C’mon Nobel Committee, Zhu Rongji is 96, do the right thing!

British economist John Ross impishly told one interviewer that if the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences were honest, the Nobel Prize in Economics would have been awarded to Chinese economists every year for the past four decades.

Objectively, he has a point. China’s real GDP is 50 times what it was since reform and opening up began in 1978, far outpacing growth rates in Japan and the Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) during their miracle decades.

A 50x increase in GDP since 1978 for 1.4 billion people has certainly been more impactful than, say, a neat little math tool whose most primary use case is to match US and Canadian medical students with residency programs.

A 50x increase in GDP since 1978 for 1.4 billion people has certainly been more impactful than, say, the Black-Scholes option pricing model, which, while clever, wasn’t necessary for options markets. Laureates Myron Scholes and Robert Merton did manage to blow up mega hedge fund LTCM in 1998, just a year after winning their Nobel Prize, when interest rates failed to follow their model.

A 50x increase in GDP since 1978 for 1.4 billion people has certainly been more impactful than, say, a self-congratulatory political theory on Western institutions, a theory surely belied by China’s spectacular growth and the West’s long malaise.

John Ross is now not alone. Economist Adam Tooze of Columbia University has suggested that the Nobel Prize in Economics be given to Chinese policy makers because China’s growth has been the most profound economic story of our lifetime.

Some would argue that the Nobel Prize in economics is for academic researchers, not practitioners. A fair point, perhaps, if such a rule existed. But in fact, we are unaware of such a rule and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Swedish Academy have a long history of arbitrarily changing the scope and definition of Nobel Prizes. Artificial intelligence for physics? What? Bob Dylan for literature? Huh?

The Nobel Prize in Economics has always been the bastard child of the Nobel litter. Not among the original five prizes established by Alfred Nobel (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace) upon his death in 1896, the economics prize was tacked on in 1969 by Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, as a “Prize in Economic Science dedicated to the memory of Alfred Nobel.”

Over the years, the Nobel Prize in economics has gone through 11 name changes from simplifying down to “Prize in Economic Science” to “Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel” to “Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences” to today’s unwieldy “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” 

Sometimes it is “economic science.” Sometimes it is “economic sciences,” as in plural. Why? Who knows? The economics prize has never been comfortable in its own skin. Members of the Nobel family have voiced opposition to the prize, stating that Alfred Nobel had no intention of establishing an economics prize and the creation of one using the Nobel name is a dirty trick by economists to elevate their profession.

At the awards banquet in 1974, winner Friedrich Hayek criticized the award:

The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess. This does not matter in the natural sciences. Here the influence exercised by an individual is chiefly an influence on his fellow experts; and they will soon cut him down to size if he exceeds his competence. But the influence of the economist that mainly matters is an influence over laymen: politicians, journalists, civil servants and the public generally.

To put it more succinctly, he was calling the economics prize a bullshit award. That award has gone through various revisions trying to remain relevant and consequential. The 1994 prize, given to mathematician John Nash, caused much internal consternation. The scope of the prize was subsequently expanded to social sciences in general, opening up the prize to political science, psychology and sociology. Political scientists, psychologists and economic historians have all become Nobel laureates.

The Nobel Committee often does a better job identifying impactful discoveries than anointing deserving laureates. While DNA structure, the polio vaccine, magnetic resonance imaging, CRISPR gene editing and quantum entanglement are all deserving fields, the naming of laureates garnered controversy, accusations and hurt feelings. Such are the hazards of bestowing honors by committee.

Great contributions have also gone unrecognized when candidates had the audacity to die before the Nobel Committee got around to reviewing their nominations. Mendeleev was not recognized for the periodic table. Leo Tolstoy was not recognized for War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 before the Nobel Foundation could honor him. He received, instead, a moment of silence from the Nobel Committee, which declared that there was “no suitable living candidate” for that year.

The living laureate has been a feature of the Nobel Prize since its inception. Alfred Nobel intended the prize to be aspirational in a human lifetime. While this has resulted in deserving cases going unrecognized, the honor it bestows on the living is meant to encourage aspirants.

Prizes such as the Nobel occupy interesting mental real estate in how humanity recognizes accomplishments, contributions and merit.

Assessment tests like the SATs and gaokao and competitions like International Olympiads and Putnams are of limited value. While a high score may signal merit or even great accomplishment, test toppers and competition winners have made no contribution to society. That being said, tests and academic competitions can be highly objective and useful in deciding what opportunities to offer to whom. 

Awards by peers for contributions to a field like Nobel Prizes, Fields Medals and Academy Awards are supposed to reflect actual (not potential) contribution to humanity. But let us not pretend that these awards have not been politicized.

A 2023 study by the journal Nature found that an astounding 702 out of 736 laureates in science and economics came from the same “academic family,” connected in their histories by academic links – relationships of the students-of-students sort. Only 34 laureates have come from outside this family.

The charitable interpretation is that excellence attracts and begets excellence. The uncharitable interpretation is that the Nobel Prize is an incestuous old boys’ network that loathes sharing the spotlight with uncouth upstarts.

The 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has just been announced. It’s the innovation economists’ turn. A trio of economists has been honored “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth” and for “having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.”

While all kinds of rigorous number crunching, field work and theorizing likely went into this year’s prize and the laureates are probably more correct than not, would we be curmudgeons to wonder whether this trio has had any effect on global innovation?

Zhu Rongji, China’s premier from 1998 to 2003, is 96 years old. Time is running out. The first generation has already left us. Chen Yun, architect of China’s economic reforms under Deng Xiaoping, died in 1995. Economist Yu Guangyuan, proponent of the socialist market-oriented economic system, died in 2013.

The China socialist market system is long overdue for its Nobel. And no greater living figure is more deserving than Zhu Rongji. As governor of the People’s Bank of China in the 1990’s, Zhu Rongji reined in runaway inflation with tough austerity measures. As premier, Zhu forced through painful but necessary restructuring of state owned enterprises. Zhu also shepherded China’s ascension to the World Trade Organization in 2001, extending China’s miracle growth for two more decades.

Most heroic of all, Zhu insisted on maintaining the Rmb peg during the Asian financial crisis, putting a net under the freefalling economies of China’s neighbors.

Zhu Rongji did all of the above while navigating the treacherous politics of taking cookies away from the powers that be. Zhu stared down hundreds, if not thousands, of officials who had knives drawn for him – figuratively certainty, literally probably – saying:    

To fight corruption one must go after the tiger first, then the wolf. There will be absolutely no tolerance for the tiger. Prepare 100 caskets and leave one for me. I’m ready to perish together in this fight if it brings the nation long-term economic stability and the public’s trust in our government.

As a practitioner, Zhu Rongji understood, in ways academic Nobel laureates cannot, that there was only one economic policy that truly mattered. Zhu knew in his bones that corruption was a cancer that cannot be tolerated:

My only hope is that after I leave public service, the Chinese people will think of me in one way: that he was a clean official, not a corrupt one. I will be immensely satisfied with that judgment alone. But if they are feeling particularly generous and say that Zhu Rongji got some real things done while in office, then I’ll thank heaven and earth.

Most Chinese would judge Zhu Rongji’s service generously. His accomplishments and methods, as part of China’s socialist market system, are far more relevant for developing countries to study than the Black-Scholes model or airy-fairy theories on innovation.

If Zhu Rongji dies without a Nobel Prize in economics, the committee should just disband. They would have proven themselves to be utterly irrelevant and inconsequential. But hey, that math tool to match medical students with residencies is really really clever.