On October 15th, 2017, George Root, Professor of the Public Policy School of George Mason University in the United States, was invited to give a lecture on “Sino-US trade” for MPA students from University of International Business and Economics at classroom 630, Ningyuan Building.
At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Root introduced his new book "Capital and Collusion---The Political Logic of Global Economic Development". With the social foundation of policy credibility, political and economic structure, as well as information economy as the starting point for the discussion, the book deeply analyses the historical development and complexity of the world's major emerging economies from the perspective of risk, uncertainty and social progress. Professor Root believes that the global economy is growing steadily, but there are still many countries whose economy grows slowly. The fundamental reason why great disparities of the economic performance still exist between developed countries and developing countries, lies in the deep-rooted uncertainty of markes, society and politics in some developing countries. Consequently, Professor Root proposes to convert uncertainty into risk by establishing organizations and institutions. Risk can be calculated while uncertainty cannot, thereby narrowing the ever-increasing wealth gap between countries.
Professor Root Presents his New Book to the vice president Weixia Lv
In the following part, Professor Root especially introduced those organizations and institutions related to trade in American government, including the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Energy, the Customs and Border Protection(CBP), The International Trade Commission(ITC), etc. His introduction provided an overall trade mechanism in U.S. for students and established a basis for everyone to view the development of Sino-US trade more objectively and comprehensively. Afterwards, Professor Root guided students to ponder and analyze the essential aspects of the development process of Sino-US trade, including multilateral and bilateral trade mechanisms, the historical development of BIT, negative lists, and intellectual property protection(IPR). When analyzing Sino-US trade issues, Professor Root suggested students to treat/view the development trend of Sino-US trade from the perspective of historical development. Professor Root also explained in detail those crucial nodes in the development of Sino-US trade, from the establishment of the mechanism and institutions to the evolution of laws and regulations.
Students highly appreciated the lecture and actively joined the discussion, creating a warm atmosphere. The lecture ended in their heated discussion.
About Professor Hilton Root:
He is an expert in international political economy and development policy. He was a senior adviser on financial development of the US Treasury Department, a sponsor of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). He also provides consulting services for many well-known agencies like/including Asian Development Bank (ADB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). He worked as the head of the project "Improving Government Efficiency" sponsored by US Agency for International Development(USAID), which has been successfully implemented in at least 25 countries. Professor Root has a wide range of research fields, with more than 200 publications, nine of which have been translated into different languages and published. He won the bestselling Charles H. Levine Memorial Prize in 1997, the Bestseller Award for Economic history in 1995, as well as the Chester Penn Higby Prize in 1986.
