Wu Jinglian (吴敬琏; born 1930) is a Chinese economist whose career spans the whole of the reform era. Colleagues call him “Market Wu” (吴市场), and publishers have described him as “China’s most celebrated and influential economist” — publisher’s copy, not an independent verdict. His long advisory proximity to the State Council makes his writings the standard attributed statement of the establishment’s market-reform position.
Current position
Senior Research Fellow at the Development Research Center (DRC) of the State Council. A 2016 bibliographic record for his book Whither China? also lists him as Professor of Economics at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and Peking University, and at the graduate school of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and as an adviser to the China Finance 40 Forum (CF40). No later institutional title has been documented in the sources consulted.
Positions at the time of key cited work
- Chatham House lecture, “Challenges for China’s Economic Policy and System Reform” (2012): Senior Research Fellow, DRC.
- 《改革：现在到了关键时刻》 (Reform: Now at a Critical Point, Chinese monograph): full text was not available to the editors.
- Whither China?: Restarting the Reform Agenda (Oxford University Press, 2016, with Ma Guochuan): DRC senior research fellow; CEIBS / PKU / CASS graduate school professor, per the 2016 book record.
- Caixin columns and interviews, 2018–2019: DRC senior research fellow.
Field and expertise
Economics — economic policy and market-reform theory: coordinated reforms (配套改革), the relationship between rule of law and reform, anti-corruption through market reform, the diagnosis of reform stagnation, and comparative transition economics (Eastern European and Soviet transitions). The relevant period is 1978 to the present; sectors include SOE reform, tax, trade, banking, monetary and foreign-exchange reform, competition policy, intellectual-property protection, and rule-of-law institution building.
Major works
- Whither China?: Restarting the Reform Agenda (OUP, 2016, with Ma Guochuan; translated by Xiaofeng Hua and Nancy Hearst; ISBN 9780190223151). The book’s abstract states its core thesis: “Professor Wu argues that the only way to escape the various social ills in China today is to restart the economic and political reforms… and to move China in the direction of a market economy, the rule of law, and democracy.” The book itself is paywalled; the abstract is openly available.
- Reform: Now at a Critical Point (改革：现在到了关键时刻) — Chinese monograph; full text not available.
- Chatham House lecture (2012) on China’s economic policy and system reform.
- Caixin interviews and columns (2018–2019): the “coordinated reforms” program across taxes, trade, banks, SOEs, and monetary and foreign-exchange policy, defending the 18th Central Committee’s Third Plenum language on letting markets play a “decisive role” in resource allocation.
- Barry Naughton, Wu Jinglian: Voice of Reform in China (MIT Press) — a scholarly treatment of his career.
Documented positions (attributed to Wu Jinglian)
- Reform pairing. Economic reform without political reform is unsustainable; restart economic and political reforms together. (The Whither China? abstract.)
- Coordinated reforms (配套改革). Reforms across taxes, trade, banks, SOEs, and monetary and foreign-exchange policy must proceed together rather than piecemeal. (Caixin, 2018.)
- The “decisive role” of markets. Resource allocation should be governed by markets, with rule-of-law institutions built to underpin them. (Caixin, 2019 interview.)
- Reform-stagnation diagnosis. The post-2008 decade of slowdown was driven by vested interests blocking reform; he warned against drift toward what Chinese discourse calls “crony capitalism” (权贵资本主义). (Whither China?)
On reception: Xu Chenggang told Caixin that Wu had “maintained the biggest and the longest influence over China’s economic reform among all economists” — Xu’s attributed view, not a verifiable fact. Neo-left critics in the 2000s attacked him as the “chief designer” of ills they attributed to marketization (attributed; specific citations not located).
What this entry does not cover
- His position on the 1989 moment is not documented in the sources consulted.
- His views on pensions and social security are not documented in the sources consulted.
- The Chinese monographs’ full texts were not available to the editors.
Readers should remember that his is an insider’s account: he writes from inside the establishment, and his reform narratives have not been subjected to an adversarial published audit.
Selected sources
- RePEc bibliographic record for Whither China?: Restarting the Reform Agenda: https://ideas.repec.org/b/oxp/obooks/9780190223151.html (author affiliations, abstract, OUP catalog, ISBN)
- Chatham House lecture, 2012, “Challenges for China’s Economic Policy and System Reform”
- Caixin 2018–2019 interviews and columns on coordinated reforms and the “decisive role” of markets
- Barry Naughton, Wu Jinglian: Voice of Reform in China (MIT Press)