It Is Ideas That Shape History: Reflections on a Visit to the UChicago

1.

If you ask an economist who has lived through China's reform and opening-up, "Which university would you most like to visit?" the answer would very likely be the University of Chicago—or, more precisely, its Department of Economics.

Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, and the UChicago economists they represent are the intellectual idols of this generation of Chinese scholars. Their columns, statements, and publications have answered the practical dilemmas faced by a whole generation of Chinese academics. For three or four years, Coase’s The Firm, the Market, and the Law was a constant companion in my suitcase. It felt as if no matter how many times I read it, it was never enough.

My visit to the UChicago Department of Economics also stemmed from a personal connection.

In 2008, Coase used his Nobel Prize winnings to host a large, high-level academic seminar at UChicago to commemorate the 30th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up. According to Wang Ning, Coase's assistant and an economist, I was the only journalist invited. At the time, I was working for the Southern Media Group in China.

However, due to personal work commitments, I was unable to attend, which I deeply regret. It was in the final session of that very conference that the 98-year-old Coase delivered a deeply moving speech: "I Am Near the End of My Life, Best Wishes to China."

Coase was the economist with the greatest influence on China's economic reforms, yet unfortunately, he never visited China. Around 2012, friends were arranging for him to go, but sadly, the old master passed away in 2013.

All Chinese people, myself included, owe him a face-to-face expression of gratitude!

It was only natural, then, that on August 29, 2025 (August 30, China time)—my 50th birthday—the birthday gift I most wanted was a visit to the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago.

2.

In early autumn in Chicago, the wind off Lake Michigan hadn't yet turned chilly. Walking through the UChicago campus, weaving between Gothic buildings covered in ivy, one feels a sense of solemnity, akin to a pilgrimage. The grey stone walls, towering spires, and quiet quadrangles feel like an ancient monastery isolated from the noise of the world.

However, the moment I pushed open the doors to Saieh Hall for Economics, the tension between the ivory tower and reality was instantly heightened—unexpectedly, by the reality of distant China.

On a wall around the corner in a corridor, I saw a progress report on the "China REACH" project. This is a research program led by Nobel laureate James Heckman. He turned his gaze to the most remote rural areas of China, such as Gansu, using empirical methods to verify that "investment in early childhood education is the human capital investment with the highest rate of return." The light of economic reason has become a practical force in changing the destinies of impoverished children in distant China.

And in the "Chicago Economic Experience" exhibition on the first floor, I saw a familiar Chinese name—Yifu Lin (Justin Yifu Lin). After receiving his Ph.D. from the UChicago Department of Economics, Lin returned to China and founded the China Center for Economic Research (CCER) at Peking University, later renamed the National School of Development (NSD). He was the first economist to study abroad after the reform and opening-up, and he understood the immense significance of economics for a transforming China. Today, the NSD is home to many prominent scholars; to be fair, it is the academic institution that has responded most actively to China's realities and has had the most profound impact on China's transformation. I myself once studied there and benefited from it.

The first lesson for the Rocky Mountain Center from this visit to the UChicago Department of Economics is that think tanks must respond frequently and profoundly to reality—to the pain points of the real world.

The history of the "Chicago School" itself is the best annotation. From Friedman’s monetary theory, which profoundly reshaped Federal Reserve policy, to the "Law and Economics" pioneered by Coase and others, which directly changed U.S. antitrust laws and business regulation practices, the UChicago Department of Economics has never remained confined to an ivory tower.

This will also be the core methodology of the Rocky Mountain Center.

3.

Those interested in China's economic reforms over the past 50 years will likely ask: What is it that truly shapes history? Politicians? Great men? Luck or chance? Ordinary people? Perhaps the answer can be found in the long corridor on the first floor of the UChicago Department of Economics.

The walls lining the corridor are filled with photos of intellectual giants—Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Gary Becker... and even a group photo of 16 Nobel laureates!

A photo that seems a bit abrupt is a candid shot of Milton and his wife, Rose. In the spring of 1938, in a cherry-blossom-filled Washington D.C., a shy and reserved Rose stands beside the dignified and confident Milton. It reminds me of their co-authored book, Two Lucky People. Many of the captions for the photos in the corridor are quoted from this book.

Walking down the long corridor, I reflect on the ideals they defended throughout their lives—free markets, clear property rights, minimal government, and vigilance against the interference of power in the economy. For most of the 20th century, facing the frenzy of planned economies and state interventionism, they were lonely contrarians. But ultimately, it was precisely these ideas that directly catalyzed the global wave of marketization, including in China, saving hundreds of millions of people from poverty.

Paul Samuelson was right (more or less): "I don't care who writes a nation's laws, or crafts its advanced treaties, if I can write its economics textbooks."

What truly shapes history is, in fact, ideas.

In random exchanges with students, I also felt deeply that they take pride in the UChicago Department of Economics. When they read those classic texts of economics, it feels as if history itself is passing by just outside the windows of their desks. History is, perhaps, just a footnote to those intellectual documents.

Standing at the end of the corridor, the sunlight streams in from the window outside, creating dappled patterns of light and shadow.

America once had a glorious era of entrepreneurship—the Founding Fathers’ defense of private property and individual liberty, the fearless spirit of the pioneers in the westward expansion, and the wild dreams of the geeks in Silicon Valley garages changing the world. However, amidst complex regulations, anti-market sentiments, and the bureaucratization of large corporations, this spirit has waned.

The future is undetermined. If one had to summarize the mission of the Rocky Mountain Center in one sentence, it would be to reshape the idea of entrepreneurship in order to promote a new technological revolution and commercial civilization.

On August 29, 2025, in this temple of economics at UChicago, I spent my 50th birthday. There was no cake, no noise, but I received a precious gift: a power that transcends time and space.

Goodbye, Ronald Coase.

(Note: Strictly speaking, Coase was on the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School, but he had deep roots with the Department of Economics and was one of the key members of the "Chicago School of Economics." For his pioneering contributions to transaction costs and property rights theory, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991.)