On May 27, 2026, the Eighth Annual Conference of Government and Economics, co-organized by the Society for the Analysis of Government and Economics (SAGE) in partnership with Tsinghua University's School of Social Sciences and the Academic Center for Chinese Economic Practice and Thinking (ACCEPT), was broadcasted online.

Guest speakers participating in the conference included Eric S. Maskin, 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Adams University Professor of Economics at Harvard University; Yuval Noah Harari, Professor of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind; Dong Zhiyong, Member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Vice President of Peking University, Professor and Dean of the School of Economics at Peking University and Editor-in-Chief of Economic Science; Zheng Jianghuai, Dean of Nanjing University's School of Economics; Qiu Bin, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute of International Economics at Southeast University; Li Tao, Vice President of the Central University of Finance and Economics; Zhang Zhiming, Vice President of the Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics; Yang Yuzhen, Vice President of Henan Normal University; Fan Shide, Professor and Dean of Nanjing Audit University's School of Economics; David Daokui Li, Co-President of SAGE, Director of ACCEPT, Editor-in-Chief of Research on Government and Economics; Liu Peilin, Chief Researcher of ACCEPT and Co-Director of the Institute of Government and Market Economics at Zhejiang University's Center for Regional Coordinated Development. Wang Hongwei, Vice President of Tsinghua University, delivered opening remarks to kickstart the event, with the remainder of the conference proceedings moderated by Li Ke'aobo, Executive Deputy Director of ACCEPT.

Wang Hongwei highlighted that 2026 marks ten years since General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered his congratulatory letter to Tsinghua University during the university's 105th anniversary and five years since his important speech commemorating the university on its 110th anniversary while conducting an inspection tour of the campus. The General Secretary proposed to go a step further in refining some of our typical approaches, including forging ahead in establishing new concepts, typologies and formulations that are easier to comprehend and accept internationally, leading the way within the international academic community by convening related research symposia, and encouraging institutions focusing on philosophy and the social sciences to participate in setting up academic organizations of an international character. In 2022, Xi further suggested accelerating the institutionalization of philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics, ultimately with an aim towards bringing into being an independent Chinese knowledge system.

Following its establishment eight years ago, the ACCEPT research institute at Tsinghua University has continuously strived to develop an independent knowledge system in accordance with China's own economic practices and with widespread applicability to the international community, having since produced a number of influential outcomes in the area of academic research. Seven years ago, SAGE was founded as an international academic organization; and five years ago, SAGE went on to inaugurate an English-language international academic journal called the Journal of Government and Economics (JGE). In 2025, a Chinese-language journal was officially launched, titled Research in Government and Economics, which has already successfully published two issues, including incorporating research from three Nobel laureates, the publication having since witnessed a rapid rise in its citation rate within a very short period. Wang further expressed his hopes that the research institute will seize this historic opportunity, take serving the country as its mission, persist in conducting internationally influential research, foster a leading international academic hub, and enhance the reach of China's global discourse, all while becoming a pioneer in reforming the discipline of economics in China and making concerted efforts to promote Tsinghua University as one of the forerunners in building an autonomous knowledge system in the fields of philosophy and social sciences.

At the meeting, David Daokui Li introduced the core ideas, latest developments and future directions for the field of government and economics. He mentioned that the fundamental task for government and economics is to incorporate the government—a significant participant in the modern market economy—systematically into economic analysis, study government behavior and its underlying incentive mechanisms, and thereby fully put into place a proactive government and an effective market. He further stressed that a disciplinary branch of academic learning would possess more dynamism than merely schools of thought. Government and economics shows significant promise as a discipline because it contributes to establishing the theoretical basis for Chinese-style modernization and developing the country's own independent knowledge system, transforming the experience gained from China's economic practices into theoretical contributions that are of relevance to audiences around the world, thereby further promoting the discipline internationally. In terms of research methodology, Li explained that government and economics ought to adhere to the trio of case studies, theory and statistics as its basic research paradigm.

On the topic of the artificial intelligence (AI) epoch, Li expressed that AI not only enhances our capabilities to engage in economic research but also raises major issues that the field of governments and economics must address. AI is now in the process of gradually bringing a "silicon-based society" into being. Humanity must not only study how AI is affecting the operation of the economy but also the relationship between a silicon-based society and human society, as well as the behavioral procedures, institutional arrangements and governance mechanisms within a silicon-based society. On this basis, he also proposed establishing an AI Development and Governance Commission with functional capacities in both developing and governing AI, as its name suggests, and incorporating scholars, entrepreneurs and officials from governmental departments. Such a commission would require well-defined goals, professional capabilities and supervisory authority, with its aim being to promote an effective balance between the development and governance of AI.

Eric S. Maskin launched into a discussion on the various societal impacts and governance frameworks associated with the ongoing AI revolution. Compared with the previous industrial, computer, and internet revolutions, AI is being adopted faster and is having a comparatively broader impact, with the technology expected extend its reach into almost every domain of society and across almost all areas of employment. On the one hand, AI has the potential to replace a large amount of routine and repetitive tasks, including even a portion of knowledge work or mental labor; and on the other hand, the technology also generates enormous hazards ranging from the mass substitution of employment and misinformation from deepfakes, as well as the possibility of losing control over AI systems following an increase in their autonomy.

In terms of logic behind the governance of AI, Maskin emphasized that research into AI operating mechanisms and their social impact has the attribute of being a public good, and since the private sector may underinvest in these areas due to the need to maintain profitability, the government therefore must step in to provide the necessary research funding and institutional incentives. He further advocated for applying mechanism design principles in the establishment of institutions focusing on AI governance, ensuring that such institutions can promote the development of AI while effectively preventing its misuse through the reasonable allocation of powers, responsibilities, professional capabilities, incentives and constraints. Compared to the high degree of independence and clearcut targets that underpin the governance model of the Federal Reserve System of the United States, Maskin stated his preference for establishing a dedicated AI department more in line with the mold of the US Department of the Treasury.

Zheng Jianghuai noted that China's stage of economic development has already undergone fundamental changes, shifting from application-oriented development to basic research-oriented development. However, he further explained that the current investment structure remains severely imbalanced, with the overall proportion of national funding devoted to research and development remaining very low. At the regional level, there is a mismatch between inputs and outputs in the area of technological innovation: with the proportion of R&D funding in the country's eastern region declining despite the proportion of patent authorizations for new inventions having continued to rise, while the proportion of R&D funding in the country's western region having meanwhile undergone an increase despite the number of patent authorizations having actually decreased. As the upstream segment in the innovation chain, universities have witnessed a disconnect between engaging in basic research and bringing tangible deliverables to the market, leading to recurrent low-level competition downstream and very low conversion rates for research efforts. At the same time, given that such funding can generate added GDP growth and improve promotion prospects for career bureaucrats, local governments have demonstrated a willingness to invest more into R&D.

Basic research involves two types of externalities. The first is "asymmetric horizontal spatial externalities," wherein the strength of knowledge spillovers from basic research and regional innovation gaps form a U-shaped relationship. The actual innovation capacity of central and western regions in China is relatively weak; even if R&D investment increases, innovation outputs are typically siphoned up by the eastern region. The second involves "vertical externalities," wherein basic research is unable to reap a sufficient share of the profits given its position upstream in the value chain. The combination of these horizontal and vertical externalities has led to an insufficient supply of critical and core technologies, ultimately creating a chokehold on their continued development. Counteracting this chokehold lies in implementing a new countrywide system, one that is endogenous in its nature and capable of overcoming current market and organizational failures. First of all, vertical integration must be adopted to internalize any of the externalities found along the entire value chain. By boosting R&D investment among existing entities engaged in basic research, including fully expanding the scope of basic research and incorporating institutional innovations into the system, such that the scale of investment into basic research is adequate and its coverage is sufficiently broad, the aforementioned externalities can be mitigated. Second, horizontal coordination can be implemented to internalize spatial externalities across regions and market participants, which can be realized through the harmonization of various incentives. Building a unified national market will primarily involve sharing the burdens and benefits of its maturation across regions, which hence poses new challenges to the institutional relationship between central and local governments and differentiated subsidy policies.

Yuval Noah Harari delivered a speech centered around "human choices in the age of AI." He pointed out that AI is no longer simply serving as an auxiliary tool but instead is increasingly involved in and influencing decision-making processes in more and more critical areas. From electricity grid operations to transportation systems, from financial transactions to healthcare services, AI's autonomous decision-making capacity is already playing a crucial role and even beginning to replace humanity's command over its own decision-making processes. Harari emphasized that one of the pivotal issues with transferring such decision-making powers arises from the "opacity" of algorithms: whereby humans indiscriminately hand over important decision-making competencies related to resource allocation, opportunity acquisition and risk assessment to AI systems, effectively abandoning our understanding and control over the decision-making process itself. This in turn may not only undermine social fairness but also potentially poses significant risks.

In taking the historian's perspective, Harari is of the view that technological changes have undoubtedly brought about greater human welfare, with any of the negative factors emerging from these changes often not resulting from the changes themselves, but instead from the processes by which humans adapt to and incorporate such transformations. When society embraces new technologies and advances too quickly without effective mechanisms to oversee and rectify potential areas of concern, this can easily result in catastrophic consequences at critical moments in history. Therefore, the development of AI must not follow a "launch first, then govern afterwards" approach. Institutional arrangements must be established to control AI systems, ensuring that their operating and decision-making processes can be verified, in addition to promptly correcting any issues when they arise, such that the human capacity to intervene remains preserved in those areas of the most critical concern.

In keeping with the core perspectives of government and economics, Dong Zhiyong delivered a systematic address on the topic of "Can Poverty Alleviation Foster People's Aspirations? Government Policy and Personal Choice as Seen from the Issue of ‘Idleness'." Government and economics focuses on the synergies and complementarities between government intervention and market mechanisms in resource allocation, with the "idleness" issue in poverty alleviation work being a typical topic of concern from the standpoint of how policy design and market incentives can influence individual behavioral choices. At its essence, this topic pertains to the boundaries of government intervention in poverty alleviation efforts and the effectiveness of incentives derived from market mechanisms, including how both can jointly resolve the problem of low individual performance.

In his address, Dong alluded to the fact that the "idleness" issue has persisted since the early days of China's reform and opening up, with this issue able to be demarcated and defined based on three dimensions: morality, economics and behavioral science. At its center, there is clearly a combination of attributes characterized by low individual participation, low individual expectations and low individual effort, which results from a mix of overlapping structural factors and individual circumstances rather than being merely an issue with individual character. Dong made use of budget constraint and indifference curve models to analyze the key factors affecting both: the former is linked to constraining variables such as returns, risks and opportunities, while the latter is linked to immediate consumption preferences, loss aversion and sociocultural mechanisms. In terms of policy responses, he proposed both short-term and long-term approaches: with shorter-term policies such as subsidies for employment and industries that can readjust the budget constraint to increase returns to labor and reduce participation costs; and longer-term policies that focus on "poverty alleviation and confidence building," such as promoting the outward shift of the indifference curve from the three aspects of stabilizing expectations, reducing costs for training participation, and establishing responsibility punishment and reward mechanisms, in this way stimulating endogenous dynamism. Lastly, by focusing on the long-term nature of the "idleness" issue, estimating the long-term costs and benefits of incentive policies, defining the boundary between government and the market, as well as investigating discrepancies in expectations between employers and employees regarding compensation and performance, among other questions, Dong marked out a path for further advancing research on this topic from the perspectives of government and economics.