David Daokui Li: Developing an Independent Knowledge System Requires Putting Forward New Questions

“The social sciences of today, to take economics as an example, continues to pose the same problems and take the same approaches without coming up with something new; but you must put forward new questions. And so, what new questions ought to be posed? We must have a realistic awareness of the issues before us. From a realistic point of view, what are the pain points facing China's economic performance and interactions with the world? I have come to realize that we have already gained a great deal of insights into how to manage the relationship between government and the market, including how to mobilize the initiative of governments at all levels to cultivate and calibrate the development of markets; however, we have not yet fully encapsulated this knowledge into theory,” said David Daokui Li, Director of the Academic Center for Chinese Economic Practice and Thinking (ACCEPT) at Tsinghua University, expressing his views during the “Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on Knowledge Development” session of the China Education Science Forum (2025).

Dr. Li argued that advancing China's independent knowledge system will necessarily involve bringing three principles to bear: first, we must become internationalized and cannot simply talk amongst ourselves behind closed doors; second, we must ask the right questions, putting forward new questions based on China's own actual practices and establishing new areas of study; and third, we must become aware of the main issues, not only solving practical problems related to our country's economic development, but also providing valuable experience to other countries.