This year marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Peking University Development Institute (formerly known as the China Center for Economic Research, CCER). Today, the Institute has been able to make achievements in teaching, scientific research, think tanks and other fields, and contribute to social progress, which is inseparable from the relay development of teachers, students and alumni, as well as the care and support of all walks of life. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary, we have launched a special call for essays on the theme of "I and the Peking University Development Institute (or me and CCER)", and welcome teachers, students, alumni and partners from all walks of life to contribute to the unfading years through your words. The author of this article is Zhang Fan, co-founding professor of Peking University Development Institute.
The China Economic Research Center (the predecessor of the Peking University Development Institute, abbreviated as CCER) was established by a group of scholars who participated in the reform and opening up of China and went abroad to study modern economics. They have two experiences, one is the experience of reform and opening up in China, and the other is the experience of studying economic theory abroad, and the center provides an opportunity to combine these two experiences.
The process of the establishment of the center was a series of institutional innovations, not only the name of the center was the first of its kind, but also the institutional construction of the source of funds, administrative subordination, internal organizational structure (such as the professors' association), etc., which were the first in China at that time.
In the summer of 1993, Lin Yifu, Zhang Weiying, Yi Gang and several other colleagues designed and discussed the establishment of the center, and after communicating and negotiating with some schools in Beijing, they finally settled in Peking University. In December 1993, the center held a preparatory meeting, in 1994 received the official approval of Peking University, in September of that year, to the official inaugural meeting in 1995, all of which were carefully planned, for the next 30 years of the center and the National Development Institute of the goals, organization and specific operation of the basic correct design.
I participated in some policy research and activities of the American Economic Association in the 80s of the 20th century, and I was fortunate to be a member of the center.
In December 1993, I had my first face-to-face conversation with Lin Yifu at the preparatory meeting of the center, and Yifu encouraged me to participate in the center. The preparatory meeting was held in a classroom of Peking University's audio-visual education, and people from various research institutes in Beijing came, many of whom were old friends. The meeting discussed the state of economics and policy research in Beijing at that time, and welcomed the Center as a new force in these areas. I met a lot of old friends and made some new friends. When I walked around the campus to eat, Zhang Weiying told me that there are many opportunities in China, and there are many projects everywhere, but there are not too many people who can take on them.
I returned to China on 23 August 1994. After arriving in Beijing, I spoke with Yi Gang. On August 27, I reported to Peking University. I went to Building 5 of Spoon Garden first, and saw a man and a woman coming out in the distance. When I entered the door, I asked, saying that the person in the center had just left. After a while, Xing Huiqing and Yu Mingde came back and took me into a guest room, a suite, which had the only asset in the center, a newly bought printing and photocopier.
At noon, I sat by the Weiming Lake, it was very hot and cloudy, and there seemed to be sticky sweat in the air.
Offices and housing
A few days later, President Wu Shuqing of Peking University granted the China Economic Research Center two and a half offices, on the first floor of the old school building. The two large rooms are half-large classrooms, which are used as teachers' offices, and in the first semester are Yi Gang and Yu Mingde to the south, and Zhang Weiying and me are to the north (which has changed since then as the number of people increases). Half of the room is the administrative office of Zhang Jiali and Xing Huiqing.
The school gave four houses, and Yu Mingde and I lived on two floors adjacent to Weixiu Garden. One day, Matilda and I got the keys in the real estate department, and the staff was not very friendly. Later, I learned that the teachers of Peking University had to wait for many years to wait in line for the room, and we cut the line, and some teachers were naturally not very happy, so we began to take the keys in a straightforward manner, and later learned that the situation was also a little sorry. The house in Weixiuyuan is smaller, but it is relatively close, and it is very convenient to ride in and out of Peking University. Move in September, install the water heater two months later, and you can take a shower. Since then, Yu Mingde and I have gone through a lot of formalities, printed dozens of photos to fill out forms, applied for liquefied gas, took a written driving test, and sometimes had to ride a bicycle through the entire city of Beijing. Yu Mingde and I live in Wei Xiu Yuan, and we help each other, and I, an unlicensed former electrician, once installed a light socket for Mingde's house. My file was not available at the Overseas Study Service Center of Beijing Language Institute for a long time, and I needed to go to the National People's Congress of my original unit to pay off the air ticket money I borrowed when I went abroad, which was about more than 1,000 US dollars. This is a lot of money for me, and I can't reduce it if I ask someone to find a relationship, and Peking University can't hire people who have been dismissed from public office, so I finally paid back the air ticket of 972.85 dollars, the salary of 4060.50 yuan, the training fee of 100 yuan, and the file storage fee of 320 yuan. After negotiation, 4,480 yuan and 950 US dollars were paid, thanks to the discount given by the National People's Congress. After repaying the money, the leader of the personnel department of the people's congress took out a piece of paper, on which there were more than a dozen grids, each of which said a unit, and all of them had to be stamped with the official seal. Finally, I made some copies of the paper stamped with red stamps as a souvenir.
administration
In the early days of the center, the day-to-day work of the office was very simple and lean. The office started with Zhang Jiali and Xing Huiqing, and later hired a secretary, Zhang Ning, who had just graduated from college. Although he is the secretary of the director, he also serves all of us, and many people do the work in the 21st century, Xing Huiqing and Zhang Ning did it in the 90s after dinner. Whoever has a broken computer, the administrative director Zhang Jiali is personally responsible for repairing it.
Haiwen has presided over the operation of the center for a long time and has made great contributions.
Since then, Li Ling and other teachers have also presided over the operation of the center and played an important role in the consolidation and development of the center.
Teaching
In the first semester of 1994, we taught the Department of Economics, Zhang Weiying taught advanced microeconomics, Yi Gang lectured on measurement, Yu Mingde lectured on development economics, and macroeconomics was not accepted, so I taught macroeconomics.
I teach intermediate macroeconomics in the Department of Economics, using the book of Dornbush-Fisher. Dr. Yu Yongding, who returned from United Kingdom, later taught advanced macroeconomics. After that, in September 1995, I taught a large course on macroeconomics for more than 50 first-year master's degree students. In 1996, he gave a lecture on environmental economics to the undergraduate students of the Academy of Social Sciences, and at the same time gave a lecture on development economics to the graduate students of the Academy of Social Sciences (contacted by Fan Gang). In February 1997, he taught a major course in macroeconomics for 300 people (it should be a double degree), and 6 examination rooms were set up during the examination, and 12 teaching assistants were invigilated. In the second half of 1997, he gave a double degree lecture on industrial organization (160 students). Macro lecture in February 98, 200 students.
One night in 1994, Yi Gang, Mingde and I rode bicycles to a community near Peking University to visit Mr. Li Yining. Teacher Li taught us earnestly, and also talked about some daily trivial matters, such as if you want to load more things in the house, you must pile it up to a high place, we sat on the sofa and looked up, his bookshelves and other furniture are really high, and then I have been remembering Mr. Li's wise words. Later, he and Wei Ying visited Xiao Zhuoji, a teacher from the Department of Economics of Peking University.
Inauguration Ceremony
When school started in the spring of 1995, I met Perkins on February 15 and left a photo of all six of them.
From left: Zhang Fan, Yi Gang, Lin Yifu, Dwight Perkins, Mrs. Perkins, Hai Wen, Yu Mingde, Zhang Weiying
The inauguration ceremony of the center was held on March 10. First, there was a week of academic lectures, which were held in the lecture hall behind the audio-visual education, and the six of us and the heroes from all walks of life inside and outside the school participated. I was talking about control theory and its application in China, and in the middle of the talk, I saw Wei Ying coming in, and I thought the topic might be a little interesting.
On the last day, the opening ceremony, which was held in the auditorium of the audio-visual education center, was very crowded, and I was in charge of recording the briefing, standing in the aisle on the right side. On the rostrum were Professor North, Chen Dailao (Chen Daisun), Du Runsheng, Gao Shangquan, Wang Qishan, Wu Shuqing, then president of Peking University, Liang Zhu, vice president of Peking University, teachers in charge of the Department of Economics, and officials from the Ford Foundation and the World Bank. North gave a keynote speech on institutional change, and I later translated North's speech into Chinese and published it in a book edited by Yi Gang.
The scene of the inaugural meeting in 1995
On March 16, 1995, the Center held a plenary meeting and established a statute stipulating that all important matters of the Center should be voted on by the Faculty Council. Since then, the center has continued to expand, and Zhou Qiren, Song Guoqing, Lu Feng, Hu Dayuan, Wang Dingding, Yao Yang, Zhao Yaohui, etc., have joined the center, and some of them (such as Qiren) have been involved in the planning of the center from the beginning. Since then, Qiren, Yao Yang, and Yiping have successively presided over the work of the center-National Development Institute, so that the center has continued to grow.
Research and social work
In the early days, Yifu and others invited many famous economists to give lectures at Peking University. Once he and Yu Mingde went to the "home" of the Friendship Hotel Mondale to invite Mondale, and he was invited to give a lecture at Peking University, and there were people sitting on the ground.
In May 1995, Wei Ying, Mingde and I accompanied Uzawa, a famous Japanese economist, to eat and drink beer in Spoon Garden, and the white-haired old man who had just given a lecture drank more than a dozen bottles of beer and was very happy.
When the center was first established, I was in charge of editing the newsletter. In April 1995, Lin Yifu asked me to edit the newsletter, and on May 18, the first issue of the newsletter reported on the rice conference, which was officially published. Briefing: Qin Qi, a student from the Department of Economics, was my main assistant, and Wu Xuhua, Deng Haiyan, Zhong Kaifeng and other students from the Department of Economics have provided help. Because of the briefing, I had to attend many lectures. At the March 1996 meeting, Yifu said that the briefing had a big impact and that he needed to be bolder. During this time, Yifu introduced my briefing to school leaders, participants and experts many times. In May 1998, Yifu happily told me that the central leadership had read three briefings, including the Southeast Asian financial turmoil and global integration.
The first issue of the newsletter compiled by Mr. Zhang Fan
In 1996, with the efforts of Yifu and Jiali, the first phase of the Longrun Garden project was completed, and we moved into the Longrun Garden. In May 1998, I met an elderly man named Zhou Youfei, who said that he had lived here, and that Walson, a professor in the Department of Chemistry, and Liang Sizhuang, the director of the library, (Liang Qichao's daughter and Liang Sicheng's sister), lived with him. Initially, only two courtyards were rebuilt, and from the back window of my office, the third courtyard had an unobstructed view of the crowded life of the residents and the messy simple houses.
At Long Runyuan, we all have a separate office. Our classes are held in the school buildings.
In 1995, he was appointed acting director of Yi Gang. Since then, the center has been operated by Haiwen for a long time, and Mrs. Haiwen Xiaobi began to do secretarial work herself, which was very good and played an exemplary role. In June 1997, I asked the teaching assistants to judge the papers, and they were required to give the same questions to all students, but the teaching assistants did not listen, so they took the papers back to the dormitory and judged them separately. As a result, everyone judged all the questions of a subset of students. In this case, the same question will be judged by several different people, and the standards may be inconsistent, which is unfair to students. After I found out, I told them, and Haiwen pulled out his sword to help after knowing about it, and asked his subordinates to inform the three assistant teachers to come to the meeting immediately, and it was already 10 o'clock in the evening. Haiwen criticized them and ordered them to be sentenced heavily. I am very grateful to Haiwen for this, and I also feel that I am a little sorry for these teaching assistants.
Yifu has won the first major project of the center - the food project for us. Yifu is in charge, and the members are Guoqing, Lu Mai, Mingde, and me. I am in charge of food consumption. I added the questionnaire to the regular household income survey of the National Bureau of Statistics and sent it out, covering a number of cities, and I also took the opportunity to go to Chengdu to supervise the survey process, during which some comrades from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics helped a lot. In June 1996, in order to ensure the completion of the food project, Yifu "locked" us in the guest house of the Air Force Command College, and only went home to see it on weekends. The first time I ate, there was only one table in the restaurant, the waiter asked you what drink you wanted, we said one drink, she said no, and then another one and there was none, and there were several none. We said what do you have, and she said it's only Sprite. If it's just Sprite, why are we asked? We went out for a walk every day after dinner and saw a lot of interesting things. There are few people around, Lu Mai went home at 10 o'clock one night, I and Guoqing went to send it, there were no street lights, and the three of us were "hideous" under the headlights, and it took more than 20 minutes for a taxi to stop.
In May 1995, he went to Singapore to see the EEPSEA workshop and has been there several times since. From June to July 1995, he attended the Harvard Kennedy School for the Summer Study of the Environment, chaired by Panayotou and Vencent. I asked a lot of questions in class. In 1995, I went to Pingdu and Wuxi in Shandong Province to investigate. Some friends helped a lot. In January 1998, Zhang Jin, an entrepreneur who lived in Wuxi, helped him do an investigation. In April 1997, Tian Ze discussed the system, and I talked about the study of the civil aviation industry. In 1997, he did research on multinational corporations (in cooperation with Zheng Jingping of the National Bureau of Statistics). In September 1997, Qiren introduced me to the Hainan Development Research Institute to give a lecture on macroeconomics, and I lectured for 6 hours a day (plus 2 hours of extracurricular tutoring) for a week, which was a lot of work. and Tsinghua Xue Lan did a control project, and wrote a chapter on control in Cheng Siwei's editor-in-chief. The Shanghai People's Publishing House published the first edition of my environmental and natural resource economics, and two more editions have since appeared. He translated several basic economics textbooks for Liang Jing, and later found that everyone used one of them when teaching at the National Development Institute in the 21st century. In 1997, he co-wrote an article on food consumption with Yifu.
Others
In October 1997, he met with the second phase of the double degree. Haiwen presided over the meeting and answered the students' questions about whether the degree certificate education committee recognized it, which effectively resolved the students' questions. Teachers such as Hu Dayuan, Chen Ping, Yao Yang, and Liang Neng attended the meeting. Yifu asked the teachers to say a few words of encouragement and encouragement, and the teachers said a lot of words of encouragement. From my memory (which may not be accurate), Jeff said: The Nobel Prize is yours. Yi Gang said: We must be the double gun general of the main battlefield of the economy. Zhou Qiren talked about what Tsinghua University and Peking University people did in the past, and encouraged Peking University students. I said: the center is a potential stock, and in ten or twenty years you will find that the value of this experience in the center will increase greatly in your life.
Students at the center
I had the opportunity to interact with a lot of people at the center. In May 1998, I had dinner with Yifu with the guests, and then the guests went to the second teaching to give a speech, and Yifu accompanied the guests to walk around the small courtyard, and asked me to drive his car to the second teaching, I drove on the campus of Peking University for the first time, and I forgot to let go of the hand brake because of nervousness.
In June 1997, when I graduated from the minor, I opened champagne and Yifu helped.
I also participated in some sports activities at the center, or cheered for the students at the center, and our results were in the third world at Peking University at that time, but our cheerleading team was among the best at Peking University.
Cheerleaders at the center
On May 5, 1998, Yellen and her delegation visited. I was greeted at the West Gate, got in the car and took it to Langrun Garden, where I had a brief conversation with Yellen, a white-haired woman who was very kind. At the meeting with Zhifuxuan, Lin Yifu talked about reform, and Yi Gang talked about financial reform. On June 29, 1998, Clinton gave a speech at the president's office building of Peking University, and at the same time, Commerce Secretary Daley and Yellen attended the MBA opening ceremony at the center, and Yellen spoke.
On April 25, 1997, the renovation of Zhifu Xuan was completed and officially unveiled. Some veteran leaders attended, and before the meeting, we accompanied them to visit the office and introduced some information. One of the guests said: I believe that the center's success is based on my personal understanding of these people. He said that we have moved from China's reality to theory, from China to foreign countries, and then from China to foreign countries.
On May 3, 1998, the centennial celebration of Peking University, we held a meeting in the center, and the music was melodious outside. At 2 o'clock in the morning, I went to Jingyuan to see the venue, people went to the garden sky, the night was charming, confetti was flying in the breeze, a girl I didn't know rode over, and said, "I wish you luck", I quickly replied "I wish you luck".
In June 1998 I had hepatitis and the doctor prescribed a false note. After that, he returned to the United States on academic leave, but did not return immediately due to health reasons, and did not return to the center until 2010.