I found this piece while flipping through my WeChat favorites. When I opened it, the official account had already deleted it, so I looked up the original and reposted it here — just for my own study.
Originally published on the WeChat account: WSJ中文
For a long stretch, Zhang Weiying felt a bit lonely. The intellectual weather of the times had shifted hard. The ideas he’d held for decades got little echo. He didn’t waver; he just felt it was a pity. Then in the last few years he noticed, quietly, that younger people’s positions were drifting toward his. “That made me happy.”
It’s been thirteen years since he stepped down as dean of Guanghua School of Management at Peking University. There’s much less controversy around him. That actually gave him more time to sort his thinking, and he’s revised some earlier views and pushed them further.
“Entrepreneurship” and “market economy” are the keys to Zhang’s views. As he sees it now, a market economy isn’t great at making people hugely rich. It just gives ordinary people a chance to live reasonably well — and that’s already precious.
He’s more and more convinced that the real meaning of a market economy is this: the most creative, most ambitious people “can only do good for us humans, they can’t do harm.” He stands opposite the founding assumption of economics — the rational-person hypothesis. “I’m disappointed in human nature.” In his view the market is a mechanism that constrains that nature. “We can’t manage ourselves, so we hand it to the market.”
In market logic, the right people should sit in the right seats, and entrepreneurs play the most important part in that. “What we’ve achieved so far, everyone can see, comes from reform and opening, and entrepreneurs played a big role.” From new digital industries, the internet, e-commerce to manufacturing, he thinks private firms were indispensable. “We can export so many low-cost goods to the world market — that’s all entrepreneurs working.”
He thinks a market economy is like air. Normally nobody notices. “It’s just there.” Everyone takes it for granted, thinks it’s nothing special. Only when it’s gone do people feel how much it matters — even that you can’t live without it.
Zhang was born in a gully in the northwest — Xinzhuang village, Wubu county, Shaanxi. He never found that embarrassing, never felt inferior. He even treats it as wealth. He’s a real farmer’s son. When he gives examples it’s either Ordinary World or household contract responsibility. “Ordinary World is our place. The story is set very close to home.”
He brings that up because of one scene: Tian Futang, party secretary of Shuangshui village, had a job — ringing a bell every morning to call people to work. One day he went to ring as usual and nothing moved. Only the bell wandering over the fields. Then he looked: people had already gone out to work. Tian didn’t quite get it — nobody needed calling anymore, and that used to be hard. This is after household contracting. Farmers could keep a share of what they earned, no more eating from one big pot, more work more pay, and people actually wanted to work.
Zhang uses this to say how much institutional, mechanical innovation matters in how an economy runs. “Without household contracting, just Tian Futang ringing a bell, nobody really has the drive.” That’s how economies work, he thinks. For a long time many people believed demand could be printed with money, confidence could be manufactured, the economy could be stimulated. For Zhang, development is a natural process. “If you set out when it’s still dark, the further you walk the lighter it gets, and everyone has confidence.”
Among economists he’s an odd one: he likes talking to the public, and he hasn’t dropped research. Both matter; he doesn’t want to give either up. He’s just put out two new books — Rethinking Entrepreneurship and Looking Back. In the first he gathers recent thinking on entrepreneurship. In the second he almost becomes someone else, writing in a smooth hand about the people who mattered as he grew up — parents, teachers, a childhood friend — feeling coming straight off the page.
Like his writing, talking to him you wouldn’t think he’s a famous Chinese economist. No airs, always smiling, speaking softly. On the other side of the video he shows up on time, smiling, in a down vest. He’s lived and worked in Beijing for years, but he never lost the accent. You can tell he’s from the northwest.
The last time he unexpectedly stood in public was because of a xintianyou. His teacher He Liancheng, who changed his fate, had passed away. Under COVID, moving between cities was hard. Zhang couldn’t see him off. He wrote a piece, “Teacher He, listen to one more xintianyou,” with lyrics attached.
The lyrics go: “The first time we met you lightly touched my head, the last time we met you smiled and didn’t speak. You were glad for me and you worried for me, and you once praised the xintianyou I sang.”
Before the gaokao came back in 1977, Zhang had finished high school and gone back to the village as Communist Youth League secretary and deputy militia instructor. He didn’t even know there was such a thing as arts vs science tracks. He ended up admitted to the newly founded political economy major at Northwest University. He Liancheng ran the program. That year it had just started, 50 students. Zhang got in on the extra intake, and that changed his life. The day he left for university the whole village saw him off, and the family fed everyone rice cakes and stewed vegetables.
“If Teacher He hadn’t insisted on expanding admission, I might never have gone to university.” Zhang always remembers the help, even though the extra seats weren’t aimed at him personally. Under He, Northwest University created a brand-new economics major, which meant 50 examinees got a shot at a different life.
Even after he became a teacher at Peking University he stayed in touch with He, going back to see him whenever he could. “My economics foundation was laid by Teacher He.” He Liancheng had been at Northwest University since graduating in 1951. Because of various upheavals he hadn’t properly supervised a single student until the gaokao returned. Zhang and his classmates were He’s first cohort. To He they were like his own kids.
After Zhang became dean of Guanghua he tried a string of reforms, hit a lot of resistance. He Liancheng heard and wrote to the PKU president at the time. He didn’t even know the president; they were just Hunan fellow-provincials, and He wanted to try to help his student once.
When Teacher He died, Zhang wrote lyrics, found a fellow-provincial, Ding Wenjun, already a somewhat known xintianyou singer, and asked him to set them and sing. After he sang, Ding sent it over: if you’re happy with it we’ll record it properly in a studio. He found a few pictures, made a video, posted it on a junior’s WeChat account. It blew up. People thought Zhang was singing. He rushed to deny it — it says at the end of the video it isn’t him, people just don’t look.
Looking Back, Zhang says, isn’t really creation. It’s people he owes or remembers sharply. At most it’s a spilling-out. “It isn’t that I wanted to write a thing. Some things have to be written. These feelings no longer fit in my head.”
He’s stubborn, even a bit of a loner. Unlike most scholars he doesn’t like factions, didn’t lean on anyone, says only what he believes. Even with He’s huge influence he never formed a school with him. He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t care much what the outside thinks now. What he cares about is whether he’s satisfied with what he himself has done.
He’s past 60. At 50 he suddenly felt he’d “known the mandate of heaven,” seen clearly what he’d been doing for decades and what he should do next — a clean account with himself. What he’s been doing all these years, in his view, is trying to change public ideas. He’s already done a lot of that work, “just without being conscious of it before.” Now, at least, he thinks he mustn’t put on a show. For someone already established, there’s no pose he still has to strike.
Looked at that way, Zhang is getting freer.
Below is our conversation with Zhang Weiying:
WSJ.: The “rational person” is a premise of classical economics. How do you see the so-called rational-person hypothesis?
Zhang Weiying: Rationality has many choices, not one. And how far you look. A thief is rational; being an entrepreneur is rational. Completely different. I never criticize individuals. What you do is your choice. I care why each person does it, what’s behind it.
If excellent graduates from Beida and Tsinghua all go into business, that’s luck for the country. If they all shove their heads into the system, that’s misfortune for the country.
When the economy is alive, when more people want to create and start firms, there are many openings. The next few years, I worry for graduates too. When I was dean at Guanghua I watched students’ education, where they went, their chances. If someone had several offers and could pick, I was happy.
Now I hear two people can’t even get one offer. That worries me. Only when people with entrepreneurial spirit can start freely will there be more jobs. The market gives people more choices, and then they feel easier. Too many constraints and people feel bad; when they feel bad, creativity barely comes out. Creativity is highest when the mood is easy.
WSJ.: Has China already entered a divide-the-cake stage? Is our cake big enough?
Zhang Weiying: In economics, no country has really reached a divide-the-cake stage. As I see it, that stage doesn’t exist. If a society keeps making the cake bigger, making the cake is dividing it. If the split is unreasonable, the cake can’t grow. The cake grows because the split is relatively reasonable.
We’ve all gained from reform and opening. What we really have to fix is the unreasonable, unfair bits — how to cancel them. For example in business, you should get contracts by ability and effort, not by guanxi. As long as contracts come from guanxi, the split is unfair. Those are the problems to solve — not seeing who has a big piece and taking it. Keep doing that and later there’s no cake. You can take today’s; you can’t take tomorrow’s.
Another thing: wealth changes. Sometimes in a big city you see tall buildings and think that’s a huge asset. Maybe in three years those buildings won’t sell for a cent. Go to Detroit: lots of property nobody wants, free and still nobody wants it. Wealth isn’t physical, not how many square meters or how heavy. Wealth is how much value the market can create with that asset. Once it creates no value, it means nothing.
Say someone gives you a Boeing 747 for free, but you can’t take off and you can’t run a restaurant in it. Is that asset positive or negative? Obviously negative. Leave it and it rusts; maintenance still costs a lot. Only in motion, when wealth can create value, is it wealth. If it can’t create value, it isn’t.
A lot of people see a tower and think, why don’t I get a cut? Even if you got a cut, you’d find it isn’t wealth, because in your hands it has no value.
WSJ.: What do you expect of the Chinese economy after COVID? Is a downturn already locked in?
Zhang Weiying: After decades of high growth, the speed will come down. On the numbers we publish, at today’s scale, holding a steady 3% would already be impressive. The old model used tech the market had already tested — no R&D spend, you produce and sell, of course it’s fast. The closer you get to the frontier, the slower it naturally gets. Nothing to be ashamed of. It isn’t slow because you did badly. Doing well, it still slows.
The question is whether that slower speed can be held. That’s the challenge. I think 3% can be held, though there are many challenges — and if we don’t try, going fully negative is possible too. Plenty of examples: Argentina used to be a developed, rich country; Brazil, Venezuela too.
WSJ.: We keep talking about stimulating the economy, as if it were the miracle cure for stagnation. What’s wrong with that thinking?
Zhang Weiying: How do you stimulate an economy? It has to grow from an inner impulse. Monetary policy can cut rates, can hand out subsidies. That doesn’t fix the root. The root is still impulse. Development depends on entrepreneurs, not on printing money.
When we talk about the economy, some theories cage our thinking. They look perfect on the page and that’s why they hurt more, which I find a real pity. A lot of people think the economy can be steered — try this, try that. As if growing an economy were typing on a keyboard. In fact it’s people’s inner, spontaneous impulse.
WSJ.: How do you understand a market economy, what role should it play in a healthy society? In the usual story it allocates resources. Does that need updating?
Zhang Weiying: I’m not that optimistic about human nature itself, which is why I really want a system that can make up for the bad side of it, that can force people to correct errors. How I see the market now may differ from a lot of people, and from my past self. We used to always talk allocation of resources. That’s wrong. The real meaning of a market economy is that the most creative, most ambitious people can only do good for humanity, they can’t do harm.
Example: in a market, Musk can only do us good, he can’t do harm. Why not? If he does harm, customers don’t accept it, investors don’t accept it, he’s finished. He says he’ll send people to Mars; if they die up there, nobody signs up below. We know we can’t constrain ourselves. We have to rely on a system, and that system is the market.
WSJ.: You don’t seem to run on the usual economist track. You’re willing to spend more time and energy on the public. Why that choice?
Zhang Weiying: Any field, once it develops, splits, specializes, technicalizes. Lots of people working different corners, a lot of it not what the public cares about. Preferences differ, personalities differ, schooling differs. That’s normal.
As long as you do it sincerely and seriously, that’s worth appreciating. Plenty of my colleagues do very quantitative work. That’s fine too. We shouldn’t demand that every scholar’s work immediately do something to society.
But we still have to be sincere: say what we believe, say what we think, not what others like to hear. Pleasing anyone is irresponsible. A truly responsible person is: I think it’s this way, I say it this way; I don’t think so, I don’t say so.
Intellectuals have a tendency: because they feel they’re right and others won’t listen, they like to make people obey through power. When I disagree I can answer with another view, but I can’t push it with power. Once you use force, you’ve left the original intent of liberal economics. We can only reason. If others don’t listen, nothing you can do — but you can’t go to force.
WSJ.: For now, criticism of capital seems to have ebbed. Under global downturn pressure, 996 has become a “blessing” in some people’s mouths. How do you see that turn?
Zhang Weiying: I keep telling people, bosses work harder than employees. That’s basic. Their hours are longer.
In an interview I noticed a private boss who’d built a factory, then sold it to another boss, who still had him run it. The journalist asked: after selling the factory you founded, what’s the biggest feeling? He said: “I used to worry at month-end, having to find money to pay people. Now, the closer to month-end the happier I am. I go collect.”
Employer and employee carry completely asymmetric responsibility in a firm, but a lot of people don’t see that. Plenty used to think the boss was exploiting us. The last few years opinion seems to have shifted. Quite a few firms shut, workers lost jobs. So now everyone hopes the boss doesn’t quit. Boss quits, employees don’t eat.
WSJ.: There’s a saying that confidence matters more than gold. Globally the economy seems in a down stretch. What do confidence or expectations mean for growth now? How do we get confidence back?
Zhang Weiying: People sometimes don’t worry that much about the obstacle in front of them. They worry more about what the long road looks like. Example: someone has to walk 100 li, sets out at 5 p.m., gets more and more afraid. Why? Because it gets darker.
If you set out at 5 a.m., it’s still dark, but you aren’t afraid. Why? Because it gets lighter. Start at 5 p.m., it gets darker, of course people lose confidence. People look at the long road, not whether there’s a rock in front of them.
Down at the micro level, to give people confidence, what’s most important? Autonomy, I think. I hold my own fate. I may have chosen a direction; I have the right to choose; the consequences are all decided by what I do. Then I have confidence.
Say the gaokao. We might not get into a good school, but we don’t blame anyone. That’s like I hold my fate. If after the exam, whether you go to university and which one isn’t decided by the score, but by someone else’s taste or by drawing lots, we wouldn’t have that confidence, and we wouldn’t try.
Real confidence comes from a feeling: can I hold my own fate. To really give people confidence, in probability at least they have to feel they can change themselves. If in probability I can’t change myself, what’s the point of trying? How would I have confidence?
Same for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs take risks. No entrepreneur thinks business is guaranteed to make money. They just have confidence they can make money. If whether you make money or succeed is largely about your own effort, they’ll grind.
If I hold my fate, I have confidence. Not that I won’t fail — even if I fail, I fail convinced. After failing I’ll come again, sum up, continue. If success or failure has little to do with my effort, if it’s manipulated by others, after failing I won’t come again.
WSJ.: You’re at Beida, you were dean of Guanghua, a cradle of elites. On you I see a heavy “concern for the bottom.” A lot of scholars don’t have that. How do you hold both?
Zhang Weiying: People are probably just different. Different temperaments, different choices. I didn’t set out to have what you call “concern for the bottom.” I may just be fairly plain by nature. I am what I am. Everyone you meet at each stage of growing up affects you, but the biggest is parents.
I didn’t feel inferior because I came from the countryside. If anything I’m moved — having gone through so much. What I write is what I actually feel. Your history and origin are part of you. Treasure them.
I think people should be a bit more genuine, not put on a show. You are what you are. If you fake it, others can tell. Don’t assume everyone’s a fool. The humanistic concern you mention — I didn’t try to think that way. I just am this way.
WSJ.: A lot of young people face huge pressure, jobs and life in first-tier cities. Climbing a class has also become very hard. A school like Beida seems out of reach for poor kids. “It’s hard for a poor family to produce a distinguished son” seems a reality we don’t want to see but already have. What’s your take?
Zhang Weiying: First we should recognize that in these decades of reform, class crossing has still been very large.
On the other hand, you do feel society has been stiffening in recent years. If that’s really happening, we need to watch it. So far I’m not that pessimistic.
You ask this and I remember a general-education class in 2021, about three hundred people, including Tsinghua and Renmin students. I did a survey: over 90% from cities, under 10% from the countryside.
Hearing that, a lot of people think it’s serious. Then I asked about their parents’ origin: over 80% of students’ parents came from the countryside. So I wrote a piece, “Where do Beida students come from? A two-step jump from the farm.” First jump: countryside to city. Second: the next generation into Beida. These decades, mobility in China was still large. For a rural kid to test straight into Beida is of course still hard, because rural schooling still lags the city. But once they’re in the city, rural-origin parents push the next generation’s studies hard, so that generation has a higher chance at Beida, Tsinghua, and the like. My survey has some representativeness, but we still can’t ignore the problem.
The gaokao has many problems, but right now in China it’s still the fairest thing. I had no chance to attend Beida. Sitting the exam I already knew I wouldn’t get in. Then I came to Beida as a teacher. That’s pretty good too.
Back to entrepreneurs: a lot of the famous ones, or people on rich lists, came from poor families. I even looked it up. Ma Huateng, Ma Yun, very ordinary origins. Many of the rich were farmers, never got to university.
That’s why I support a market economy. A real market brings high vertical mobility — you fight in the market with creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. I especially like a line of Schumpeter’s: the rich club under a market economy is like a fancy hotel, always full, but the names of the guests keep changing, some leave, some come in. That flow is a very important test of whether a society is healthy.
What I see so far, I’m still not that pessimistic. Why do I treasure market reform so much? Only under a market economy do ordinary people have a hope of getting somewhere. Without it, ordinary people have no hope.
WSJ.: Is entrepreneurship in some sense an import? Does China have a spontaneous entrepreneurial gene?
Zhang Weiying: Among us there are always people who won’t sit still. They want to do things, things others won’t do or can’t do. They have an impulse, they’ll take risks, they’ll face failure. That kind of person has existed from ancient times. Humans first came out of Africa — who left Africa? The ones with entrepreneurial spirit.
But when we usually say entrepreneurship we mean more the commercial kind. For people, business is a challenge, and it asks a lot of you. In the Chinese tradition that kind of person slowly got “fixed” by the imperial exam. The exam put all the temptation on officialdom. In the old days people with entrepreneurial spirit went into office. So ancient governments gathered a batch of very capable people.
For society that’s a loss, because government is a mechanism for allocating wealth, not a place that creates it. People who truly have entrepreneurial spirit create real value when they do firms. That’s how ancient China differed from the modern West.
Take England. Some very talented people didn’t accept the Church of England, including some Puritans. They still had a commercial impulse, wanted to be entrepreneurs. When those people went into industry and commerce they were more creative.
The huge change in two thousand years of Chinese history is that after reform and opening, capable people started doing firms. But this culture is still fragile. It hasn’t fully turned.
What I’ve wanted to do since the 1980s is change people’s ideas — the public’s ideas about business, about entrepreneurs, including what I call modernization of ideas — “ten shifts in ideas.”
When I was still dean at Guanghua, very few students sat the civil-service exam. Now they all scramble for it. Better that excellent people create wealth than that they all go allocate it.