HKUST Library iTalk - The Price of Zero: China's Policy Missteps During & After Covid
The Chinese economy has not had the widely expected rebound since pandemic restrictions were lifted in late 2022. High debt levels, falling property prices, excess capacity in many industries, falling foreign direct investment, and tepid consumption growth have all contributed to a weak recovery and stubborn deflationary pressures.
What are the causes of China’s post-Covid slowdown? Is the slowdown structural or cyclical? And what are its likely impacts on the rest of Asia and the world?
In this talk, Prof. Donald Low will examine the causes and economic consequences of the zero-Covid policy that the Chinese authorities pursued for much of the pandemic, as covered in his latest book, The Price of Zero: Chinas Policy Missteps During & After Covid (2024).
Donald Low is Senior Lecturer and Professor of Practice at the HKUST Institute for Public Policy, as well as Director of Leadership and Public Policy Executive Education (LAPP) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
He’s the editor of Behavioural Economics and Policy Design: Examples from Singapore (2011), the lead author of Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus (2015), and co-author of PAP v PAP: The Party’s Struggle to Adapt to a Changing Singapore (2020).