- Good evening. And welcome to the John
F. Kennedy Junior Forum. My name is Harpreet Singh. I'm a first year here at Harvard College and a member of the JFK
Junior Forum Committee here at the Institute of Politics. The Institute of Politics is excited to be a part of this fall's
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congregate in the JFK park. Please also take a moment now to silence your cellphones please. You can join the
conversation online tonight by tweeting with the hashtag #chinaforum which is also listed in your program. Please take your seats now and join me in our welcoming our guests,
Lu Mai, Rohini Pande, Anthony Saich, and our
moderator Graham Allision. Thank you. (audience applauding) - So good evening. I am Graham Allison. A professor here at the Kennedy School. And we have organized for
you a real treat tonight. A discussion that I hope
will warm your hearts but I think also stretch your minds. So the topic tonight is what
the World Bank president calls China's economic miracle. And China this year is
celebrating the 40th Anniversary of its opening to the
market, marks to the market, and considering what's
happened in that period, so let me begin with a pop quiz. So 1978, Chinese setting
out for the market, what percentage of the Chinese population is struggling to survive
on less than $2 a day. Look at this pyramid of
poverty, you think 25%? 50? 75? Let's see. So 90. So nine out of every 10 Chinese in 1978, I was alive then, some of you were, most of the panelists were. Were struggling just having $2 a day. So just think about it. What is $2 a day? I don't think probably anybody
in the audience can quite imagine, I certainly can't. I've tried, but actually the World Bank had tried to describe what
the effects of this are on human beings. If you're severely
malnourished than somebody on less than $2 a day is as a child, by the time you've gotten to
your 1000th day of your life, your brain has shrunk by 40%. So just as a, and now have a good life. I do think of it as bizarre. So 90%. 2018 what does that pyramid look like? What percentage today? Take a guess. Less than $2 a day in China today. Let's see. 1%, 1%. So one in every 100, well
that's hard to believe. It is hard to believe, but brute facts are hard to ignore. So what we are gonna do is explore this to try to better understand
what's going on here. And we have a fantastic panel to do that. So it's a special honor to welcome our special guest, a
colleague from China, Lu Mai, who is a graduate of the
Kennedy School in 1991. So for those of you who are
students at the Kennedy School, and who then spent two years
at, what was then HIID, which is now the Center for
International Development, as a researcher, before
returning to China, where he's been one of
the actors in this drama that is seen 90% of people
who were below the $2 level raised up to better standards of living. And shook the number of
extremely poverty people poor people to 1%. Lu Mai's China research
development foundation is a leader in China in
addressing particularly the problems of the poorest of the poor. And he will tell us about that. And he also has organized
the China Development Forum which is the China Devos. So as a former dean of the Kennedy School, I would say this is kind
of graduates of the school of whom we are extremely
proud as they go out and change the world. So we are very happy to have him. Let's say thank you for him coming back. (audience applauding) In addition we have Rohini Pande, who is a good evidence for us that this is a topic that's not finished, and the next generation
of scholarship is actively digging in a whole question of poverty, not just the extreme poverty but poverty in developing countries
and economic development. Rohini is a professor here
at the Kennedy School, and is part of the Center
for International Development where she co-directs the
project on evidence based poverty, how do you call it? - Evidence of policy design. - Okay. We are happy to have her
offer a perspective on that, particularly in terms
of the kind of research that's now being done in
the US and internationally and finally our colleague Tony Saich. Tony like Lu Mai has been not
only a scholar in this space but an actor before he
came to the Kennedy School, he for more than a decade ran
the Ford Foundation's projects in China, including projects
that were attempting to help Chinese economic development
and the reduction of poverty. He here is the director
of the Ashe Center, which is the epicenter
of Chinese studies here at the Kennedy School and
substantially at Harvard. So we're glad to have
such a fantastic panel, but let me stay with
this puzzle for a second, because I'm a late comer to China studies. But I've been fascinated by
China for the last 20 years, and have been studying
it as much as I can, particularly the rivalry
between a rising China and a ruling US. So I commend from an international
relations perspective, but I look at this and I say well, well, and how can this be? Now interestingly if we
do the next slide here, China's not done yet. So at Davos last year, the
leader of the Chinese delegation was a fellow named Liu He, just again gave another good shout-out for the Kennedy School. Liu He is a graduate
of the Kennedy School, of whom we're very proud. He's the Vice Premier of China now running the economic program. And as he said at Davos,
the boss that is Xi Jinping, his boss, has said
unambiguously that before the end of 2020, the number
of Chinese below $2 a day is going to be essentially zero. So they're not stopping
at 1%, essentially zero. And Lu Mai works with Liu He, so he may be able to tell
us a little bit about how this is going and
undoubtedly as all of us know from the old hockey stick,
as you get closer and closer to the last mile, it generally
gets harder and harder. So it's a more complicated,
a more complicated story. Now both Lu Mai and Liu He work
for a very determined boss, if we will take the next slide here. So Xi Jinping, as he says
here, has made this one of his highest priorities. And again Lu Mai may be able
to illuminate that a little bit for us how that works
through the system to cause somebody to do something
to the extent that it does. I think in China it probably
has a little bit more direct impact than presidential statements in the US would be inclined to do, but any case you can
help us understand that. So let me start with the big picture, and then we'll drill down. So if I started in 1978 and I have 90% of people with less than 2$ a day and now I jump to 2018, and that's shot to 1%, where I'm on my road to zero. And I think what's going on here? How did this happen? Again I would say it's
a first approximation from 60,000 feet looking at it maybe the main storyline
is a poor country, which China was in 1978, becomes a rich country or a richer country like it is in 2018. So the lesson for those of
us here from other countries as we have lots of students
from other countries, some of whom have big pockets
of people below 2$ a day is get rich okay? And John Kennedy's version of that was a rising tide lifts all boats. So if you go from the GDP
of China in '78 to 2018, the sea goes up, all the boats go up. Maybe then there's a few
islands or pockets of poverty, but is that the big storyline. So Lu Mai why don't you tell us? You've been in the middle of living this for these 40 years. Tell us a little bit
about how this happened. And then we'll ask Rohini and Tony to offer your thoughts about that. - Thank you, thank you Professor Allison. Yes 40 years passed very quickly, just like yesterday. What's happened in China,
that picture is wonderful, just come down from 90% to 2%. First Deng Xiaoping used very good words to set up the goal to motivate the society. In letter of 1979, he set up the goal. China should build up well off society in the end of the 2000. Well off in Chinese is a
(speaks foreign language). The words that come from
the poem 3000 years ago. I asked some assistant to him or involved in the policy making, but they told us this come
from Deng Xiaoping himself. Well off means you do not
worried about the food and the clothes. You're not rich but you
do not need to worry. (speaks foreign language) That's the explanation about
the (speaks foreign language). So he used this term under say by 1990, we should reach 500 US
dollar per capita GDP under by 2000, it's 1000 US dollar. So he started a reform, and the reform, keep the
household responsibilities implemented in the rural and in the urban, so economic growth
really solve big problems for the poverty. The second thing in the
last 40 years is that something, some policy, we
can call it pro poor policy, like cease of agriculture tax, provide a free compulsory education, set up a rural cooperative healthcare, and those policy benefits all the farmers, but the poor people get
the most benefit from that, and the third element is
the government Project to fight with the poverty. Government has an aid from 1984. They called that (speaks
foreign language). Work for food. You come to build a road, build a dam, and then for exchange you'll get a green, you'll get the money. That's a 1984, the project. So the different generation of leader keep their promise. That's a political promise. Deng Xiaoping made well off society. Now by 2020, the goal set up very clear. By 2020 is well off society in all front, for all the people. So Xi Jinping when he took over, thus he need to keep this promise, zero people under the absolutely poverty. Nobody should worry about their food. Nobody should worry about their clothes. That's the promise he made, and he really motivated society to fight with this poverty. Before him the word we used
is poverty alleviation. You help poor, but
what's the result is that doesn't matter, but you give
the money, you help them. Now for him, the term change
is (speaks foreign language) get rid of the poverty. That's very clear, and that's the standard for
the all government official who need to working on this. So they took five approach. One is developing the project
including help those farmers and the poor, give him some
tool, give him some money, help him in the technology. Second, relocated the
farmers from a poor area. Totally they plan to move
10 million of those farmers from poorest mountain area. And the third one is for education. They guarantee if you go to high school, if you go to college from
a poor family, it's free. Another one is social security is covered, especially for the poor and the elderly. If you will seek rural
cooperative health care cover 40% but insurance cover another 40% and the poverty alleviation cover 20. So almost you don't need to pay if you are in the poverty. So the government working on this under motivated the whole society. Center government this
year spent 106 billion RMB for this remainder 30 million of people still under the poverty. Under every governmental ministry, every level of a
government get assignment, and the coastal area and the big company has the responsibility to help
the county in the poverty. They got assignment and they
have to finish this job, so this is a big effort. Ask some local government official, they think is not so difficult to achieve 3200 Chinese RMB per year. So they can help those family to do that to achieve that goal. If not they promise to cover
that minimum life allowance. So this minimal allowance
in those poverty county, if it's a below to 2%, government will take
over to cover all those. - Okay thank you, that's helpful. So Rohini, you see this when you look at other
countries as well as China, and it's overall. What do you say before somebody
like me who looks and says wait a minute here's 1978, here's today, 90% 1% wow. What do you make of this? - So I think you do look at China and say wow I think that certainly true. It's also the case when
we look across the world. So you talked about in 1978 90% of the Chinese lived under poverty. If you looked across the
world that was also a very high number then, and
today I think just the last set of World Bank figures came out last week. Now it's down to one in every
10 person lives in poverty down from something like
one in every three in 1980. And certainly China has
been an incredibly important contributor to it. I think if we look at it
a broader perspective, it raises two questions. First at a very broad level should every country aim
to do what China did? You know really try to get growth going and hope that that'll as you said be the tide that lifts all boats. I think the second question
is looking ahead how is, so I think China has something
like 43 million households still under poverty, and how
are they going to get out? How easy is that going to be? So I shall talk a little
bit about both of them. I think they are quite
linked that when we look at reductions in poverty
certainly the case that it's still, most poverty
remains concentrated in rural areas. I think 80% of the
world's extreme poor live in rural areas. So when we talk about
ending extreme poverty, we are largely talking about rural poverty and what we see and I think
you see that also in China we increasingly see not
large swaths of a country that is poor, but I think
Graham you used this word. You see these islands of poverty among and it's plenty, so I think
you just talked about it, but in China I think for the last 20 years there was something like
680 nationally designated high poverty counties. So these are counties that
would be removed from this list if less than 2% think in overall channel in western regions less
than 3% are under poverty. And I think one thing
that's striking is of course it's a high standard, but that in 2017 of this list of 680 counties, they removed 26, but it was
the first time they had done any such removal in 20 years. So what tells you that
in the last 20-25 years of high poverty reduction, there were these persistent
pockets of poverty. And this is true I think if
you look across the world as well especially in
what I often describe as high poverty middle-income countries. So these are countries
that have become richer, but have at least 1% of the world's poor living in them and China
has features of them. So those are countries
like India, China, Nigeria, Indonesia, you increasingly
see these countries, they're growing fast. They're becoming more
unequal and you find poverty in these sort of bits. And so the question is how
are you going to remove this last bit of poverty? Is it going to be successful
as you described in sort of very top-down manner, where you're going to engage
for instance in policies like moving a large
number of individuals away from say rural mountainous areas where you don't think there's
much economic activity to peri-urban areas? I think history has many
examples of attempted large-scale migration that often doesn't go so well. I think there's a question
of if you provide individuals education in today's world is
basic education going to be enough or are we seeing
returns to education only when we look at secondary
education and upwards? So I think there's a
lot to learn from China for the rest of the world. It's clear that growth is an
extremely important element of reducing poverty, but
I think we also learn that as poverty falls economic
and social disadvantage get increasingly intertwined. It also becomes more
concentrated in those pockets. And I think then the
question is can you affect the last bit of economic disadvantage without recognizing that
there is social disadvantage that you have to account
for and take care of. So that would be the
point at which (mumbles). - So why don't we hear
from Tony and then Lu you might want to jump back in yes. - Yeah I mean first I want
to congratulate Lu Mai and his group for all the
work that they've done. There's no doubt the
leadership is important. There's no doubt that
economic growth is important, but I think we really need
to unpack why the numbers in poverty dropped and
also I think one thing of getting rid of the
designated poor counties would be important because
there's a massive incentive to stay poor and this
answers your question that as the number of poor dropped, the number of poor counties went up, because for example there's
one county Xin Chào, which was put into the list. It was worth 560 million
renminbi to be classified as a poor county. So there was a lot of
incentives for local officials not to declare that they were poverty free because they'd lose a lot of the benefits. So that really distorted things. I want to make a couple of points and I think it's important
to think about why and to think about the history. The first important point
is that the biggest drop in poverty occurred before
the government set up the leading group on poverty alleviation. So something else was going on, which wasn't related to
direct state engagement. Most Chinese research concludes that most of the programs that the
government has directed had not been successful where they're directly focused
on poverty alleviation. There's other things which
have been very successful, which I'll come back to. So direct intervention
on poverty alleviation on the whole has not been very successful from Chinese government attempts. If you look at why did
the first boom came, well it was still collective agriculture and the state increased purchasing prices by 20% and 40%. Immediately farmers had a
lot more income that led to generating off farm employment and so on and so forth. What it did do was the state
had a massive budget deficit, so it had to move to alternatives. And so basically the
collectives got broken up. You got household farming
becoming the norm. So essentially I think what's
driven it are three things. Pro-poor policies which Lu
Mai correctly indicated, increased marketization and urbanization. Those three things have
been really important. So I think it was more the
indirect effects of government policy, rather than its
direct interventions, which are important and if you
look at the World Bank growth commission, to a large extent
what China's done successfully are things which relate to that, the heavy investment and infrastructure. I think one of the most
important things China did was build rural roads. I mean suddenly there was an
incredible rural road building program which was incredibly
important for helping farmers get produce to get better
facilities into the farms. Belatedly important investment in health. There's also been a lot of
investment into education, particularly for rural
girls and incorporating them into the workforce and
urbanization as I mentioned, and also allowing markets
to allocate resources efficiently, so I'm not
denying that there has been tremendous progress. I think if we try and think
of it in terms of lessons for other countries to think about, we need to kind of unpack
those overall figures and say okay what really
worked, what didn't work. One of my fears at the moment
moving forward is this policy has to work, so it will work. The figures are gonna show
everybody's out of poverty, but an obsession on income
masks other problems. And I saw something from
Tsinghua, a little while ago that shows that over
40% of those in poverty say the reason is from illness
and the costs of healthcare. So if it's just a
concentration on getting the figures right on income, my
fear is it will miss some other figures, and if you look
at place like Xu Tran there's 60% recidivism. The people come out of
poverty and they drop back into poverty. So it's a fantastic story, there's no doubt about that, but there's real things
that have to be looked at moving forward to get the
last group out of poverty and make sure that as
those people get lifted out they stay out of poverty. And so some of the things
like Lu Mai's group is doing on these nutrition
projects for school kids are really important, because he didn't talk about it, but what their projects show
is the improvement in school of those kids is dramatic
through those kinds of programs. so those are kinds of things I think need to be stabilized and increased. - So that's extremely helpful. We're getting you know
different angles of this and trying to drill
down on it and parse it would be the stuff of a long conference, but still trying to trying
to get the picture here. So again I'm just from a
distance I look at this and I think, okay anybody
that can take 90 down to one and it's going to zero, and if the thing in
question is having less than 2$ a day, I cannot see
how that's not a good thing and how it's not amazing
and so it amazes me. So then I say well if
there are other places where for example in Sub-Saharan Africa, there's 400 million other
people now with less than 2$ a day, and in India and Pakistan there's 200 million people
now with less than 2$ a day. Nobody could deny that
they would be better off for whatever other problems
they have if they had 2$ a day. And 2$ a day is not nirvana excuse me. I mean that's how about four dollars and how about a ten dollars. So Lu Mai help us how you see this because you've been living
in the middle of it, and I think particularly as Tony suggested part of what you do is with
your Research Foundation is experiment with programs. I mean you have one experimental program I think you told me about
when we were in Beijing that has, I don't know how many people? 40 million or some. All experiment, with 40
million people or something. So tell a little bit how,
comment on Rohini and Tony but do it from the perspective
of things you're doing here. - Thank you. The situation like this
China adopted market economy transfer from a central planning
economy to market economy. That's a really gifted
engine for the girls but meanwhile for the market economy, there's a winner, there's a loser. There's some people get rich very quickly, but some people in the
remote area need help. So very fortunately Chinese
government has this commitment they should not, they will not
because those area used to be revolutionary base or
the minority people live or that's their responsibility,
they need to fight for to help those people. So no one behind. How can they do this this time? They have our targeting. Targeting to a household. So fortunately with this internet
from a central government they can have exactly the
data about this 30 million of the people, where they live, and what's the problem he face. So this is new things
compared with before, and if you want to keep
you in as a poverty county, that means that those
poor family did not change and then you will be punished. That's one thing so new
technical really helpful. For some approach we still
need some time to see, like voluntary migration. 1993, I did assessment for World Bank about this migration in Nin Xia. At the beginning World
Bank thought this migration decreased in size, but this
is not force the migration. Government build new house. Each one cost 200,000 RMB
for certain square meter. And the poor family they
need to pay 10,000 maximum not more than that. So all those house is the near the city, near the highway so this
is the transition point. They come down and then
they can go to the city, and get the better public service. So that's another thing. We understand for the,
you said 680 counties who live in the mountain
area are really poor is true. In those area, there's
44 million of children from zero to 15 years old. So they live in the poverty area. Many of them are poor kids. So we need to working on this. For example we did some
social experiment 2007 under in that county,
the boys 30 year boys 13 is just as high as 10
years old in the city. So three years shorter. That time we started the school meal. We learn from US actually. And the school meal
project went very well. Government now took over
covered 32 million of students for compulsory education
in the rural area. And we measure, we're
monitoring this and measure and we saw in the five years
the children grow faster compared with before. And then we started our program in the village preschool education. This one won one award this time. They called Wise Project Award so we were happy, we're proud of that because children in the project totally will run 2300 and the local
government now run more than 10,000 this village preschool. It make big changes for those children, but you spend only 300 US dollar per year. So for school meal is 800 RMB. So 120 US dollar per year, but make a big changes. We started 2015 about parenting. So we use home visiting model to do that. In the first county it's so successful. Now we expanded to seven
county under our go. We hope government will
take over and cover all those 680 counties. We give the proposal under Xi Jinping agree with us and gives instruction to formulate the plan for child
development in poverty area from 2014 to 2020. So after that by 2020 if
government achieve the goal that goal is in the poverty area. The children should reach the
average of Chinese rural area students achieve so if we reach that level we will continue especially
for the zero to three. The earlier child development. We also learned that from US
head start, earlier head start and we adopt that in
Chinese local situation, and it worked well and
we have a lot of data, if anybody interested we
will add to discussion. - Lu Mai let me be simple-minded
to just try to push a little further and then get comments. So it sounds to me like you and Lu He whom I have talked to about this, and he agrees with you, and your boss Xi Jinping,
think this is a soluble problem and you're going to solve
it by the end of 2020. That is to have no people,
essentially zero you said, below 2$ a day. So that's what you said I'm typing, so you think okay we figured
out how many there are, 30 million that's how
many you said are left. We know where they are. They live in 680 some counties. We know their name presumably you said that now we have a database. And then we know how to fix this problem. We got five things to do. We can either encourage
them to move and we can have the children have a nutrition program, and we can do this and we can do, so that sounds to me like
an engineer basically fixing the bridge or something. And it sounds a little ambitious. A little, I mean slightly amazing, but it's amazing, I'm
already amazed to get from 90% to 1% so I can believe in miracles. So I mean if I got it I mean this is just, this is a problem you've defined it. You think you understand it
and you're gonna solve it. Is that it? - First I am sorry I need to correct that. Lu He is assistant to Xi Jinping, I come from nonprofit organization. So far behind of that. (audience laughing) - But I know for sure that
Liu He thinks extremely well of you and appreciates
the work you do obviously. - That's right. That's a policy-making
process we learn from here, but in China this is a bottom
up and top down process. They listen if we give a
suggestion to help them to solve the problem. Can we end of the poverty?
Absolutely poverty? Is that a question? Yes it's a question. We have a same question. This gentleman in
(speaks foreign language) poverty area, he is the age just 40, he was born 1978. He just started two years grade two, under the unfinished, and cannot continue, but now he is in the poverty. What he learned, look at in the war. All his money he worked
for and he write down on the war, only himself can
understand the calculation. Nobody understand. How to help him? Government build up a house for him, this is government built house, and the government gave
him a pig for him to raise and earn some money, but he has no skill. The pig was died. (audience laughing) So that's the problem, but now government official
give him assignment, as forest guard, Every month earn thousand,
but he need to trot the area to prevent fire. That's a public job, but for the future because the future we will have a hi-tech. We will have a lot of a new problem, so future is those children. So the girls, these are pretty girls. So I cannot help her. His score is very low, that's a problem. But for another three, this family has, we help him for the preschool. We help him for the parenting. We help them with the
nutrition intervention. So look at them, they are more healthy and more educated. We will change this inter
generation transmission of a poverty. We will have those
family have a sustainable poverty elevation. And I think absolutely poverty
will become the history in China, but fight with the
poverty is still a big issue. - Okay so let me just say
that we're issuing now an invitation to you today
to come at the end of 2020 or at the beginning of 2021, and we're going to have a
celebration if this is successful. I wouldn't bet against it. I don't know. Rohini what do you say about this? Because no other country does this. I mean India doesn't do this. The US doesn't do this. Nigeria doesn't do this. So I find it bold, a little shocking, audacious maybe, what do you make? - I mean as you said we should watch and I think there's a
long history of trying to think of anti-poverty policies
as an engineering problem, and mostly everyone has
discovered that people make it hard right, so engineers
like working with say atoms. They're predictable you know what they do, but then when you have
policies and that need to be delivered there are people involved and people as we all know,
can't be fully predicted. So just one thing I mentioned
which I recently saw which I thought was
interesting and I know we are short of time so I'll end
there, is as we know Jinping has also had a very well publicized and large anti-corruption campaign. And one of the places
where you know there's been significant effort has actually
been in the distribution of anti-poverty funds. So a lot of anti-poverty
resources in China go to the local county level
and then distributed locally, and I think that's just one
example of when there are people and people have different preferences, we may want our resources
to go to children, and you know in many countries
the problem is perhaps even larger, but I think
that's just one example of where I think an
engineering approach may come up against people. - So Tony you have studied this problem for a long, long time and
done a lot of things about it for a long long time. - Very quick because I
guess people have questions. I mean I think one of
the most important things Lu Mai just mentioned was
the learning experience of the government to target households rather than geographic areas. Because the targeting to geographic areas a lot of poor people
didn't live in those areas. There was a lot of leakage,
a lot of corruption. So I think that's been
a very important shift. The second thing that I worked
on a lot back in the early 90s was on microfinance programs, which you know were very
helpful in terms of helping particularly women in
some of the impoverished rural communities, to find
ways to move out of things. So I think that was
another important factor and again it was a good
learning experience for the Chinese government. I think the other two
problems really come back to what I said earlier. Recidivism has been very high in the past. So it's how to avoid that and
then the next challenge is really gonna be when you've
got people out of absolute poverty, not only do you
how do you keep them out, but how do you advance to the next step because we do know in urban
China also which often doesn't get spoken about, there's about
19 million people receiving the minimum living support Debam schemes, And so there's also a
significant set of issues there as well. So there's gonna be enough to keep Lu Mai and his organization going
for quite a few years yet. - Okay so we'll all look
forward to the end of 2020 or if we finish early,
but any case in 2021. Let me open the floor to the audience. There are microphones here on the floor, and I don't know whether upstairs or not, yes at the lounges, yeah, and stand up please at the microphone to make your point please. Yes sir. - Hi my name is Ryan
Davis and I'm a senior at the college. My question is about
the Social Credit System which is supposed to roll
out in China by 2020. I asked this question with
the assumption that may be we don't or that China does
not fix or get to the zero percent poverty goal by 2020, or with the assumption and
agreement that even if you're at 0% poverty you can
still dip below that. Well I know the program
still needs to be tweaked and it's largely unknown. The things that I've read about
have said that undesirable behavior will be punished
with things like worse loan conditions, being given the
stigma of being a bad citizen, and prevention of certain jobs. So my question is that a lot
of the undesirable behavior that we punished is a natural
consequence of poverty and living in adverse conditions. For example a food insecure
person is more likely to commit some sort of property crime or theft, and so wouldn't this direct
this program directly impede ability anti-poverty measurements? And if so, how do you
reconcile these two goals? - Good question, good. Please Lu Mai. - We separate with this
rural poverty area with urban with some cases that you mentioned. Under rural give credit is
also the way to help a poor family, but to make sure they have seeds, they have pigs to raise
and have some tool. It is the problem at the bad
loan for Bank of Agriculture for those kind of the
reason, they failed to achieve the goal. So in that case I think the time they need to be final responsible for those loans. - Maybe this gentleman, thank you. - My name is Patrick Ramirez. I'm a junior over at the
college studying government. And I was wondering so
it was mentioned that you're part of a nonprofit organization, and how you work with the
central government on tackling this issue and I'm
familiar with how American, the American government
interacts and the rules, American non-for-profits interact with the American government in tackling
these type of issues here, but I was wondering how
that works more in China if you could expound on that, and your respective rules. - As a nonprofit organization, we are a little bit different, for
example with Ford Foundation. We affiliated with government think tank. That's advantage or disadvantage. Advantage is if we have a some suggestion, we have a result through their channel directly it go to the top leader. Disadvantage, yes financially
we are independent, but not that totally, not totally. (all laughing) - Tony say a word about
how the Ford Foundation was part or with respect to this question for foundations and the
government and the environment. - When I was running the
Ford programs in China, it was at a time when
the Chinese government didn't have as much money as it has now to put into projects. There weren't as many international
organizations in China apart from the World Bank, there
was only one or two others. So we in a sense were in
a very privileged position to be able to work in policy areas. The most important thing
though is that we never ran projects in China. We funded other people
to do those projects. So you know it had to be
something that organizations or local communities felt was important and then we would help them
with funding in what we try to do coming back to some
of the points that Lu Mai was making earlier, we try to
work with local communities that were trying something experimental. So we did a lot of work
in reproductive health for example social forestry,
but we try to link those experiments, with the relevant
ministries at the center. So that the local experiment
had some feedback into people with decision makers
'cos no way we could take something to 40 million
people or whatever. I mean we're working
in very small villages, very small counties. So someone had to think this
was a good idea and champion it and then sort of scale it up. To be honest it wasn't easy. At that time China didn't
have a great understanding of not-for-profits, and
there was a lot of suspicion about what we were really doing, but there were a lot of great
people doing fascinating things and we were able to help them. I think it's tougher now
because the Chinese government has so much more financial capacity that I think finding the
niche of where do you provide value-added in China has so much more international engagement. Many things that Lu Mai
talked about that they've learned from experiences
in other countries that finding the niche that
makes you special I think is tougher now than when I was working there. - Gentleman in the lounge please. - Thank you very much Graham. My name is Demaji and I'm from Nigeria. And this is a really interesting
subject for me because just last month the Brookings
Institution says that the largest number of
the extreme poor people now live in Nigeria and no longer India. So this is really key for me. Right now I think that we do
not even have a coordinated approach to this. We haven't even started to
tackle the issue of poverty, and meanwhile in the last
10 years, we've actually had you know decent growth, so the issue has been how do
you make this growth inclusive? So I just wanted to tap
into your experience you know to see from a
policy point of view, from a government point of view
how do you organize yourself to begin to address
this issue at the root. - Great thank you. Lu Mai you have been hired
by the Government of Nigeria let's say. Can you do this in Nigeria? What the answer. - Yes if I say what Chinese people did and you can do also. 40 years it's not very long for us. We went to Liberia and
invited by Liberia government for a school meal project, because we run that in China successfully. So we would like to share vision. Just think about that,
inclusive means you think about people's need. Those students in the
school eat one meal per day. So they have a land. They control the rice
but the company import all rice from other country. And consumed by the government officials, by the top society of the people. That's unfair. That's not inclusive. Home growth under school meal. That's our plan. We want to work with them. Everything started from small, but I believe, I still have
faith about human being. People want to have a better life. Other people can help each other, and here I would like
to say Chinese people make a progress, as you see we work hard. Our leader made some
mistake but not too many, but we feel very appreciated
for the help we received. World Bank especially
1980s 1990s help China to design the program for those loans. Asia Development Bank, other
international organizations, scholar including here. We treat the Chinese
government official with, Tony, about 600, that's
a capacity building. So we very appreciate that. We didn't see we should not,
we never forget about this. That's sincerely thank you. - Thank you. So we have more people
up than we have time, so what I'm gonna do since
we are already standing, this lady in the lounge
and this lady on the floor please ask your questions together, and then we'll respond to them, and I apologize for the
others that are up, please. - Hi I'm a student and I'm from China. I'm a sophomore in the college. I wonder what kind of advice
you'd give for someone who would like to go back
to China and approach these problems and help to from, the social science perspective, what kind of advice would be appropriate. Thank you. - Thank you and then this
lady's the final question, yes. - Hi I'm Runbo. I'm a researcher visiting the Ashe Center. Following the Nigerian
colleague, I'm from Zimbabwe and 54 other African
countries are looking to China to copy the model. Are there any disclaimers
that you can give us because we might know the steps
that led to China's miracle but we do not know what we
should be cautious about in the process, and after
the miracle, then what? Are we looking at democracy
because that is what some of our leaders are telling us. Are we looking at authoritarianism? What should we then look
at after the miracle? Thank you. - Thank you. Two simple questions. We don't have much time but
Lu Mai what would you say? - Welcome to join us. I bring some of my colleague
here, one from back from Oxford, one from
Washington University, and so come and talk about that. About China miracle, yes, not any shoes can fit everybody. So find your way and about the democracy, I should say which one first we need to think about carefully. Freedom is the priority,
is the precondition for the market economy
but no theory proved that democracy is a precondition
for market economy. So I don't know. The most important thing is countable. The government should take responsibility to the people for the people. Otherwise election for
his career, for her career that's not solve the
problem of the people. - So unfortunately we've
come to the witching hour but let me say again on
behalf of the Kennedy School and us at Harvard, it's
amazing to think of students come here, something happens,
sometimes they go back to their country, amazing things happen. Harvard tries to take a
little bit of credit for it. I don't think necessarily
deserved but we're certainly happy to have been part of it, and I think the point that Lu Mai made about the programs that Tony
has run at the Ashe Center training people from China
to help build capacity is again suggestive of the
ways that we've at least had a little part in a miraculous story, but I would say for an
opportunity they'd like to hear from one of the people
who's been part of this. We're very grateful and we're
looking forward to your coming back and before as well for
discussing how the process is going, but certainly for the
end we're going to look forward for a great celebration. So let's say thank you very much. (audience applauding) - Good. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Thanks.
