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Understanding Chinese Economy Accurately—John Wong and His China Research

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Abstract

How and to what extent can China be more accurately understood? Is China best understood as it is or through theories that appear to reveal its nature? John Wong is an example of the former approach, a pursuer of economic realism in the discipline of economic analysis. This paper first describes John Wong’s conceptual model of Chinese economic development, which consists of three major components: Singapore as the reference point; economic scale as the first adjusted variable; and economic development phase as the second variable. The paper further explores sources of his choice of methodology through the positionality of his research. He cannot be neatly categorized in any existing school of economic analysis of the Western academic tradition but pursues his accurate understanding of China through pragmatism; his institutionalized research position constitutes the methodological foundation for his research strategy and conceptual framework.

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Notes

  1. Quoted from written correspondence between the author and John Wong.

  2. Interview with John Wong, 2007, Taipei, Taiwan.

  3. Quoted from written correspondence between the author and John Wong.

  4. Quoted from written correspondence between the author and John Wong.

  5. In the interview, John Wong asserted his determination to carry out research without being trapped ideologically, as many US scholars are.

  6. Interview with John Wong.

  7. The self/other concept is originally attributed to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in “Phenomenology of Spirit” (1977).

  8. From his autobiography and John Wong’s interview.

  9. According to the interview with John Wong, each stage of the institute was given a different research assignment, based on the need to shift the focus of Singapore’s China policy. The IEAP period, for instance, emphasized the study of Confucian thought, when the Singaporean government—which had chosen to westernize the country for quick development—learned from its East Asian neighbors the merits of Confucian philosophy in modernization and thus encouraged Confucian thought to maintain stability in the 1970s and 1980s.

  10. Interview with John Wong. 2007.

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  1. Department of Political Economy, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

    Chueiling Shin

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Shin, C. Understanding Chinese Economy Accurately—John Wong and His China Research. East Asia 31, 157–169 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-014-9212-4

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