Professor Peter Nolan delivers lectures on ‘the crossroads of global capitalism’
13 April 2011
Western
countries need to put far more effort into understanding China and other rising powers, argued
Professor Peter Nolan in a public lecture hosted by the Humanities & Social Sciences Graduate
School on 13 April.
In a wide-ranging lecture to a packed lecture hall, Professor Nolan (from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge) reviewed the spectacular achievements of global business over the last thirty years. But he also warned that growing concentration of corporate power, environmental damage, and rising within-country inequalities are fuelling petty nationalism, and that this in turn is undermining our collective ability to address global problems. While the Chinese Prime Minister can quote from both the great works of Adam Smith, few people in the West are even aware that China’s own experience of regulating capitalism goes back more than a millennium, he observed.
The lecture was the first of new series of public lectures entitled ‘ways of thinking’ that aim to challenge and stimulate new ideas and debate across the University. They are to be hosted by each Graduate School in turn, with the next lecture in the autumn to be hosted by the Graduate School of Science.
