Jeffrey Sachs urges region to adopt China-style planning as US governance ‘Crisis’ deepens

Economist Jeffrey Sachs told a Jamaican university audience that Caribbean nations should study China’s blend of government planning and free markets while maintaining “strategic independence” from an increasingly unstable United States.

Speaking at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus on January 29, Sachs said China’s economic success over 45 years offers lessons for small economies despite vast differences in scale and circumstances. The lecture was hosted by the Chinese Cultural Association of Jamaica and the Confucius Institute.

“What we all can learn is this remarkable combination of planning and markets, because China has championed the private sector and the innovations of the private sector, but it has also done it within the context of very serious government planning,” said Sachs, a Columbia University professor who has advised dozens of governments worldwide.

He called the approach “a general proposition that is a lesson from China” and cited Singapore’s 50-year track record of economic planning as another example worth studying.

China lifted 1.4 billion people from poverty through what Sachs described as an “industrial innovation ecosystem” spanning major production sectors. But he acknowledged the model cannot be directly replicated by smaller nations.

Instead, he said, Caribbean countries should extract principles from China’s experience: “the combination of planning, markets, and innovation as being absolutely essential for long-term development”.

Sachs emphasised that the Caribbean faces distinct challenges requiring region-specific strategies, including proximity to larger economies and mounting climate risks. He pointed to Hurricane Melissa—a Category 5 storm that struck Jamaica in October 2025 – as evidence of “dramatically increasing frequency and intensity” of major hurricanes.

“This poses dangers, risks, challenges from climate change and from other environmental challenges that are absolutely profound, that are growing in scale and danger, and that need to be confronted in ways where we’ve not had that success yet,” he said.

The economist called for action “in policy terms, in insurance, in resilience mechanisms, but also in physical infrastructure and in related strategies.”

Sachs devoted significant attention to what he termed a “crisis of U.S. governance”, making unusually direct criticisms of American leadership.

“It’s the worst we’ve ever had,” he said. “The President himself is unstable and dangerous.”

He condemned U.S. actions toward Venezuela as “lawless, piratical, and very dangerous” and referenced domestic turmoil, saying “Washington is also attacking our own cities in the United States right now, as everybody can know from Minneapolis.”

The former Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia did not offer specific policy prescriptions, saying “I wish I could say that there’s a clear approach ahead of what to do, but the truth is we really are in a crisis.”

He added:“The U.S. is seemingly at war with everybody, and China is seemingly at peace with everybody, except maybe the United States… Everybody is rushing to Beijing right now,” Sachs said, noting recent visits by the prime ministers of the U.K. and Canada.

His remarks, delivered via Zoom for the Chinese Cultural Association and Confucius Institute’s 2026 lecture series, contrasted China’s diplomatic outreach with U.S. trade policy under President Donald Trump, who has imposed tariffs on imports and threatened action against Venezuela, Iran and Greenland. The CCA held the lecture at the University of the West Indies on 29 January.

He concluded by urging nations to develop independent strategic vision: “I do believe countries need a strategic view and they need their strategic independence.”

Sachs is the founding editor of the World Happiness Report and a University Professor at Columbia, the institution’s highest academic rank. He has worked with governments in more than 125 countries on economic development and sustainable development issues.

The lecture, titled “Achieving sustainable development in the face of widespread geopolitical instability,” came as Jamaica continues recovery efforts from Hurricane Melissa, which caused some US$8.9 billion in damage.

Sachs, author of The End of Poverty and The Price of Civilization, said that China’s success also stemmed from expanding its education system since the 1980s. Part of that drive was twinned with setting up economic zones around Hong Kong and Shenzhen Guangzhou, which now ranks as the world’s top innovation cluster, he said.

In 2014, Sachs came to Jamaica to give a lecture at the UWI.

luke.douglas@gleanerjm.com