Prof. Roy Bin Wong is a Chinese Economic historian at UCLA. He is the Director of the UCLA Asia Institute. He received his BA from the University of Michigan, and received his MA and PhD from Harvard University. Prof. Wong is a well-known Economic Historian belonging to the 'Californian School'. His research has examined Chinese patterns of political, economic and social changes, especially since the eighteenth century, both within Asian regional contexts and compared with more familiar European patterns. He’s the author of the famous book, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Cornell University Press, 1997).

In order to improve students’ historical perspective in economics, SOE invited Prof. R. Bin Wong to pay a visit and give three lectures here, which can be a useful replenishment for the existing courses on economic history. On Nov. 14th-19th, Prof. Wong gave a set of three lectures themed “Chinese Economic Change in Global History” at SOE. This set of three lectures begins with an analysis of economic expansion during the Qing dynasty, provides an assessment of the kinds of economic change occurring between 1850 and 1950, and concludes with an evaluation of economic development since 1950, suggesting the possible relevance of different features of China’s economic past from the perspective of global economic history in order to understand China’s possible future roles in the global economy. The first lecture explained the difficulties of observing the causal mechanisms behind China falling behind Europe or its subsequent economic development. Lecture 1 stressed the importance of social institutions and state policies for economic development, noting that both varied across time and space in world history, subject to particular political and social conditions.  Lecture 2 considered the economic factors behind Britain’s industrial revolution in cotton textiles and subsequent roles for the Chinese state in promoting industrialization and how they did not work very effectively in the first half of the twentieth century.  Lecture 3 considered the changing roles of state actors and domestic social institutions in fostering economic growth before and after the start of major policy changes beginning toward the end of 1978, leading to Chinese economic actors having very different relations to the international economy through “One Belt One Road” initiative than they had previously in both the planned economy and the reform eras. Together the lectures argued for the importance of economic history experiencces to understanding development economics possibilities.