An Economist at the Heart of U.S.-China Engagement
An obituary for David Dollar, whose work argued for the benefits of more open trade and investment for poor countries.
David Dollar, then U.S. Treasury Department's Economic and Financial Emissary to China, attends the Caijing Annual Conference in Beijing, 15 December 2011. Credit: Imaginechina via AP Images
It wasn’t that long ago that the U.S. and China sought closer economic relations. David Dollar was at the heart of that engagement, first as a World Bank economist and then as Treasury official, advising both Washington and Beijing on ways to move forward together.
During the 2009 global financial crisis, Wang Yang, a senior Communist party official who was then running Guangdong province in southern China, turned for advice to the World Bank’s Beijing office headed by Dollar. After Dollar and his staff wrote up recommendations, he told a Wall Street Journal reporter, Wang invited him to give a lecture to the provincial government, which was attended by hundreds of officials, with Mr. Wang in the middle of the front row.
Not long afterwards, the U.S. Treasury hired Dollar as its China representative, counting on his broad contacts for a better idea of Beijing’s thinking. “No one else came close to his depth of understanding and on-the-ground access,” say
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
A decade ago, China arrived on the global art scene with deep pockets and an abundance of swagger. Recently, however, China's economic downturn has caused a spate of museums to close and once prominent collectors to sell their collections. Can China ever achieve its dreams of "cultural self-confidence"?
The Harvard professor discusses the effects on Chinese society of the country's high-tech development, and how the pandemic may have shifted public attitudes.
The Global Intelligence Platform used by The Wire China