First trip

Lardy, however, might not realize that his first visit to China would be totally accidental. His wife, Barbara, who happened to know someone in the Hong Kong Family Planning Association which was leading a family planning delegation to the Chinese mainland in 1978, had already signed up for the trip. Five days before departure, someone dropped out and when his wife was asked if she knew somebody who wanted to go, she immediately said, "Yes, my husband."

Going on the heavily health-oriented trip with mostly doctors was not really Lardy's cup of tea, but he said it was interesting since he had never been to China, a place he now travels to several times a year.

He admitted that he never thought he would be able to go to China when he studied the Chinese economy in the 1960s. "Obviously I didn't anticipate there would be this big opening up in the late 1970s," he said.

After teaching at the University of Washington for 12 years, Lardy moved to the Brookings Institution in 1995, first as a visitor. But he said he liked being in Washington and his family liked it too.

Lardy resigned from the University of Washington to join the Brookings, where he wrote another two major books, one on China's financial reform, known in its Chinese version as China's unfinished economic reform and the other on China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Sitting in his well-lit office with a big window at the Peterson Institute, Lardy can see his old office at the Brookings across the street.

He agreed that studying the Chinese economy was quite lonely in the early years and "you have to be very interested yourself".

When there were more people studying China, Lardy said they talked among themselves. "But now everybody is interested in China because China affects everything, globally," he said.

"Even people who have never been to China and don't know anything about China, they wanted to know more, they wanted to learn as much as they can, because the influence China has had on the global economy, commodities and everything else," he said.

"That has been a huge transformation," said Lardy, who has been sought after as a speaker on the Chinese economy by a numerous business groups, companies and conferences.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com