Weekend Long Read: A Japanese Economist’s Lasting Impact on China

Editor’s note: The author, Wu Jinglian, a 93-year-old researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council, is one of China’s most influential pro-market economists. He wrote the following speech in remembrance of Japanese economist Ryutaro Komiya, which he delivered virtually at professor Komiya’s funeral on March 14 in Tokyo. Komiya was the first director of the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry’s Research Institute, who made significant contributions to the development of economics in Japan and the country’s economic policy. He died on Oct. 31 at the age of 93.