Zhiguo He is a Chinese economist and James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he was a professor at the Chicago Booth School of Business. Aside from teaching, He also serves as a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the executive editor of the Review of Asset Pricing Studies.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Sarah Jeddy: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I was wondering if we could start with a brief introduction?

Zhiguo He: I am an economist from China, and I came to the United States in 2001. At that time, China was definitely a developing country, although the economy started opening up a little bit, everybody would agree that China was still lagging behind the US or other countries quite a bit. And when I arrived in 2001, 9/11 happened, and to a lot of people, that’s a game changer. Another event happened at the end of 2001, was the WTO. So China got accessed, entered the WTO in December of that year, and that was definitely a game changer for China’s economy, just that the entire labor force found a way to fuel the economy. It’s also that I wanted to mention a lot is that just Chinese are fundamentally, at least for two generations, they want to work. They work very hard. They are extremely diligent. And they just feel like, if they are working to earn money, it’s part of their consumption. That’s very, very weird. Weird kind of attitudes towards usual people, and hard to understand, to be honest, from outside, but that’s how hard working. And also, you know, just save for the future family to feel the growth of China, I guess, in the past 20 years, in the first part of the 20 years, which is 2001 to 2020 basically.

Sarah Jeddy: Yeah that makes sense. So then what do you think is, like, the cause of, or the relevant history, of the financial relationships between the United States and China?

Zhiguo He: The United States saw bigger investment opportunities in China in the beginning of 2000 when the WTO started opening up China. VCPs got into China in the early 2000. This is where the kind of textbook kind of financial connection started to be established. Before it was like DFI, most direct foreign investment, right? Those examples, including, let’s say, GM invests in Shanghai automobiles. Basically, foreign companies have both the technology as well as intellectual property. They know how to do stuff. China knows nothing. Only have labor, and then they start to collaborate. Beijing, from the very beginning, very clear that, you know, it’s okay, we give you the market, but you need to teach us. How do you do these things? This is now the debate—whether China is stealing technology or not. I just feel like this crazy debate, even this is from the very beginning, very clear. If you can come here, we will learn from you, you know, and oftentimes, we will say that this so-called technology transfer is a premise for you to open up, and it’s all agreed at that time. China is learning super fast. That’s a problem.

One interesting example—when GM started to open up in Shanghai to produce cars, they chose the cars to be made. It was basically in the 70s, already out, and nobody doing this anymore in the U.S. That was a response to this. They knew it. That’s the important part of this, direct foreign investment. Then, finance—true finance investment. Think about jd.com, think about these early internet-based companies. You see very big foreign venture capital names everywhere. Another layer is mutual funds—foreign investors like professional funds start to invest in China, in stocks. That’s the secondary market. The VC is the primary market. FDI is kind of zero level. The third party is also big, through so-called stock connect—where, say, Fidelity or Vanguard can use access in Hong Kong to directly invest in A-shares. Starting from 2016 that was a big exposure. When COVID happened and China’s growth slowed down, a lot of foreign money stayed at first, thinking maybe they’ll have to come back. Eventually, they decided to get out because after two or three years, they kept losing money. I think the lowest point is 2024—most of them are completely out. Now Beijing is doing something to convince them to go back, and that is gonna take a long time. I think they should come back, but it’s beyond my pay grade to really change anything.

Sarah Jeddy: So then, what role do you think that the tariffs imposed by President Trump play in these relations?

Zhiguo He: It will hit the Chinese export industry. I would guess that the GDP will be affected by at least 1%. I’m more on the optimist side. It’s only 1% if Trump indeed launched a blanket tariff. What happened in the past was there’s a lot of exemptions that you can apply for. So a lot of impact can be shielded in the median one. What we already saw last time was that there’s a lot of shifts in the supply chain from China to other countries, and the impact won’t be that large. So in short, tariffs hurt China’s GDP growth. Will that completely change the way people think about China? No, because China is not doing well, just from the very beginning.

Sarah Jeddy: That makes sense. So then I guess, kind of in the same vein we’ve seen efforts from like, both China and the US to decouple financially. So how do you think that would affect global financial stability, if at all?

Zhiguo He: I think decoupling is really happening at the heart of technology. There’s another area where decoupling is heavy—science. I worry about it. I don’t think there’s any solution to that. A lot of researchers would like to travel to both sides, but both governments are influenced by certain interest groups. In China, there are groups that try to convince Beijing that we need to prepare for the worst—potential U.S. military actions. I can imagine the other side does too. So all the sensitive exchanges, including financial, will be cautioned to an extreme extent. On that side, I am pessimistic. I think in the time of Trump, as well as Xi, it’s harder to get any progress. One thing I do see is that Singapore benefits. Most of these kinds of meetings happen in Singapore now.

Sarah Jeddy: So do you think that Singapore is going to play an increasingly large role?

Zhiguo He: They already play a role. They enjoy their position very, very well.

Sarah Jeddy: Do you think they would try to leverage that for more? Do you think they will succeed?

Zhiguo He: They already succeeded. It’s an extremely small country. For a while, there were a lot of Hong Kong businessmen going to Singapore because they were worried that Hong Kong is not politically stable. I always went to Hong Kong, and there’s always a group of very lefty people versus extremely right. People who want a Hong Kong with no attachment to Beijing. Others believe Hong Kong can survive only because of Beijing and are very grateful. I wouldn’t say that I agree with everything, but Beijing just wants political stability. It’s not trying to discourage economic diversity. For instance, cryptocurrencies—in the mainland it’s all banned, but in Hong Kong, it flourished. Hong Kong even tried to compete against Singapore as another center for cryptocurrencies. And Beijing is very happy about this outcome.

Sarah Jeddy: Okay, so kind of pivoting, I guess. What role do you think China will play in shaping global financial markets in the coming years?

Zhiguo He: Little.

Sarah Jeddy: Little? Do you think it’s going to shift towards Singapore then?

Zhiguo He: In the old times, China got people’s attention not because of its financial market—it was booming. People went there to make money. But the power you felt was from the real business: jd.com, Alibaba, Tencent, Ant Financial. Now Deep Seek. Financially? It’s little. What people might sense is that because of its economic growth, because its trade was growing so fast, its currency became popular. The RMB, Chinese yuan, became a hard currency in Pakistan, East Asia. Beijing is excited about seeing that. They want to make the currency more influential. Replacing the dollar? Almost impossible. But becoming important locally—Southeast Asia—yes. That’s standard.

Hong Kong helped foreign investors get access to the onshore market where they can do hedging and other instruments. In that sense, it affects global financial markets. But China has closed capital accounts, which means money cannot move freely. So the impact China has on the world is through the real economy—not through financial markets.

Sarah Jeddy: So then, what do you think the real impacts will be in the coming years?

Zhiguo He: Manufacturing. China has impacted the world through this extremely complete, sophisticated value chain. Everything—China can produce. They’re moving away from extremely low-end work. Some things are moving to Vietnam or India. But when it comes to iPhone-level production—high-end parts—other countries cannot do it. Think about where chips reside—not the chips themselves, but the circuit boards. You need sophisticated manufacturing to do those things.

Sarah Jeddy: So those were all my questions. If you have any more comments.

Zhiguo He: I actually wanted to say something about what Neil was talking about this morning—entrepreneurs and private business in Beijing. Also related to industrial policy. I’m very neutral, slightly positive, towards industrial policy—China trying to promote hardcore technology over, say, food delivery apps. Beijing thinks that kind of thing is less useful than chips, for example. I think that’s fine. They’re slowly figuring out the best way is not to pick winners themselves. What’s good about the recent EV car industry is they subsidized consumers. First, they built out charging stations—only the government can do that. Second, they subsidized purchases. Not always 100% useful, but the best any government can do. The U.S. does it too. The issue is when governments subsidize the firms directly. The better way is to subsidize the consumers—let the market pick the winners. Customers still want the best product. Whoever wins the market gets the money. That explains the fast growth of EV cars in China in the past three years.

Sarah Jeddy: Yeah, that makes sense. Perfect, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really enjoyed this!

Zhiguo He: Thank you!

Image courtesy of Zhiguo He

Despite increasingly dire climate consequences, the Pakistani government has yet to implement sufficient or sustained policies to mitigate environmental degradation or support its most vulnerable populations. Although Pakistan has articulated ambitious targets under its nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement, its actions often fall short of matching these goals. The country remains among the top 30 global emitters of carbon dioxide, releasing 200 million tons of CO₂ in 2022 alone, with emissions continuing to trend upward. This reflects both a systemic underfunding of climate adaptation initiatives and a continued reliance on fossil fuels, as well as a lack of enforcement of international agreements meant to curb emissions.

The consequences of climate inaction have been catastrophic. While all Pakistanis face exposure to climate-related disasters, women and girls—particularly those who menstruate—bear a disproportionate share of the burden. The 2021 floods displaced hundreds of thousands, while the 2022 monsoon floods, intensified by global warming, affected more than 33 million people. Among them were 650,000 pregnant women who lost access to essential healthcare, many forced to give birth without medical assistance or sanitary conditions. A staggering 8 million individuals were left without menstrual hygiene products or even toilets, stripping them of the means to manage menstruation with dignity.

Climate disasters have also disrupted food systems, especially in rural and agrarian regions. The resulting malnutrition exacerbates the challenges menstruators face, as adequate nutrition is essential to regulate menstrual cycles and maintain reproductive health. Research suggests that menstruation demands significant energy and nutrient intake; in its absence, growth can be stunted, and the onset of menstruation delayed. While the global average age of menarche is 12, in Pakistan it tends to occur later, often between ages 12 and 16, reflecting the dual burden of food insecurity and environmental exposure.

These delays and disruptions are not merely biological inconveniences—they carry long-term health consequences. Climate-induced menstrual irregularities have been linked to heightened risks of infertility, depression, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis. This growing health crisis underscores the extent to which environmental stressors can reproduce cycles of gendered vulnerability.

In contexts of extreme scarcity, societal desperation often gives rise to further injustices. In climate-vulnerable regions of Pakistan and beyond, there is a documented rise in child marriages—young girls exchanged for food or resources in order to alleviate family hunger. Though such practices are condemned globally, they resurface in moments of crisis, revealing the intersection of climate instability and entrenched gender inequality. These forms of gender-based violence are compounded by the absence of institutional protections during and after environmental disasters.

The scientific community has drawn a direct line between anthropogenic climate change and these worsening conditions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II—tasked with assessing climate change’s impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation—has reported with high levels of evidence and confidence that the glacial melting and unprecedented flooding observed in Pakistan are attributable to rising global temperatures. These climatic shifts not only bring extreme weather, but also environmental contamination: floods and droughts disturb landfills, industrial zones, and agricultural soils, triggering the release of toxins such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), pesticides, and other chemicals. Contact with such substances—including flame retardants and heavy metals like lead—has been scientifically linked to delayed puberty and menstrual onset. These impacts are reflected in self-reported menarche among Pakistani girls: over 80% of respondents were between the ages of 12 and 16 upon starting their period.

The inequity of climate change is thus twofold: it is an environmental emergency and a social justice crisis. Yet Pakistan’s policy priorities often fail to reflect this dual urgency. Military spending remains one of the country’s largest budget items, consistently outpacing allocations to climate resilience or public health. Although Pakistan has appealed for international aid—highlighting its disproportionate vulnerability despite contributing less than 1% of historic emissions — its domestic expenditures reveal a misalignment with its own rhetoric.Redirecting funds from militarization or fossil fuel subsidies toward green infrastructure, healthcare access, and gender-sensitive adaptation policies is not merely advisable, it is necessary.

As emphasized by the IPCC Working Group II, which assesses climate impacts and regional vulnerabilities, no nation can adapt to climate change in isolation. Pakistan’s climate response must be integrated into broader global frameworks. This includes advocating for more equitable disbursement under United Nations climate finance mechanisms, increased participation in the Green Climate Fund, and engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to restructure debt in exchange for environmental investment. At a regional level, Pakistan would also benefit from deeper cooperation with other South Asian states facing similar challenges. Multilateral platforms could help harmonize climate adaptation strategies, especially around shared river systems, agricultural resilience, and migration preparedness.

The stakes of climate inaction are no longer abstract. They are embedded in the lives of girls who miss school because of a lack of pads, in the hospitals overwhelmed during floods, and in the communities forced to barter away their daughters for survival. Confronting this reality demands a transformation not only in policy but in priorities—placing health, gender equity, and sustainability at the heart of Pakistan’s climate agenda.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Emergency Flood Response in Pakistan, Image sourced from Flickr | CC License, no changes made

As part of a series of conversations with the 2024 Class of the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program, Abla Abdulkadir, Sarah Jeddy, and Owen Haywood of the YRIS Interviews and Events team sat down to interview the founder and Group CEO of Affinity Africa, Dr. Tarek Mouganie. Affinity Africa is a digital bank that specializes in providing banking services to underbanked populations in Africa, as well as lending for small businesses and micro-enterprises that otherwise struggle to access credit.

Mouganie discussed his journey from childhood in Ghana to the founding of Affinity Africa, during which time he obtained a PhD in physics from Cambridge and worked for eight years as a director at a hedge fund. Mouganie has sought to apply his financial experience towards his goal of African socioeconomic development by focusing Affinity Africa’s efforts on providing banking services that are more readily accessible in Africa. During the interview, Mouganie also shared his love for science, triathlons, and Afrobeats, as well as his advice for students looking to the start of their careers: “not to take things too seriously.” Mouganie’s desire to apply his talents to make a positive impact on the area of socioeconomic development shines through as an example for any student looking to make a difference in their career.

You can listen to the full interview linked above, or read selected quotes from our discussion with Dr. Tarek Mouganie below. All quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Abla Abdulkadir: Could you go into depth on what Affinity Africa is, your role at the company, and what led you to found it? I am also interested in how your scientific background and interest in exploration and design shaped your ideas for Affinity Africa.

Tarek Mouganie: I was sort of obsessed with this idea of investing in Africa and the knock-on socioeconomic implications. After spending all this time at this hedge fund, I decided to get up one day and I quit my job, thanks to my mom. She was the catalyst. She said I was intolerable working for this fund, “What have they done to you, quit your job and come back home.” I quit my job, moved back to Ghana, and started focusing on this idea of getting investments into the continent, and in particular, supporting small businesses. I became obsessed with that idea. After trying to figure out how to build a fund that would invest in African startups and African small businesses, I then had this sort of aha moment. I had all this guilt of, like, eight years working for a hedge fund. “What did I do? Why did I waste my time, my life? Why was I there for so long?” And then I kind of paused, and I thought to myself, “I understand banking because of these eight years.” All the pieces just clicked, you know? And I was like, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna start a bank. And that was it. 

The first thing that I did, getting back to your question on informed design, is I tried to figure out why banking has failed Africa. Just to throw out the statistics, looking at Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, only 42% of adults have a bank account. It’s crazy. I mean, the start of your financial freedom, financial journey is to actually be included in financial services. Even worse than that, less than 10% of businesses have access to credit. How can you grow without a loan? You have an idea. You want to start a business. You might be able to survive on the revenue that you generate in the cash flow, but to unlock your full potential, you need access to credit.

I realized that banking was invented and developed in the Global North, right? So it assumes, like all of us here who have a bank account in a country from the Global North, it assumes you’re formalized. It assumes you have a formal ID, you have an address, and you can prove that you have the address, too. You probably are formally employed and getting a check or at university, and you have to show that. So as a result, those are the three kinds of documentation that you need to actually go into a bank here in the US and actually open an account. Well, guess what? The majority of Africans, 87% of Africans, don’t have that information. So we had to try and understand, using informed design, how we could reinvent banking for the masses. 

And it wasn’t easy. We had a lot of stages of iteration…We actually only launched in January this year with a product in the market that we’re happy with. In March, we put out a product that we’re super happy with, and since then, we’ve actually onboarded 40,000 customers – and almost 10,000 accounts in the last six weeks alone. So it’s going like gangbusters. 62% of our customers are women, which is awesome. And almost 90% of our customers were opening their first ever bank account, which is pretty cool.

…

Sarah Jeddy: What makes small businesses so important for economic development?

Tarek Mouganie: I often use the comparison between OECD countries and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.  So small businesses and micro enterprises are the drivers of social and economic growth. It’s crazy, you know. In the US and UK, they are actually 99.9% of registered businesses and they employ over 60% of the population. We have a highly informal sector in Ghana and in Africa in general. By creating companies that employ in the formal sector you actually unlock that potential. It’s crucial because there’s a huge opportunity in our part of the world. By 2050 one out of four people will be African, and one out of three young people will live in Africa as well. The Global North is shrinking. The global majority is growing, and Africa has a huge potential to unlock its human capital so job creation needs to follow through as well too. That’s the first thing I wanted to say. 

The second thing is, if you take a look at OECD countries the tax-to-GDP ratio is around 36%. If you take a look at countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, it’s 18% – and if you take a look at countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and any of the countries that have extractive economies like Angola, South Africa, it’s as low as 6%. Our governments make money from extractives. They sell extractives. For example, if you have a chocolate bar, the cocoa probably comes from Ghana. Gold, oil are other examples. But what’s very important is diversifying that revenue for governments. Our taxpayer base is very, very, very narrow, so part of additional revenue is generated by generating and supporting small businesses. They are the drivers of revenue for the government. We’re talking corporate tax, we’re talking income tax, we’re talking VAT [value-added tax], we’re talking everything that is collected through those small businesses. 

The other thing that’s super important about this tax, the thing that I’m kind of obsessed with, which forms the majority of that OECD 36% tax-to-GDP ratio that I talked about, is that it creates accountability between civilians and their governments. If I buy a bottle of water and I’m poor, I’m rich, I’m paying the same amount of VAT. It’s indirect and it’s regressive, right? But if I’m earning an income or I’m a small business owner and I pay tax, there is a fiscal contract between me and my government. I’m paying money to you, for you, to provide you with a service that doesn’t really exist in that part of the world, because of the hugely informal sector. So if we see an element of formalization, and I don’t know what that looks like, and I’m not here to villainize the informal sector, you know, or romanticize them, but they’re a huge part of our economy. But over time, if we see an element, basically, of formalization and an increase in the taxpayer base, and an increase in direct taxation as well, too. I would like to think that there would be more civilian accountability to leaders in the continent as a result.

…

Owen Haywood: How have you worked to bridge your diverse array of interests and experiences throughout your career?

Tarek Mouganie: I guess my life and my career only makes sense now looking backwards and trying to connect the dots – I think Steve Jobs said that, right? But in the middle of it all, I wasn’t really thinking. I knew I wanted to work in investment management. It was actually a friend from university that said, “Oh, I work for this company. Why don’t you consider joining?” And I thought, “hey, sounds great. I’ll give it a shot.” You know, what’s the worst that could happen? I would fail. I would move on with my life. And then when I left, the idea of starting a bank was out of coincidence, because I’d spent all this time, even though it wasn’t intentional, working in financial services, investing in banks, and understanding banking strategy. I think it only makes sense looking backwards at it.

The only kind of advice that I can give is not to take things too seriously. I’ve had a lot of students reach out to me here [to network], which is somewhat disappointing. Like 20 years ago, when I did my undergrad degree, everyone would go into investment banking and work for like a consultancy firm. I thought those days were over. surely there are other options out there, you know. And I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with being an investment banker or, you know, or working for a consultancy firm. I did in the past, too. But don’t be afraid to make mistakes in the early stages of your career. You have chances to mess up and correct them later in your career, and when you make a mistake earlier, it’s a lot less grave than it is in the later stages of career. 

But what I wanted to say is stay curious, don’t lose that. Think to yourself, “What is your North Star?” If you want to fix health care, if you want to fix inclusion, if you want to work in the field of climate justice or whatever, why do you care about that? Which part of the value chain do you care about as well, too? And how do you start thinking through how to get to a situation where you think you can maximize your impact. Whether it’s working for a consultancy firm, fine, as long as you’re aware of that and getting the right skill set. Whether it’s working for an established startup where you get a ton of exposure because you want to be an entrepreneur yourself, or whether it’s working for a corporation that has a department in there that looks at sustainability, is also another option. Just make sure that you have all the options laid out to stay curious and always question everything.on, if you want to work in the field of climate justice or whatever, why do you care about that? Which part of the value chain do you care about as well, too? And how do you start thinking through how to get to a situation where you think you can maximize your impact. Whether it’s working for a consultancy firm, fine, as long as you’re aware of that and getting the right skill set. Whether it’s working for an established startup where you get a ton of exposure because you want to be an entrepreneur yourself, or whether it’s working for a corporation that has a department in there that looks at sustainability, is also another option. Just make sure that you have all the options laid out to stay curious and always question everything.

Image courtesy of the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs