Article source: Chinese Social Sciences 28/03/2012

Author: Feng Jianhua

The first Lingnan forum, organized by SYSU Lingnan College and Caixin Media, was held in SYSU on March 25. Wang Yang, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of CPC and Secretary of Guangdong Party Committee, Guangdong Province Governor Zhu Xiaodan, Secretary of SYSU Party Committee Zheng Detao, and President Xu Ningsheng attended the opening ceremony.

The theme of the first forum is “The Road to Chinese Mainland's Economic Reform”. Many experts have expressed their opinions and made suggestions on the forum. Xu Xiaonian, Economics and Finance Professor of China Europe International Business School, holds this view that industry upgrade can’t be separated from government transformation, and government should take good charge of protecting intellectual property, which is directly related to the success or failure of national innovation.

Liu Mingkang, former chairman of China Banking Regulatory Commission, pointed out that government should accelerate the pace of reform, and the economic development model must be modified. If this couldn’t be realized, Chinese people would buy ‘Made in China’ products from abroad.

Commissioner Xiao Jie of State Administration of Taxation thinks that Chinese economy is under the critical period of transformation, government should lose no time to introduce value-added tax system into the service sector, eliminating the current double taxation defect of business tax. According to Xiao Jie, State Administration of Taxation once organized special research groups to conduct quantitative analysis of value-added tax reform, by building a computable general model of Chinese tax and adopting a quantitative method.

"According to the calculation of State Administration of Taxation, there’ll be a 100 billion decrease in national tax revenue if value-added tax reform is put into effect”, said Xiao Jie. It is said that Lingnan Forum aims to provide a high-end exchange platform for political, academic, business and industrial sectors, and it will be held regularly every year.