Lecture Notes on New Political Economy: Thinking About Justice, Efficiency and Public Choice in China

In a godless society, justice is a quality of relationships between people - it is so important that it affects and even determines whether everyone or most people feel happy to a great extent. This lecture of mine is not only a lecture on "New Political Economics", but also a lecture on how Chinese people can live a better life. Therefore, this handout is the latest summary of my long-term discussion on "basic issues in Chinese society". ——Wang Dingding "Lecture Notes on New Political Economy: Thinking about Justice, Efficiency and Public Choice in China" is based on the lecture notes of the "New Political Economics" course offered by Professor Wang Dingding at Peking University. It brings together many years of ideological results from the perspective of economics to solve the basic problems of Chinese society and the prospects for institutional reform. In this book, the author first defines the new political economy and its basic issues, and then discusses in depth its core issue - justice, including the entanglement of particularism and universalism in justice theory, the development history and social practice of the concept of justice, and the relationship between social justice, public reason, and political democracy. It also focuses on the works and contributions of economists such as Ai Zhiren, Knight, and Buchanan. At the same time, the author sorts out the practical wisdom of "justice" from an interdisciplinary perspective and the method of intellectual history, and finally applies all theoretical discussions to the analysis of the current situation of Chinese society and the exploration of the direction of future change.