Graduate / environmental protection:discuss an issue of national or international importance and its [2]

hi, guys, I am applying for the international political economy program(IPE), and this is an essay , any of your advice will be very much appreciated!

Conflict between economic development and environmental protection

As a college student in Beijing, I witnessed the dense haze in the winter of 2012. The haze nearly lasted for one month that there is no way for fresh air, for outdoor activities and for sunshine. It was the first time that I realised the crucial importance of environmental protection and the new crisis China is facing. In fact, this is a challenge for most developing countries, especially in East Asia, where many countries are transforming from agricultural countries to industrialized countries just like China.

In fact, the relationship between economy growth and environment protection has raised a heated discussion for a long time. Environment not only provides the substantial foundation and activity space for human, but also responses for production, castoff by human activity. Economic development not only enhances the integration national power and improves people's life, but brings a lot of serious environmental problems. Which one is more important, economic development or environmental protection? What is the order of these two goals? Wether can we find a balance between them? We seem to have not found the answers yet.

For many industrialized countries, the conflict between economic development and environmental protection is not news, that many of them have paid high expenses for pursuing high economic growth regardless of protecting the environment. England and Japan service as good examples. The 1952 London Fog caused thousands of people's deaths and left a powerful strike to the British economy. Like UK, Japan had the familiar experiences during 1960's, that the heavy metal pollution led a large number of people suffered from minamata disease and itai-itai disease. Although governments took up a set of measures to reduce impacts, the effects of these two events still exist. Even until now, London's air quality ranks near the bottom of European cities and victims of metal pollution still suffer.

In spite of a lot of negative materials, most developing countries still cannot avoid the same mistakes. It is no surprise to hear public nuisance incidents happened in China and Southeast Asia. Economic growth first or environmental protection is a tough choice for us. With the high pace of globalization and urbanization, most East Asia countries faces rapid social transformation and great chances and challenges, it is important for those countries to gasp these opportunities to improve productivity and international competitiveness, while on the other hand, blindly pursuing GDP growth is doomed to pay high costs. Although in recent years, people in these areas seem to recognise the importance of protecting environment, governments have come out of bills to prevent pollution, and a few new concepts such as Green GDP have been put out to call for public's attention, these efforts do not have practical progress.

Personally speaking, I believe that there must be hard constraints to prevent damaging the environment while ensure economic development, and I deem that international trade can make a significant contribution to this goal. But it is hard for any economic integration organization to erect trade barriers in the name of environmental protection, because any trade barrier is against economic liberalism. How to find the balance between the economic benefit and social benefit? It is a tough issue that bothers us for quite a long time. As an undergraduate student, I am confused but full of passion for studying this issue. Since **** is well known for IPE studies, therefore, it is my desire to apply for your admission.

Undergraduate / I love challenges; PERSONAL STATEMENT; MA in Economics [6]

Here are my ps ,could you help me revise it? Thank you very much

For the past three years, my undergraduate education has exposed me to the various sub-fields of Economics. Besides good performance in classes, I also attended several national and international conferences in this discipline, including the first forum on China Market Economy under the Rule of Law and the lectures given by famous economists such as Prof.Robert John Aumann and Prof. Elinor Ostrom. These experiences helped me discover the fascinating world of Economics and reminded me that what I have learned is far from enough. Therefore, it is my desire to pursue a graduate degree in world-class universities.

I love challenges, and the experience of winning the second prize in CUMCM gave me confidence to do research on the expressway's charge system when the toll-free policy in Mainland China aroused heated discussion. During that time, I gradually understood my instructor's words that doing academic research is a process with pain and happiness. After having several talks with my teachers, I decided to do a comparative study among China, the US and Japan. I had to read tens of books and papers, and even picked up some Japanese. Sometimes, I would be bothered in making a sentence more accurate and professional, and sometimes I would lose sleep if there were not any progress.Nevertheless, it was great pleasure to find the improvements I had made,and the experience of choosing a topic of my interest, searching for useful information and analyzing the factors trained my ability of doing research.After amended it for more than ten times, I contributed this thesis to some periodicals and it is in the second round of review now. But the research does not stop, since experience is the best teacher, I have to wait and see whether this reform bring as much convenience to public as the authority announced, and I plan to messure it in a quantitative way.

Since minoring in law for two years, I gradually developed the capacity for critical thinking. This distinguished me from most students in mainland China who only know how to memorize what the authority had told them. Last year I enrolled in the class of Business Ethics, of which the professor is well known for being strict with his students. He believes credit is unshakeable in trades, but I thought that from the perspective of Law and Economics, defaults are encouraged if the outcome outweigh the cost, and this phenomenon exists in our daily life. Later the professor said my question posed a threaten to his theory but he appreciated my critical thinking very much that he would discuss this frontier problem in his next book. Maybe my thoughts are a little naive at this time, but it is much better than never asking why.

Doing the volunteer work as a primary school teacher in rural Beijing and field research work in my hometown increased my understanding of the increasing gap between rich and poor in China. As the leader of a research team, I found great improvements in farmers' incomes in Southwestern China, but these are on the cost of selling their land and turn to be the unemployed hobo. As a result, large numbers of them turned to be migrant workers in big cities. But as a teacher in the school for the migrant workers' children, I just felt pity for the poor education and care they received both from their parents and society. I only opened their horizon and offered them an unrealistic blueprint, but there are numerous challenges for their dream come true, and I believe it is the government's duty to help them.But my experience of being an internship in the local government showed that the officers often found it difficult to work effectively because of the impractical policy made by their leaders. These experiences helped me to realize how important the government's economic plans are to the people's livelihood. In order to become sound economic policy makers, I wish to further my study in your institution, and go further to get a PHD if possible.

I plan to work for universities or government departments after I finish my study. Since Hong Kong is a leading regional financial center, it must bring me a different experience compared with Beijing. Your program will not only help me become more professional to do economic research in the field of public finance and Labour Economics, but also broaden my horizon and help me find decent jobs. On the other hand, from where I grow up and the volunteer work I had done, I believe I will be a great help for professors who are interested in the regional disparities in China and the immigration labours (like Prof. Tsui,Kai Yuen and Prof. LIU,Pak-wai).And I am looking forward to your admission.