China’s Prospects for Catching Up: Escaping the Middle-Income Trap in an Era of Massive GVC Repositioning

Wednesday, May 11th, 2022
11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m  EDT
1957 E St. NW, Room 211

via Zoom

Professor Keun Lee from Seoul National University, Economics Department, recently Vice Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers of the Korean President, discussed his new book, China’s technological leapfrogging and Economic Catch-up: A Schumpeterian Perspective.

He has previously published a long list of books and articles on the topic of technology and economic catching up, including The Challenges of Technology and Economic Catch-up in Emerging Economies.

Cosponsored by GWIKS, IISTP, and IIEP.

About The Book

After the miraculous economic growth known as the Beijing Consensus, China is now facing a slowdown. The attention has moved to the issue of the middle income trap, or the situation in which economic growth slows down as a country reaches the middle income stage. China’s Technological Leapfrogging and Economic Catch-up: A Schumpeterian Perspective deals with this interesting issue in the context of China. It also discusses China’s limitations and future prospects, especially after the rise of a new “cold war” between China and the US, namely the question of whether China would fall into another trap called the “Thucydides trap,” or conflict with the existing hegemon as a rising power. In sum, this book plays around three key terms, namely, the Beijing Consensus, the Middle Income Trap, and the Thucydides trap, and applies a Schumpeterian approach to these concepts. This book also conducts a comparative analysis that examines China from an “economic catch-up” perspective. An economic catch-up starts from learning and imitating a forerunner, but finishing the race successfully requires taking a different path along the road. This act is also known as leapfrogging, which implies a latecomer doing something different from, and often ahead of, a forerunner.