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Nobel winner: China has defied economic recession
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-17 11:37 BLOOMINGTON, US: Elinor Ostrom, this year's Economics Nobel winner, has said that despite the challenges posed by the global economic recession, China has been enjoying rapid economic growth. "There are a lot of encouraging things going on in China," Ostrom said on Thursday. She is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics.
In an interview with Xinhua at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ostrom said the Chinese authorities have allowed a lot of experimentation and spread knowledge to encourage people to try out various ways of conserving resources. Giving advice to China on its economic development, Ostrom said: "There is no single formula. The polycentric system, with some of the governance at large, some regional, some small and some going down to village level, is more likely to be able to solve problems than just having it at a large scale." She won the Nobel for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons. On the current economic situation in the US, Ostrom said: "It is a very rough time We over-invested a lot of capital and we should move to have more self-organization and less commercialization." "We hope for a recovery and things are looking more positive. There are a lot of things going on in terms of sustainable development in the US, in Canada and even in Mexico." Speaking on sustainable development of the global economy, she said: "Growing products in country A and shipping them to country B is not as good for the environment as growing them in country A and eating them in country A. It doesn't mean that international trade is always bad. But sometimes there are real advantages sometimes we have moved to where we are using too much energy and we need to do pretty serious thinking about it." Referring to the positive changes brought by her winning the Nobel Prize, Ostrom said: "I hope that it means some of the research we have already done is taken a little more seriously and I hope it helps some of our colleagues in China who are doing a very exciting study in Beijing on self-organization." Ostrom's research was introduced to China about 10 years ago, generating great interest. Some of her books have been translated into Chinese, including Governing the Commons: the Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Xinhua (China Daily 10/17/2009 page1) |
