A conference on China's integration into the world economy was held this past weekend at the Kennedy School of Government, cosponsored by the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The goal of the conference was to bring together a wide range of knowledgeable officials, scholars, and business leaders to discuss China's economic interactions with other countries and, in particular, policies which will deepen China's integration into the broader global economy.

The nearly 200 conference participants included a high-level delegation of 14 officials and researchers from Beijing led by Long Yongtu, China's vice minister of foreign trade and economic cooperation and chief negotiator to the World Trade Organization; economists and political scientists from such overseas institutions as Hong Kong University and Australian National University; and numerous American officials, economists, business and foundation representatives, journalists, and China specialists.

To kick off the conference, a dinner was held Friday evening for about 50 conference participants, including the Chinese delegation, conference panelists, and selected guests, who braved the snowstorm that hit Boston earlier in the day to attend the function. Although guests were initially informed that Jeffrey Sachs, director of the HIID and the keynote dinner speaker, had been stranded in Chicago on his return from a five-country tour of East Asia, Sachs did return to Boston in time to address the dinner attendees and led a stimulating discussion on the current financial crisis in Asia, flavoring his remarks with what he observed and learned from talks with Asian officials and other leaders on his recent trip.

On Saturday morning, the conference began with talks by Arthur Holcombe, resident representative of UNDP in Beijing; Vice-Minister Long; Richard N. Cooper, professor of international economics in Harvard's Department of Economics; Zhu Shanli, assistant dean of Beijing University's Guanghua School of Management; and Robert Lawrence, professor of trade and investment at the Kennedy School.

After the opening session, participants spent the rest of the day listening to presentations and engaging in discussions with conference panelists in the following three panels: "Quantifying the Impact of China's Integration into the Global Economy"; "Foreign Direct Investment in China: Obstacles and Opportunities"; and "China's Changing Comparative Advantage." In all these sessions, selected panelists were presenting the results of extensive research on China's foreign trade and investment, in particular the U.S.-China trade gap and the potential impact of Chinese trade liberalization.

During the lunch break, participants were entertained by a speech by Jerome A. Cohen, a former professor and director of East Asian Legal Studies and associate dean at the Harvard Law School who is currently a professor of law at New York University, a partner of the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison, and director of Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Cohen sprinkled his remarks on the progress China has made in establishing a viable legal structure with humorous anecdotes of his experiences in China over the last 20-odd years.

Following the close of the conference, a gala dinner was held at Loeb House on Saturday evening for 120 conference participants. In addition to traditional Chinese music, the dinner featured remarks by both Jeffrey Sachs and Vice-Minister Long, as well as a talk by Susan L. Shirk, a well-known China specialist who was a professor in the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies and the Department of Political Science at University of California at San Diego as well as director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation before she joined the U.S. State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary of East Asia and Pacific Affairs last summer.

Following her presentation, dinner guests were invited to ask questions of Shirk and other conference participants. A lively discussion ensued, with questions and comments made by Jeffrey Sachs, Vice-Minister Long, Cooper, Holcombe, and Cohen, among other guests.