Kornai’s Speech at Harvard
János Kornai gave a speech today about his biography By Force of Thought: Irregular Memoirs of an Intellectual Journey, which was recently published by MIT Press. In this book he wrote about his legendary life: from a communist journalist to a world-famous economist.
Kornai’s thought probably has the most transforming power in China. Ever since China’s economic reform in late 1970s, his books were introduced to Chinese economists and policy makers. And later many of his terms, such as “Soft Budget Constraint”, became popular–and in the meantime very meaningful–among thoughtful Chinese reformers.
After the speech, I approached him and asked him what he thought of current Chinese economic regime and what he thought of the future of Chinese political regime. His answer was concise and clear. For the first question, he said China’s system was more capitalism than socialism; for the second question, he told me that he did not know. “The future is always a mystery “, said him. However, he added that the current system was “not sustainable” at all. Shaking hands and saying good-bye to me, he told me his book Socialism System had just been published in China three days before.
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