LMH Fellow and Director of Chinese Studies (School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies), Professor Christine Wong, and Academic Director of the Blavatnik School of Government, Professor Ngaire Woods, co-hosted an official visit from Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the People’s Bank of China in early September. Introduced by Prof Wong, the Governor spoke at the first of the Blavatnik School’s series of ‘Conversations with Global Policy-Makers’.

Professor Wong commented: ‘The Governor has been a leading reformer in China and has also led the way in recruiting Chinese students educated abroad and placing them in senior government posts. He shared with us China’s experience of transition, and how it reformed its large state-owned banks.  He lamented how tempting it is for governments to fund economic stimulus programs and bank-bailouts using their central banks’ resources instead of more openly using citizens’ taxes.’

Governor Zhou concluded his visit with an inspection of the recently restored Selden Map, a seventeenth-century map of the trade routes across the Chinese empire of the time. The conservation team at the Bodleian Libraries have recently completed the map’s painstaking restoration using a blend of Western and Ancient Eastern techniques.

Further information

Blavatnik School of Government

Selden Map restoration