ABSTRACT
Beijing Unirule Institute of Economics (hereafter referred to as the Unirule Institute or Tianze) was founded in July 1993 by a group of economists including Mao Yushi, Zhang Shuguang, and Sheng Hong. The Unirule Institute aims to support and provide high-quality studies on economic theory and socio-economic issues, promote international exchanges and theoretical research on economics, and industrialize research results for economics and other disciplines of social sciences. The name Tianze in Chinese (Unirule in English) was inspired by one of the oldest Chinese classics The Book of Poetry (The Shijing), “天生烝民, 有物有则” (tian sheng zheng min, you wu you ze) which was roughly translated as “heaven generates humankind, with matters and rules,” meaning that all human beings follow naturally endowed rules—that is, all human beings follow “system rules that are in line with nature and heaven.” The term system covers both economic system (enterprises, markets, etc.) and political and cultural systems.
