Academics, business leaders gather for a brainstorming session in China

MORE than 100 academics, consultants and business leaders gathered yesterday in southeast China to brainstorm ideas on governance in emerging markets.

The Brics Seminar on Governance was held in Fujian Province, where the 9th Brics Summit will take place in about two weeks.

Participants come from Brics members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as well as other countries such as Tanzania, Kazakhstan, Chile, Guinea, Ethiopia, and Mexico.

Huang Kunming, executive vice minister of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, which hosted the seminar, said Brics countries are in similar stages of development, confronted by similar challenges.

Sharing experience on governance will help participants learn from one another and improve development.

Brics members account for about 23 percent of the world economy.

They jointly contributed more than half of global growth in 2016.

The grouping, based neither on ideology nor geopolitics, is seen as a new and perhaps better form of global governance in which emerging markets play key roles.

But in recent years, Brics members and other developing countries have encountered difficulties and setbacks.

China, though its economic growth has slowed, remains stable and resilient as it moves toward a “moderately prosperous society” by 2020.

Peking University professor and former World Bank chief economist, Justin Lin Yifu, said that among nearly 200 developing economies after WW2, only two have transitioned from low-income to high-income economies.

China may become the third by 2025.

Sharing the findings of his latest study, Lin said the main reason developing economies remained trapped in middle-income or low-income status was that most of them followed Western mainstream economic theories.

These theories were either structuralism or neoliberalism, and they failed to maintain a balance between the market and the state, Lin maintains.

Structuralism advocates excessive intervention, while neoliberalism champions “laissez faire,” he said.

“The secret of China’s success is its use of both ‘invisible hand’ and ‘visible hand’,” Lin said.

Only when the market and the state play their respective roles can technological innovation and industrial upgrading proceed smoothly, he said.

Robert Kuhn, a China expert from the US, expounded on how Chinese decision makers used the “Four Comprehensives” as an overarching framework and strategic blueprint to reach development goals.

The “Four Comprehensives” encompass efforts to pursue a moderately prosperous society, reform, rule of law and party discipline.