On November the 15^th 2014, Thomas Piketty, the famous French economist, who is also known for his masterpiece: Capital in the 21st Century gave afantastic speech the Famous Economy Lecture of Maxdo: Capital in the 21st Century at the Jingwen lecture hall of BNU. And the activity was held by BNU Business School, BNU Maxdo College, China Citic Press and Citic Academy. Chair person of BNU council Liu Chuansheng, vice present of BNU Chen Guangju, secretary of the party committee for School of Foreign Languages and Literature Lin Hong, deputy director of Teaching Affairs Officer Xia Min, deputy dean of Business School Qu Ruxiao were presented. Media and over 400 teachers and students also attend the lecture, which made the hall fully occupied and in a warm atmosphere. The lecture was hosted by the dean of Business School Lai Desheng. Meanwhile, Li Shi, a professor from BNU Business School, and also the Director of Center for Income Inequality and Poverty Studies was the comment guest.

Firstly, the dean Lai Desheng gave a warm welcome to professor Piketty, and made a brief introduction about the book Capital in the 21st Century. The book provides deep research based on large statistics data of income and wealth in Europe and USA over the past three centuries. Meanwhile, professor Piketty analyzes the evolution progress of income distribution in different historical stages and provides a simplified analysis to the aggravatingproperty inequality problem in the book.

Because of the pioneering work in property and income distribution, professor Piketty was awarded as the guest professor of BNU, and the chair person of BNU council Liu Chuansheng delivered the appointment letter.

 

Then, professor Piketty shared his work with the audience. After analyzing the historical data from over 20 countries since 18 century, he pointed out that the income gap is widening. For example, the widening income gap in the USA led to unequal resource distribution. Low-income people could not receive high-quality education which widened the gap in return, leading to a vicious circle. Additionally, professor Piketty warned us to focus on the expanding global wealth gap. In his opinion, the best solution to the unequal distribution of global wealth was to set up the progressive tax around the world based on the bank independent transaction information.

Due to the incompleteness of related data in China, professor Piketty failed to provide a systematic analysis on the overall situation of China. According to what were available, China didn’t seem to have serious inequity on income distribution. However, he emphasized that this might be affected by the lack of data. Based on the household survey, we might underestimate the inequity. So actually, we didn’t know the real situation of income inequity in China. Professor Piketty said that a more complete taxation system ought to be established to narrow the income gap. What’s more, he suggested Chinese government to establish a transparent fiscal and taxation system as well as an open information platform.

After the speech, Professor Li Shi made comments. He agreed with the basic views in the book. Meanwhile, he stated that simply raising the property tax or individual income tax rate is far from being enough to solve the problem, which is the income inequity of China. The same problem was formed differently in China, thus the region differences between the rural and urban areas, as well as the different social system in different developing stages should also be taken into consideration. What’s more, Income mobility should not be ignored in the research.

At the end of the lecture, audience asked questions like the impact of globalization and population mobility on wealth inequity, why choosing the top 1% people who had the highest income as research subject, etc. Vice present of BNU Cheng Guangju gave a meaningful gift to professor Piketty on behalf of the university to express gratitude. And the audience just couldn’t wait to get an autograph on their new book: Capital in the 21st Century.

 

Writer: Liu Yang, Huang Chuying