Academic praises rising innovation

Edmund Phelps says policy changes are encouraging entrepreneurship

For Edmund Phelps, a Columbia University professor who has won a Nobel Memorial Prize and the China Friendship Award, the most significant change in China since his first visit to the country in 1994 is the rise of entrepreneurship and innovation. "We've all been astonished by the privatization of so much of the commercial sector - that's just been an amazing transformation of production," said Phelps, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, when asked about what impressed him the most over the 40 years since China's reform and opening-up.

"And also, there has been a remarkable welcoming of new firms bearing new ways of producing and new products to produce," he added. "Zillions of new firms have been created in China in the past several decades."