Justin Yifu Lin on China’s Modernization Path for the 2026 Janetos Lecture
The Frederick S. Pardee School welcomed Professor Justin Yifu Lin as the speaker for the 2026 Anthony C. Janetos Memorial Distinguished Lecture, where he delivered an in‑depth talk titled China’s Modernization: Path and Implications. As one of the world’s leading scholars of development economics and China’s political economy, Lin drew on a career spanning academia and global policymaking, from founding major research institutions at Peking University to serving as Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank.
Moderated by Min Ye, Professor of International Relations and Interim Director of the Pardee Center, the lecture explored what “Chinese‑style modernization” means and why it matters for China and the Global South.
Lin situated China’s modernization project within the broader history of global economic development, contrasting centuries of agrarian stagnation with the uneven gains that followed the Industrial Revolution. While early industrializers experienced rapid growth and rising life expectancy, he noted that many countries were left behind, producing a persistent divide between advanced and developing economies. Against this backdrop, Lin argued that China’s challenge is to reach high‑income status in a compressed time frame while avoiding the inequality, environmental degradation, and conflict that accompanied earlier modernization efforts.
Central to the lecture were five defining features of Chinese‑style modernization, articulated by the Chinese Communist Party in 2022: development in a country of 1.4 billion people; the pursuit of “common prosperity”; the coordinated advancement of material and moral life; harmonious coexistence between humans and nature; and peaceful development.
Lin emphasized that achieving these goals depends on New Structural Economics, which argues that countries should develop industries aligned with their factor endowments and competitive advantages. When economies follow this path, he explained, labor demand rises, wages increase, and growth benefits broad segments of society. “If you follow your competitive advantages in the process of structural transformation, you can have a common prosperity,” Lin said, citing evidence from East Asia and across Chinese provinces.
Lin also addressed concerns about demographic aging, arguing that population aging does not necessarily impede growth if countries invest in education and skills. What matters most, he stressed, is not the sheer number of workers, but the quality of labor, defined as the combination of workforce size and education. He further explained how viable firms, supported by strong infrastructure and institutions rather than subsidies, generate the fiscal capacity for redistribution, environmental protection, and social investment—linking economic competitiveness to sustainability and social equity.
In the following Q&A, Lin responded to critiques of China’s development model, including accusations of “debt‑trap diplomacy,” tensions between export‑led growth and common prosperity, and the risks of AI‑driven modernization. He argued that many criticisms misread the data and overlook the role of infrastructure, industrial upgrading, and policy coordination.
Throughout the discussion, Lin returned to a normative core of his argument: “For me, development is a human right.” Framing China’s experience as both empirical evidence and a source of lessons, the lecture positioned Chinese‑style modernization as a provocative and consequential model for countries seeking inclusive, sustainable, and peaceful development paths.
The full recorded lecture can be watched here.