The Industrial Policy Debate of 2016: Zhang Weiying on Entrepreneurs and Innovation (Part 2)

"[One could also say] ‘there hasn't been a long-lived individual who has never fallen ill.’ But could we seriously infer from this that illness is the cause of longevity?" — Zhang Weiying

This is the second part of the landmark “industrial policy debate” between Zhang Weiying and Justin Yifu Lin, held in 2016. Part One, which covers Lin’s arguments in favour of industrial policy, can be found here.

Along with Fan Gang, Zhang Weiying is China’s most prominent representative of the neoliberal economic thought now at odds with the prevailing policy direction. For many years, however, he enjoyed a reputation as one of China’s most influential economists. While working in the State Commission for Restructuring the Economic System in the 1980s, he became closely associated with the dual-track pricing system, widely regarded as a crucial factor in distinguishing China’s relatively stable market transition from that of the Soviet Union and its former republics.

Nonetheless, by the late 2000s, Zhang and other neoliberal economists of the “New Right”—a label given by their detractors—were already coming under criticism amid mounting resentment at the social inequality that economi…