Pettis worries that China’s stuck in a groove
Investment banker turned economics professor Michael Pettis speaks to Lawrence White about the risk of increased trade tensions, the difficulty of changing China’s growth model – and the thriving local rock music scene.
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| "Shifting the model [towards domestic consumption] means undoing many of the policies that made China’s recent success in the first place" Michael Pettis, Guanghua School of Management |
SAT AT A sunlit table outside a Beijing coffee shop, cigarette in hand and dressed in checked shirt and jeans, Michael Pettis discusses the local music scene with lively, informed enthusiasm. The previous night he had taken a well-known industry figure around local live haunts, discussing the young guitar groups that Pettis says are springing up as the city experiences what he calls "Beijing’s own version of the ’60s." His own bar, D-22, located in a student district, has become known city-wide as the place to see such bands as Carsick Cars, whose albums of intricate, spacious indie rock Pettis has helped release on his own label. These are perhaps unexpected extra-curricular activities for a prominent authority on China’s financial markets but the ex-Bear Stearns managing director and now professor of economics at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management is precisely that.