Reply #47: Dr. Fan has the ear of the Chinese Government

[TexasLawyer]

http://www.chinaonline.com/refer/biographies/business/Fan_Gang3.asp

Professor of Economics, Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, PRC

Director, National Economic Research Institute, China Reform Foundation (NERI-China)

Dr. Fan Gang is a highly distinguished economist trained at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, an elite government think tank overseeing numerous research institutes. In addition to his duties as a professor of that think tank and director of the prestigious NERI-China, Fan devotes his considerable energy to serving as an advisor to the Chinese government and consultant to a number of international organizations. Dr. Fan is a prolific author as well, with over 100 academic papers and eight books on macroeconomics and the economics of transition to his name.

Dr. Fan has been a proponent of using tight monetary policy coupled with an expansionary macroeconomic policy to stimulate China’s domestic demand, which remained sluggish during 1999. Although critics of the Chinese government’s massive investment in infrastructure construction maintained that such public spending merely increased government debt and had so far failed to achieve its purpose, Dr. Fan recommended patience, pointing out that macroeconomic policies take time to work and that in the absence of adequate private investment, the government was obliged to step in until the market economy became firmly established.

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