Prof. Yu Miaojie, a member of the Standing Committee of the 14th Liaoning Provincial People’s Congress, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee, and President of Liaoning University, was recently invited to publish an article for the World Trade Report 2023 with the title Re-globalization or Decentralization: Choice and Challenge.

Prof. Yu was the only professor invited in Asia and also one of only two professors invited from higher educational institutions. The other professor invited was Prof. Pinelopi K. Goldberg from Yale University, an outstanding economist in the field of applied microeconomics, who was the Editor-in-Chief of American Economic Review, a top international journal of economics with great academic prestige, as well as Chief Economist of the World Bank.

The admission of Prof. Yu’s article to World Trade Report 2023 is another significant scientific achievement, just six months after Prof. Yu published an article in the Review of Economics and Statistics, a top international journal of economics. It is also the first time that a LNU scholar has published an academic article in an internationally authoritative global research report. Being another historical breakthrough for LNU’s “Double First-Class” construction, this work helps improve the international influence of its academic disciplines and enhances its international academic discursive power, thus playing an important role in telling ‘Chinese Stories’ well and disseminating ‘China’s Voice’ through high-quality scientific achievements.

Abbreviated as WTO, the World Trade Organization serves as an permanent international organization independent of the United Nations. Being the organizational and legal basis of trade system, it works to mediate disputes, manage various trade agreements, supervise trade legislation of its members and provide a platform for negotiation when there is a trade dispute. As one of the most important international economic organizations in contemporary times, the trade volume among its members accounts for the vast majority of the world, therefore winning the title of the ‘United Nations in Economics’.

The World Trade Report, being the only flagship report published by WTO, bears a significant impact on global trade. The report has a role to play in in-depth analysis of global trade trends, policy making, international cooperation, providing education and research tools so as to help governments, enterprises and scholars better understand and cope with the challenges of international trade. World Trade Report is crucial in helping all parties understand the dynamics, challenges and opportunities of global trade and offers an important source of information about the global economy, thus being of great significance in promoting the prosperity and sustainable development of global trade.

External experts were invited to publish articles in World Trade Report 2023, including Prof. Yu Miaojie from LNU; Pamela Coke-Hamilton (International Trade Center); Melaku Desta (U.N. Economic Commission for Africa--UNECA); Pinelopi K. Goldberg (Yale University, former Editor-in-Chief of AER); Stephen Karingi (UNECA); Jason McCormack (UNECA) and Adam Posen (Peterson Institute for International Economics).

Prof. Yu pointed out in his article that trade globalization remains the key to international trade although it is facing the challenges of protectionism. He stressed two features of trade globalization: global trade integration and production decentralization, that is, the growth of global value chain. However, the rise of trade protectionism may lead to more regionalization of trade, weaken the resilience of supply chains and widen the gap between rich and poor, thus posing a threat to global environmental sustainability. Therefore, it is suggested that we should re-energize globalization by expanding multilateral trade cooperation to solve those challenges. These efforts involve solving problems within the WTO system and striking a balance between national security, supply chain resilience, gap between rich and poor, inclusiveness and environmental sustainability. Moreover, Prof. Yu argued that we should ensure the resilience of the global supply chain, reduce the gap between rich and poor to promote environmental sustainability and maintain the openness of global trade.

The author:

Yu Miaojie was born in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province, in 1976. He holds his Ph.D. in economics from University of California, Davis. He is a representative of the 14th National People’s Congress, a member of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress of Liaoning Province, the deputy secretary of the Party Committee and the president of Liaoning University, the chairman of the Academic Committee, and the chairman of the Academic Degrees Committee of the University. He is the first Chinese winner of the Royal Economic Society Prize, the winner of the National Talent Program and a winner of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars. He is an outstanding young scientist of Beijing and a Liberal-Art Chair Professor at Peking University. He is a chief expert of major projects of the National Social Science Fund of China, an outstanding young scholar of Huang Tingfang/Xinhe, and is among the top one percent most highly cited economists in the field of economics and management in the entire world.

He also serves as Vice President of the China Society of World Economics, Vice President of the China Econometrics Association, Vice President of the Chinese Association of Quantitative Economics, Vice President of the China Society of Industrial Economics, Vice President of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong & Macao Studies, Secretary-General of the International Consortium for China Studies, a member of the Economic and Trade Policy Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Commerce, a council member of ‘China-US Research Think Tank Alliance’ (under the Ministry of Finance), and Vice President of the Liaoning Federation of Social Sciences.

Yu Miaojie’s main fields of research are international trade, world economy, and China’s economic development. He was specially invited to the United Nations Headquarters to make a report on China’s economic development and was warmly received by General Secretary Xi Jinping as a representative of outstanding teachers at Peking University during its 120th anniversary.

Yu’s award-winning study has been rated as one of the three most influential papers by the Economic Journal since its inception in 1891. His co-authored papers were rated among the most influential articles on China's economy in Review of Economics & Statistics, the world's top journal of economics. He has won many awards, including Wu Yuzhang Prize on Humanity and Social Science, Pei-Kang Chang Prize in Development Economics, the Philosophy and Social Sciences Excellent Achievement Award of Beijing, and the Anzijie International Trade Research Award five times. His book Processing Trade and Enterprise Productivity has been awarded the Liu-Shibai Economic Research Prize, Husheng Outstanding Young Scholar Research Prize and China Young Economist Award.

The lecture ‘Dual Cycle’ of Chinese Economy in the New Development Stage and “High-quality Development of Chinese Economy’ have been selected into the National Cadre Education and Training Course of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CPC twice. He was specially invited twice to give the CCDI and SCSPRC a live broadcast on China's economic development. His work on the China-US Trade War & Trade Talks in an English version was awarded the China Prize for New Development by Springer and was also published in German.

Click to download the full text of World Trade Report：