Ma Yin-ch'u (1882-), Western-trained economist who specialized in applied economics. A long-time critic of the National Government's economic policies, he later held office in the Central People's Government. He served as president of Peking University from 1951 to 1960, when he was dismissed because of the political unorthodoxy of his economic views. A native of Ch'enghsien, Chekiang, Ma Yin-ch'u was the son of a well-to-do manufacturer of Shaohsing wine. After receiving a primary education in the Chinese classics in Ch'enghsien and a modern secondary education at a Christian school in Shanghai, he enrolled at Peiyang University in Tientsin to study metallurgy. Upon graduation in 1907 he went to the United States to become an undergraduate economics major at Yale University. He received a B.A. degree from Yale in 1910 and then did graduate work at Columbia University, specializing in applied economics and obtaining a Ph.D. degree in 1914. His thesis, entitled The Finances of the City of New York, was published in the same year. Ma Yin-ch'u returned to China in 1915 and accepted an appointment as professor of economics at Peking University. He soon was invited by Chang Kia-ngau (Chang Chia-ao, q.v.) to become a member of the research department of the Bank of China, and he later became director of the bank's department of note issue. In 1920 Ma Yin-ch'u obtained a year's leave of absence from Peking University to investigate industrial and commercial activities in Shanghai. He established close ties with Shanghai businessmen and industrialists so that he could improve his understanding of conditions and practices in this economic center of China. As an applied economist interested professionally in money and banking, he deemed such understanding an essential precondition to the application of Western economic principles and methods to the development of the Chinese economy. Also in 1920 Ma helped Kuo Ping-wen (q.v.) establish the Shanghai College of Commerce and agreed to serve as an adviser to the National Commercial Bank.

In 1921 Ma Yin-ch'u returned to his teaching duties at Peking University. Before long Ma joined with the economist D. K. Lieu in founding the Chinese Economics Society in 1923 and became its first president. In 1923, 1925, 1926, and 1928 he published collections of lectures in which he severely criticized Marxist economic theories. He rejected the labor theory of value on the grounds of oversimplification and stated that Marxist theory, whatever its relevance to Western society, was not applicable to China because China lacked concentrated capital, developed forces of production, clear class demarcation, and a united urban proletariat. China's trouble, according to Ma, did not lie in capitalism, but in lack of capital. He supported the views of the German political economist Friedrich List, particularly as concerned the protection of young industries. Ma reiterated this point in such later works as Chung-kuo küanshui wen-i'i [China's tariff problems] of 1926 and Chung-kuo ching-chi kai-tsao [the economic reform of China] of 1935. The latter book, which dealt extensively with the theories of Othmar Spann, argued that neither socialism nor liberalism was suited to China and proposed the adoption of the universalism propounded by some German and Austrian scholars.

After leaving Peking University in 1927, Ma Yin-ch'u returned to his native province to become professor " of economics at Chekiang University and a member of the provincial government council. The following year, he joined the staff of Chiaotung University as professor of economics and head of its research institute. He also served as a professor and later dean of the Shanghai College of Commerce. In 1929 he published Chung-hua yin-hang lun [on banks in China]. About this time, Ma was appointed to the Legislative Yuan. He retained his membership in the yuan until 1947. In this capacity, he undertook the drafting of the Banking Law, and he frequently was called upon to lecture on economics at the Lu-chün ta-hsueh [war college]. With the deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations in the 1930's, Chiang Kai-shek convened two conferences at Lushan to discuss emergency measures in case of war. Ma attended both conferences. It was while the second meeting was in session that the Sino- Japanese war broke out in July 1937. From 1938 to 1940 Ma Yin-ch'u was professor of economics and dean of the college of commerce at Chungking University. W^hen the political department of the Military Affairs Commission undertook the compilation in 1938 of a series of textbooks for use in military schools during the war. Ma was commissioned to write a general work on economics. Ma became increasingly aware of the corruption and inefficiency that existed in some official circles, and in 1939 he launched attacks on the economic policies of the National Government, alleging that the "bureaucratic capitalism" of H. H. K'ung and T. V. Soong (qq.v.) was undermining the nation's economy. He delivered these criticisms in lectures at Chungking University and at meetings of the People's Political Council, and he published articles in such journals as the Chung-shan yueh-k'' an and the San-min-chu-i pan-yueh k'an. Because he disregarded warnings from the National Government authorities, toward the end of 1940 he was sent to Hsifeng, Kweichow, and was held there under house arrest for almost two years. Although he was released and allowed to return to Chungking in 1942, he was forbidden by government order from teaching in any national university, speaking in public, or publishing articles that did not deal solely with economic theories.

At war's end Ma Yin-ch'u returned to Chekiang. He became a research fellow of the Academia Sinica in 1947 and joined the faculty of the Hsing-li School of Accounting and the Chung-hua Industrial and Commercial School in Shanghai. In 1948 he published the twovolume Ts'ai-cheng hsueh yü Chung-kuo ts'aicheng: Li-lun yü hsien-shih [the study of finance and Chinese financial affairs: theory and reality], and he made speeches predicting that the issuance of the new gold yuan currency would bring about the collapse of the Chinese economy. Later that year, he participated in student demonstrations in both Hangchow and Shanghai and then went to Hong Kong to escape the possibility of arrest.

Ma Yin-ch'u went to the Communistcontrolled Northeast early in 1949 at the invitation of Chou En-lai (q.v.). He attended the ^VorId Peace Conference at Prague in April and returned to China to help plan the establishment of the New Economic Society at Peiping and to serve as a non-partisan delegate to the Chinese People's Political Consultativ-e Conference in September. When the Central People's Government was established in October, Ma was made a member of the Government Council, vice chairman of the finance and economic affairs committee of the Government Administration Council, a director of the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association, and vice chairman of the China Peace Committee. In February 1950 he became a vice chairman of the East China Military and Administrative Committee. He also served as president of Chekiang University in 1950-51 and as a director representing government holdings of the Bank of China.

When Ma Yin-ch'u left Chekiang University to assume the presidency of Peking University in the summer of 1951, he announced a personal ten-year plan, saying that he would study Russian for four years and then would write for six years. In this manner, he hoped to reach a deeper understanding of Communism and to "communize" his own thinking. However, he did not allow this undertaking to interfere with his public duties. In 1952 he accepted appointments as a member of the preparatory committee for the International Economic Conference, vice chairman of the China Committee for Promoting Foreign Trade, a director of the World Peace Council, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a member of the committee assigned to draft a constitution. He became a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and an executive director of the Bank of China in 1954, and the following year he was elected to the philosophy and social science department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. During the early 1950's, Ma traveled frequently to Europe, usually to attend meetings of the World Peace Council; between 1950 and 1954 he visited Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, Sofia, Stockholm, and other cities.

According to Ma's personal plan, 1955 was the year for him to start writing. In April of that year he completed an essay on "The Socialist Transformation of China's Capitalist Industry," but it was not published until 1957 because some people considered it a defense of capitalists. His "New Theory of Population," intended for presentation to the National People's Congress in July 1955, was withdrawn when it was criticized as being nothing more than an extension of Malthusian theory. Ma revised this treatise and presented it to the congress on 3 July 1957. In it he discussed the effects of overpopulation on capital accumulation, productivity of labor, and living standards, stressing the need for population control and proposing the regular registration of all data necessary for showing the movement of population increase. Ma devoted most of his energies to his "circular progression" and "spiral upward" theories to explain the achievement of "comprehensive balance," or general equilibrium, in the economy of China. His two articles on "The Theory of Comprehensive Balance and the Law of Proportional Development, Linked with Actual Conditions in China" appeared in the Peking Jen-min jih-pao [people's daily] in December 1956 and May 1957. In his 1958 book, My Economic Theory, Philosophical Thought, and Political Stand, he reprinted these two essays and his articles on population and private business and added new theoretical and anti-Keynesian material. He explained that everything is correlated in a circular movement because, according to dialectical materialism, Ma Yin-ch'u [478 these is an internal relation between everything in the universe. He diagrammed his theories as a rotating circle composed of a series of connected "links" which represent the various sectors of the economy. Between any two links there exists a correct quantitative ratio, and these ratios must be properly planned for all links if the various sectors of the economy are to be fully integrated. Ma also said that, in accordance with dialectical materialism, this circular movement is an ever mounting spiral reversion. Between April 1958 and October 1959 more than 200 articles attacking Ma Yin-ch'u's theories appeared in China. He wrote a number of articles to disprove their criticisms, but it was not until November 1959 that he published a full-scale counterattack, "My Philosophical Thought and Economic Theories." In this article, which appeared in the November issue of Hsin chien-she [new construction] he also stated that although such friends as Chou En-lai had advised him to retract his statements to avoid jeopardizing his political position, he could not accept their advice because he considered the matter a purely academic problem and not a political one. "After writing articles, one should be brave enough to correct mistakes but must adhere to the truth and bear all consequences even if they are disadvantageous to his private interests or his life. I do not teach and have no direct contact with students, but I always want to educate them by means of action." The December 1959 and January 1960 issues of Hsin chien-she contained new attacks on Ma, and in April 1960 he was dismissed from the presidency of Peking University. However, he was elected to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in 1959 and retained his membership in the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, to which he was reelected in 1964.