Understanding Chinese Economy Accurately—John Wong and His China Research

Abstract

Understanding China as it is, or chosen theories that fit it well? John Wong represents an example of the former, a case of economic realism in the discipline of economic analysis. This chapter first describes John Wong’s conceptual model of Chinese economic development analysis, which consists of three major components: Singapore as the reference point; economic scale as the first adjusted variable; and the economic development phase as the second variable. John Wong seeks beyond simple academic tradition, but finds in his acute intuition accumulated from work and life a different approach to understand China. The chapter thus further explores the causes to John Wong’s choice of methodology by anatomizing the researcher’s research positionality. He cannot be neatly categorized into any existing school of economic analysis in the Western academic tradition, but pursues his accurate understanding of China. Pragmatism, identification and his institutionalized research position constitute the methodological foundations for his research strategy and conceptual framework.

“Doing research on modern China—called China-watching—has never been easy. It is always controversial and difficult to be objective for so many obvious reasons: ideological difference, cultural difference, social difference and China being too big with rapid changes. Thus, China as a rising power is over-criticized, over-analyzed and over-scrutinized by Western scholars, journalists and commentators. This is particularly in regards to China’s politics and China’s international relations. Basically we are back to the Cold War period of scholarship. Economic analysis is supposed to be less opinionated as it is based on some well-established economic concepts and some hard data. Yet interpretation has still gone wild”

Quoted from written correspondence between the author and John Wong