On June 15, 2021, Gordon Liu, Peking University Boya Distinguished Professor, Dean of PKU Institute for Global Health and Development, gave a live lecture on "The Pandemic Economy and Healthy China" at Global Lecture Series on Chinese Economy 2021.

Professor Gordon Liu pointed out that after the great recession in 2008, China's economic growth began to slow down and the development tendency turned to the quality improvement rather than quantity increase. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, supply and demand has been greatly impacted in both ways, and the total economic volume has shrunk by more than 4%. From the perspective of aggregate demand, the role of Chinese residents' consumption is still very low compared with that of most developed countries, and there is still much space for effective improvement in the future.

With regard to the room for improvement, he highlighted that income redistribution and health care demand would be the two main driving forces. And the role of these two sources seems to have been enhanced by the epidemic. In general, as healthcare is a relatively labor-intensive industry, its growing share of income will face two major challenges. First, the economic growth of TFP may be more limited, which constitutes a constraint to the long-term economic growth. Secondly, health care inflation will become an increasingly urgent and controversial issue in the whole society. Therefore, the factors of aging, income, market competition, and technology dissemination, are attracting more and more social attention, as well as academic evaluation.

The lecture was hosted by Professor Shi Lizheng, Director of Department of Health Policy and Management, School of Public Health and Tropical Diseases, Tulane University, USA, and received special support from China Health Policy and Management Society.