By Riaz Mamdani
Cheif Online Editor
Junior Andrew Liu has started his economic research career early, in both China and the United States.
After helping administer a Chinese household financial survey sponsored by the Chinese government last summer, Liu received approval from Rossen Valkanov, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, before he went to China to begin an economics research project that would involve evaluating the relation between stock market trends and homeless rates in the United States.
“The experience I had in China had a large impact on my decision to undertake this research project,” Liu said. “[In China], I noticed the relatively low participation in the financial market and thought there may be some correlation between that and the country’s high rates of poverty.”
The survey Liu helped conduct was a financial household survey directed by the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. The results were used to determine the effectiveness of economic policies on the average Chinese household. Liu was assigned a random district with a group of other surveyors and randomly surveyed households within those districts, questioning citizens about income, personal assets and charitable donations.
“It was like nothing I had ever seen before,” Liu said. “So many people were living in abject poverty while the elite, more or less, controlled the entire economy of the nation. It made sense why some people tended to have such a negative attitude.”
During the survey, Liu and his team worked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., moving from different towns within China, surveying random households and collecting data. After Liu and his team met the data quota, they aggregated and analyzed their results and sent the results back to UFE.
“Analyzing our results was one of the things that I enjoyed most about the survey,” Liu said. “It was intriguing for me personally to really understand the financial situations and economic climates for different cities and people.”
The results of the survey revealed high income inequality between the poorest and richest classes. This economic stratification has led to an increasingly hostile situation between citizens and financial institutions in China, Liu said. There were several heated verbal exchanges due to people mistaking him for a salesman.
“We travelled to lower class cities like Shenzhen and business hubs like Chongqing,” Liu said. “Traveling to different places and interacting with interesting people really enhanced my overall experience during the trip,” Liu said.
Because of financial constraints on Southwestern UFE, Liu was given a strict allowance of 70 Yuan per day, the equivalent of about $12, to pay for food, transportation and housing. This low amount only allowed Liu and other members of his team to afford poor living conditions, Liu said.
“Coming from Manhattan Beach, it was very difficult to adjust to a lifestyle where I had to decide between using my money to eat a full meal or to use the money to drive to my next destination,” Liu said.
Despite the hardships that were constituted by the surveying experience as a whole, Liu said that he is glad that he participated in the survey because he plans to use the results to begin work on his own economics research paper in which he will be comparing stock market trends and overall revenue with rates of annual charitable donations from select large companies in different nations, he said.
“I want to pursue a career in economics, so I thought that it would be really beneficial for me to learn the process of how to compile an economics research paper because that’s what I want to be doing for the rest of my life,” Liu said.
Because of his interest in pursuing economics as a career path, Liu hopes to not only gain valuable insight about the process of compiling research for university- sponsored projects, such as the one with UFE, but also investigate a personal interest of his as well, Liu said.
“I hope any conclusions I find will be adding something to the ever-growing field of economics,” Liu said. “Hopefully I can contribute through my research in this previously untouched subject and have something to set me apart from other prospective economics majors applicants.”
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