Vida acadêmica chinesa

Xia Yeliang: The China Americans Don't See

A Peking University economics professor who was sacked for his political views explains the underside of elite Chinese higher education.

His political awakening came later, in 1987-89, when he studied management at the University of Toronto, visited several European democracies—and read Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose." Friedman's writing helped make Mr. Xia a classical liberal and, by the mid-1990s, a student of economics. Today he cites F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, James Buchanan and Gary Becker among his intellectual idols. The list also includes Xiakoai Yang, the Chinese economist—and Mao-era political prisoner—who convinced him that China cannot thrive without imitating the institutions, and not just the technologies, of the West.
Institutions like multiparty constitutional democracy, which Mr. Xia and his Charter 08 comrades demanded five years ago.
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