Writing
Foundational essays on sufficiency-first, the cases that illustrate it, and shorter pieces for general audiences.
Foundational essays — how the idea developed, what it claims, where it leads.
A new UN commission wants to move beyond GDP. The trouble: the UN built the architecture that makes GDP mandatory in practice — and a dashboard of voluntary indicators won't dethrone a metric that's required to belong.
The idea that poor people benefit more when you generate opportunities that are small in scale and low-tech. Obvious as a prescription — heretical in development.
If we brought sufficiency-first to its logical conclusion, what would society look like? On scale, Kuhn, and the call for an epistemic community.
My 'discovery' of a fifty-year-old idea. How a puzzle about two neighboring Chinese provinces led, eventually, to what I now call sufficiency-first.
Examples of small works in practice — drawn from agriculture, industry, and beyond.
A ranching town of 140 in Montana, a poor province in southwest China, and the same bargain made in two languages. On data centers, the 'scissors gap,' and what self-rule turns out not to deliver.
What Taiwan forgot about its own pathway out of poverty. On TSMC's triumph, two divergent clocks, and the difference between an economy that includes its poor versus one that just redistributes to them.
KFC, Nescafé, vegetables, cut flowers — all sourced from small Chinese farmers. How land rights kept agribusiness small-scale, for a while.
Lessons from Isan, the rice basket of Thailand, on what it takes to shift small-scale farmers into certified organic production.
Most poor people in poor countries farm. When subsistence becomes unviable, mainstream economists prescribe scaling up. But there are other ways.
Selected pieces with full text or audio/video on this site.
Op-ed for Channel News Asia on the centrality of poverty in Chinese politics, a century after the founding of the Communist Party.
A brief interview on BBC Radio's News Day discussing the announcement that China had eradicated absolute rural poverty.
A short video on the persistence of poverty in China — a reminder that the 'end of absolute poverty' is not the end of poverty.
Observations on how scholarship is measured, marketed, and at times mismeasured.
On the seductions and distortions of citation databases — from someone who has spent a lot of time reading them.
Commentary published with external outlets — Channel News Asia, Wall Street Journal, Straits Times, Brink Asia, Karyawan, and others.
Wall Street Journal Webinar · with Jason Douglas
Karyawan (AMP Singapore) 16(3): 9–12
Channel News Asia (Commentary)
Karyawan (AMP Singapore) 14(1): 13–16 · with Pearlyn Neo
Karyawan (AMP Singapore) 13(1): 9–11
Karyawan (AMP Singapore) 12(1): 17–20 · with Abdul Shariff Aboo Kassim
Brink Asia
IPP Review · with Joel Moore
IPP Review · with Zhanping Hu and Q. Forrest Zhang
Lianhe Zaobao (in Chinese) · with Curtis Chin
Wall Street Journal Asia · with Curtis Chin
Straits Times · with Forrest Q. Zhang
Straits Times · with Forrest Q. Zhang
Lianhe Zaobao (in Chinese) · with Forrest Q. Zhang
Asian Post
Reviews of recent scholarship on China, rural development, and the politics of poverty.
China Journal
China Journal 87(1): 130–2
The Developing Economies 59(3): 327–30
Journal of Chinese Political Science 24(3): 551–53
China Quarterly 233: 250–52
China Journal 79: 154–6
China Journal 78: 133–5
China Review 1(2): 203–5
China Quarterly 223: 140–2
Pacific Affairs 86(1): 140–2
Journal of Asian Studies 71(2): 539–41