Reprinted from Center for Chinese Economic History, Tsinghua University
On the evening of September 22, 2020, the 16th Luojia High-end Forum on Economics and Management was held online through Tencent VooV Meeting. Mr. Long Denggao, Professor of Institute of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University and Director of Center for Chinese Economic History, Tsinghua University, was invited to bring a wonderful lecture for teachers and students of Economics and Management School of Wuhan University, entitled “Providers of Public Goods and Their Comparison: A Long-term Investigation of China’s Waterway Construction”.
Professor Long Denggao first analyzed the regional restrictions in terms of business scope and funding sources from the supply mode of public goods by legal entities, such as the lack of profit accumulation channels or lack of motivation to expand for organization operators. In contrast, enterprises can break through above restrictions to achieve self-expansion and sustainable development. However, the government-led public goods construction under the planned economy can hardly achieve overall diversified and sustainable development in a long period of time, resulting in extremely backward construction of China’s infrastructure until the eve of reform and opening up. Next, taking the reform of state-owned waterway enterprises as an example, Professor Long talked about the market logic of public goods supply, mainly for the infinite space for market allocation of resources, market competition, market demand orientation and market globalization. Through a series of reform trial and error and exploration, Chinese enterprises are going abroad and actively participating in international competition. The reform practice of state-owned enterprises has achieved remarkable results. It also confirms that marketization, corporatization and internationalization are the general trend in the supply of public goods.
This forum was chaired by Du Xiaocheng, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Economics and Management School of Wuhan University
