China Seminar | 12 January 2017

Xi’s Challenge: Can China Avoid Economic Stagnation?

Richard H. Hornik

All rapidly developing countries eventually face what economists call a “middle income trap” when they try to move from resource-driven growth dependent on cheap labor and capital to growth based on high productivity and innovation. Few counties have made that transition, and China’s chances were heavily compromised by the unprecedented growth of private and public sector debt in the past 8 years. Will Dynamic Zhonguo become the Muddle Kingdom? Richard Hornik, currently a lecturer in the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, is a journalist with over 30 years of global experience. He was executive editor of AsiaWeek, deputy chief of correspondents and news service director of Time in New York, and he served as Time’s bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong. He co-authored Massacre in Beijing: China’s Struggle for Democracy, with Donald Morrison, and has written for Foreign Affairs, Fortune, Smithsonian, The New York Times and Wall St. Journal. He has an M.A. in Russian studies from George Washington University and a B.A. in political science from Brown University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was Journalist-in-Residence at the East-West Center. He was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong in 2012 and at UHM in Spring 2015.