The following is a summary of Zhang Zhiming's comments during a rountable discussion at the Eighth Annual Conference of Government and Economics held at Tsinghua University, Beijing, on May 23, 2026. Zhang Zhiming is Vice President of the Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics.
On May 27, 2026, the Eighth Annual Conference of Government and Economics, co-hosted by the Society for the Analysis of Government and Economics (SAGE) along with Tsinghua University's School of Social Sciences and the Academic Center for Chinese Economic Practice and Thinking (ACCEPT), was broadcasted online. Vice President of the Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics, Zhang Zhiming, participated in a lively roundtable discussion where he observed the significant potential that research on government and economics can have in improving economic development policies in ethnic minority areas across China's borderland regions.
Zhang observed that government and economics is an exceptionally promising field of study to engage in research on ethnic minority areas in China's borderland regions. Compared to the country's eastern regions, where market economies are relatively well-developed and government intervention is more effective, many government officials in borderland regions have a limited understanding of the academic discipline of economics. When intervening in the market, these officials sometimes are unable to satisfy the requirements for achieving an efficacious government, which can negatively affect the functioning of the market and generate a pervasive phenomenon wherein the government is strong, but the market remains weak. Therefore, government and economics provides substantial value and holds great potential for its diffusion across China's borderland regions, with the onward promotion of this branch of learning among relevant government and university departments being highly anticipated.
Zhang also mentioned that ethnic minority areas in China's borderland regions are of ample significance to the country, such that if these borderland regions can prosper, China will prosper, and if these borderland regions can remain stable, China will remain stable. Only by achieving modernization in China's borderland regions can the country achieve an overall level of modernization as a whole. However, the patterns of economic activity in China's frontier regions differ from those of its interior regions, such that the presupposed assumptions adopted when performing economic analysis should also differ from those adopted when examining the eastern region. He sincerely expressed his invitation for economists to visit the borderland regions and conduct field inspections, expanding their understanding of these frontier regions' economic operations while guiding these areas' economic and social development. These efforts would ensure that the field of government and economics can be better applied to these regions, making a larger number of and more impactful contributions to their drive towards modernization.