Professor Jintao Xu, the coordinator of EfD in China and one of China´s most prominent experts in forestry economics, did not really plan to become an environmental economist. ”From the beginning it was just by accident. My application material for studying industrial management was picked up by Beijing Forestry University.
In college, Jintao Xu studied management engineering, or how to organize production.
”I had a very good economics teacher in college. Though, when I applied for graduate school at People´s University of China in Beijing, I wanted to go on studying industrial management, but I didn’t get in,” says Professor Xu as we approach the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, so wild and snow-capped, standing 5500 meter above sea level in the province of Yunnan in southeastern China.
Recently planted pine trees cover the slope where we stroll. All the trees burned down in a fire in 1999, but in the following years one thousand hectares of trees were planted to prevent erosion and protect the important watershed.
Earned his PhD in the US
Eventually, the young Jintao Xu’s application was picked up by Beijing Forestry University, at that time one of the somewhat less prestigious universities of Beijing. The university was looking for students for its new graduate forestry economics program and told Xu that they wanted him to come.
”That is how I became a forestry economist. Now it´s almost impossible to get in to any Chinese university that way,” says Xu smiling.
After finishing the graduate program in1986, Xu got a job at the Research Institute of Forestry Economics, under the Chinese Academy of Forestry. For the first seven years he did research, wrote reports and traveled. Still, he felt his skills were not adequate, and wanted to continue studying and earn a PhD.
An opportunity opened up in 1994 to study forestry economics under Professor William Hyde at Virginia Tech University in the US. After completing his PhD, Xu returned to Beijing in 1999, and worked for the Center of Chinese Agriculture Policy for another seven years. And then, in 2006, he moved to Peking University.
”I had wanted to become a university teacher for a long time, and finally I got to teach and meet very good students. I´m teaching both undergraduate and graduate students. I just like teaching and meeting smart students, it´s a lot of fun!”
Economists in China mostly work on system reforms. In recent years most of the work by EfD in China, or the Environmental Economics Program in China (EEPC), has focused on forest policy and on reformation of the state forest sector and the collective tenure system. These two themes have been top priority on the agenda of the central government and have merged into the broader national agenda of establishing a new countryside. (Read more here.)
He likes to make a contribution to the solutions of problems
To be a forest economist in China means to witness a lot of problems. But this is also one of the best parts of it, according to Professor Xu.
”The existence of problems in the forestry sector means that you have the possibility to make a contribution to the solutions of the problems. With no problems you would not have had any room for doing good things.”
Although Professor Xu participates in much international collaboration, the EfD initiative means two particularly important things to him:
”Within the EfD network I have high-quality colleagues in the developing countries of Africa and Latin America. They provide me with comparative information on what is going on in these countries, which helps to put my own research into perspective. In addition, the EfD initiative offers international research collaborations with very good scholars working in similar areas. This lifts up our own research and makes it more rigorous.”
By Karin Backteman