Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Hayek in China

My former professor Tony Fu-lai Yu now teaching in Taiwan just went to a conference in China about Hayek. Yes, the conference was all about Hayek! It was the inaugural conference organzied by the newly formed Hayek Society in China.

Tony told me that the quality of the papers presented at the conference is good though all of them in Chinese. A story Tony told me suggests it is still not completely safe to openly discuss Hayek in China. There was no sign whatsoever at the hotel lobby to suggest there was a conference about Hayek going on. The only sign, if you can call it a sign, was a little piece of paper saying that an academic conference was held, and yes there was no mention of the name Hayek on that small piece of paper.

If my memory is correct, so far only two books of Hayek's have been translated. One is the Constitution of Liberty and the other one is Individualism and Economic Order.

Another mentor of mine, Yeung Wai Hong up at Next Magazine here in HK, is the only person here in the territory that popularizes Hayekian ideas. And yes, he even mentions the concept spontaneous order at least once in one of his recent columns !

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