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Economist explores human stories behind development_我的网站

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    Zhou Jiang speaks at an event. Photo: Courtesy of Zhou Jiang
Zhou Jiang, a researcher at the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, has a favorite book:  White Deer Tableland or Bai Lu Yuan by renowned writer Chen Zhongshi.
As vice president of the Regional Science Association of China (RSAC), Zhou told the Global Times that a lifetime of reading has profoundly shaped the way he sees and understands the world. It ultimately led him to a career in research and academia, where he teaches and pursues scholarly work.
Since earning his PhD in economics in 2000, he has devoted himself to the study of regional science and economics, a field that demands a constant crossing of disciplinary boundaries, drawing on the fields of geography, sociology, history, and ecology among others.
"Reading has kept alive my sense of curiosity and taught me to ask questions with patience and persistence: Where do disparities in regional development come from? How do policies affect different groups in society? And how can a region pursue both efficiency and equity so that development is not merely effective, but also imbued with a greater sense of humanity and warmth?" Zhou noted. 
Founded in 1991, RSAC is a national academic society dedicated to advancing domestic and international academic exchange and cooperation, providing consulting services on spatial planning, urbanization, and regional development, and offering intellectual support for China's modernization drive.
The 57-year-old researcher noted that reading has empowered him in two distinct ways.
"The first is discernment. When confronted with a complex issue, I try not to settle for a simple conclusion. Instead, I make an effort to understand its broader context, how it has unfolded, and the perspectives of the different people involved," he said. 
"The second is a sense of inner steadiness. Setbacks are an inevitable part of both life and work. Good books remind us that hardship is never ours alone to bear; countless people before us have faced circumstances more difficult than our own, made difficult choices, and found the strength to carry on. Reading cannot solve every problem for us, but it can help us remain calm when challenges arise, giving us the clarity and resilience that allow us not to panic or give up too easily," he said. 
Historical depth

Each time Zhou returns to the White Deer Tableland, he finds something different in its pages. 
"When I first read it as a young person, I was drawn primarily to the characters and the twists and turns of their lives. Later, as I began researching regional economics, I found myself paying closer attention to the changes in the land, the countryside, families and social order presented in the story. Now, approaching 60, I have come to appreciate more deeply the choices the characters make, the constraints they face, and the quiet perseverance they show amid the sweeping currents of their times," he said. 
White Deer Tableland uses Bai Lu village in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province as a microcosm, tracing the feuds and intertwined fortunes of three generations of the Bai (literally meaning white) and Lu families. Through their stories, it captures more than half a century of sweeping historical change, from the final years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) to the 1970s and 1980s. The novel won the Mao Dun Literature Prize, one of China's top literature awards, in 1997.
Zhou prefers literary works with historical depth and a keen eye for social change. 
Regional economics may appear to be concerned with the spatial distribution of industries, population and resources, but at its heart, it is about how people live on a particular piece of land, and why some places flourish while others decline, he noted. 
In this sense, literature and history are more than pastimes beyond professional research. They often help him understand the historical context, cultural traditions and social mentality that lie behind economic data, he said. 
When reading novels, Zhou said that he often pays close attention to the relationship between people and the places they inhabit: How the land shapes the local character, how transportation transforms a region, and how shifts in industry reshape families and villages. Such details may not offer a direct conclusion, but they broaden a researcher's perspective. They also serve as a reminder that research should look beyond growth rates and statistical indicators to consider the sense of fulfillment experienced by ordinary people and the dignity of human beings.
Understanding ourselves
Once, while tidying his study, he came across a book filled with notes he had scribbled in his early years. Among them was a question that particularly caught his attention: "In the face of sweeping changes in the times and profound social transformation, what can a person truly determine for himself?"
Looking at those words he had written in his youth was like coming face to face with the person he had been decades ago.
Reading is not simply the act of understanding a book; it is also a record of a person's own growth, he said. The same book can reveal something entirely different when read at different stages of life. 
When we are young, we turn to books in search of answers; but when we become seasoned, we read more to understand life, to understand others, and ultimately, to better understand ourselves, Zhou said. 
In this era of fragmented information, AI can help people access information quickly, organize materials, and gain a basic understanding of unfamiliar fields. Yet deep reading, Zhou said, allows people to see how a conclusion is reached — what evidence supports it, where its boundaries lie, and what alternative interpretations it may invite.
What truly shapes a person, after all, is not how much information they have browsed, but the words that have made them pause and reflect - and the words that have remained with them for many years, he added. 
。    The OPCW’s lack of a coherent, objective and fair-minded response to recent crises centered around Syria and Russia demonstrates its politicization and domination by Western interests, and the longer the watchdog stays out of Ukraine, the better, former diplomats, geopolitical observers, and international legal experts have told Sputnik.,“In Ukraine, the OPCW has fortunately not been pressed into action. This, I suspect, is because the US is satisfied with the situation as it is, with no need for the US itself to be drawn in, as would no doubt be the case if a chemical attack was fabricated,” Peter Ford, Britain’s former ambassador to Syria, said.,The veteran diplomat, who warned the British government against the folly of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and stressed that the campaign by Western powers to topple the Syrian government in the 2010s could open a “Pandora’s box” of endless crises, said the Syria case demonstrated clearly that the OPCW is no longer an independent, impartial agency.,“The Syria crisis proved without a shadow of a doubt that the Western powers have bent the OPCW to their own will, destroying in the process the organization’s credibility, probably irretrievably. This is a tragedy for world peace,” Ford stressed, referring to documented OPCW efforts to censor and smear agency whistleblowers who revealed that the watchdog’s report on the April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria, was doctored to implicate the Assad government.,Today is 4 years since Douma massacre. US claimed it was a chemical weapons attack & bombed Syria. OPCW found no evidence of CW, but its findings were doctored & censored. Also confirmed is that a hospital scene was staged. Ongoing OPCW cover-up denies justice to Douma victims.— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 7, 2022,In Ukraine, Ford fears, the international community can now only depend on “self-interested restraint on the part of the Pentagon in controlling its proxies rather than the deterrent power of a genuinely impartial international watchdog.”,Chemical Weapons Danger in Ukraine,Since the escalation of the crisis in Ukraine in February, Russia has sent the OPCW and its technical secretariat over two dozen notes warning of possible staged provocations by Ukrainian forces or radical nationalists involving chemical weapons. Last month, the agency assured the international community that it was “closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine” for chemical weapons use.,On Wednesday, the Russian military indicated that it had information regarding Kiev's plans to stage a provocation in the Donetsk People’s Republic using chlorine gas to accuse Moscow of indiscriminate attacks targeting chemically hazardous objects.,Situation in UkraineLIVE UPDATES: Moscow Warns OPCW of Possible Provocations by Kiev With Chemical Weapons in DPRYesterday, 08:12 GMT,Alessandro Bruno, a Toronto-based geopolitical analyst and political observer at Lombardi Letter, says that while the OPCW’s official mission and goals are “certainly worth pursuing,” the problem is the watchdog’s control by Western interests seeking to obfuscate the truth and objectivity in favor of politicized objectives.,“They seem to have targeted only specific sides in specific wars to suit specific aims, which typically are those of Western powers. There have been many efforts to manipulate these organizations by the dominant powers, particularly in the West,” Bruno said.,The scholar recalled instances of claims by the US and its allies about Russia’s use of chemical weapons, from the allegation that Russia poisoned pro-Western Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the mid-2000s, to the 2018 Novichok scandal in Britain, which “many thoughtful journalists have debunked,” to the Alexei Navalny “poisoning” saga of 2020, which doctors treating the opposition vlogger have debunked.,Russians Did It! A List of Dastardly Deeds Ridiculously Blamed on the Kremlin22 March 2018, 14:14 GMT,“Yet the accusations of chemical weapons that Russia used have persisted, even though they defied all logic. That's the biggest issue with these organizations. They must be more neutral. Their headquarters must be in more neutral locations because the fact that many of these organizations operate from Western capitals makes them more prone to Western media misinformation,” Bruno said.,The geopolitical analyst still fears that the West could use the pretext of ‘Russian chemical weapons use’ in Ukraine “to get more directly involved in the conflict and potentially trigger a much wider physical war.”,“So far, I think, some of the powers came to understand that making an accusation like that in this conflict would be riskier than the accusations they made in Syria and Iraq, Navalny and Yushchenko and so on, that this would have much bigger implications, that this would blow back against the West,” Bruno stressed.,Tool of US Interests,Christopher C. Black, an international criminal and human rights lawyer with 20 years of experience covering war crimes and international relations, echoed Bruno’s sentiments about the OPCW’s noble stated aims and their stark contrast with the body's actual history, which “shows that [the watchdog] acts to serve the interests of the United States and its NATO and other allies.”,“We saw strong evidence of this when the USA tried to get rid of the Director General Jose Bustani of Brazil in 2002, when the United States was preparing its invasion of Iraq and John Bolton went to The Hague and threatened his family if he did not resign,” Black recalled, pointing to Bustani’s 2018 interview with The Intercept in which the former OPCW chief detailed the threats made against his children living in the United States.,“We Know Where Your Kids Live” John Bolton threatened head of chemical weapons commission as part of effort launch war against Iraq https://t.co/p8uluxbWGH— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 2, 2018,“In August 2020, it was revealed through leaks from Austrian government sources that the OPCW and British claims that Novichok had been found in the blood of the Skripals allegedly poisoned in the UK were false, that in fact no such agent had been found in their blood at all. But the findings were suppressed and a false report issued to back the UK claims,” the lawyer added. “Similar results were seen regarding the alleged poisoning of Mr. Navalny. We can quickly understand what goes on behind the scenes at the OPCW,” Black said.,'Novichok' Would Have Killed Navalny, Developer of Substance Says2 September 2020, 15:26 GMT,Black finds it unlikely that the chemical weapons watchdog will change “without a change in the balance of power in the world,” which is taking place, but whose effects on international organizations will be slow to appear.,In Ukraine, the lawyer fears, “We cannot expect any objective consideration of Kiev regime or NATO claims of Russia using chemical weapons in Ukraine for the reasons stated above, despite the fact that Russia has not used them, does not use them and will not use them. To the contrary, we have a situation in which Kiev and NATO forces keep making false claims while themselves preparing chemical weapons attacks to be staged as false flag attacks to be blamed on Russia and when Russia asks the OPCW to investigate this, Russia is met with silence,” he said.,How OPCW Can Regain Credibility,Dr. Alfred De Zayas, a lawyer, writer and former independent expert on international order with the United Nations, similarly doubts the OPCW’s ability to reform itself under current conditions, saying the agency “has long been instrumentalized to pursue the geopolitical interests of Western powers.”,The international legal expert is confident that agencies like the OPCW, the International Criminal Court and the Human Rights Council can regain their credibility by demonstrating impartiality. “This is possible if the BRICS countries become more vocal and more visible on the international scene. There is no reason why African, Asian and Latin American countries should dance to the tune of the ‘Washington consensus’,” De Zayas stressed.,In Ukraine, the OPCW’s assurance about “monitoring the situation” carries only a “purely propagandistic value,” and is “intended to charge and convict Russia even before there is any evidence of violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention,” the observer believes.,“If the OPCW investigates not only potential Russian war crimes, but also expands its investigation to potential chemical weapons violations and war crimes by Ukrainian forces and by foreign mercenaries, including US, UK, French, Georgian and others, then the OPCW might regain some credibility. That, however, would be ‘out of character’. It is not unlike the ICC, which in the eyes of many observers in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland – has lost its little credibility and will have no authority unless and until it indicts Western politicians and bureaucrats including Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Victoria Nuland, Barack Obama (the king of the drones), Donald Trump, Nikolas Sarkozy, etc.,” De Zayas concluded.,10yrs On From Iraq War Logs Bush & Blair Should be in Prison Not Assange22 October 2020, 18:29 GMT。

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