited economists to conduct on-the-ground investigations in frontier areas, understand the local economic operational态势, guide socio-economic development there, enable better application of Government and Market Economics in these regions, and发挥更大更多的贡献 towards achieving modernization.
Fan Shide认为 research on Government and Market Economics高度契合 the ultimate goal of economics serving national major strategies. Currently, labor migration from rural to urban areas, from less developed to more developed regions, is massive, with an increasingly明显的 trend. As national targeted poverty alleviation focuses on rural and less developed areas, the current large-scale population flow may lead to遗漏 of policy targets and spatial偏差, an issue that should be重点关注 when considering government incentives in Government and Market Economics. Simultaneously, promoting rural revitalization and achieving urban-rural integration also requires充分考量 the impacts of畸形化人口结构 in rural areas due to labor outflow.
Fan Shide also expressed agreement with Li Daokui's approach of establishing Government and Market Economics as a discipline, believing it有利于 talent cultivation and research depth in the field. He同时指出 that if establishing it as a discipline, clear definitions are needed regarding its nature,内涵,外延, boundaries, and relationships with other disciplines.
Finally, Liu Peilin阐释 the uniqueness of Government and Market Economics primarily from the角度 of research questions. First, he noted many young scholars are accustomed to studying the impact of a government policy X on outcome Y. In fact, one can take a step further by追问 why the government introduced the policy or whether better policy designs were possible, thereby studying policy formation, government incentives, and institutional design本身 more deeply.
Second, he emphasized that Government and Market Economics must understand not only "government" but also the interaction mechanism represented by the "and" between government and market. After a policy is introduced, whether and how market entities, local governments, or other actors respond determines if the policy truly works. Comparing China's infrastructure construction with Indonesia learning from China's policies, he illustrated that the same policy design can yield completely different responses in different countries or localities. Therefore, government-market interactions cannot be simply抽象化处理; they must be结合具体情境 for deeper思考与剖析.
Following the morning session, the organizers presented research成果 via posters in an academic分会场 from students and faculty of numerous institutions. Subsequently, the conference held sessions themed "Government and Development" and "Viewing Enterprise and Industrial Development from the Perspective of Government and Market Economics." Paper authors from various universities shared academic topics and焦点问题 related to Government and Market Economics and engaged in in-depth discussions with attendees.
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