Gan Li, co-author of the paper Financial availability, financial market participation and household portfolio choice, made a speech at the ceremony held for granting the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Awards in Beijing on July 3, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Gan Li, co-author of the award-winning paper in Chinese, Financial availability, financial market participation and household portfolio choice, said China's problems have yet to become mainstream research questions in international academia.

He explained that only 20 papers on China's economy, 1.8 percent of the total papers, were published in the top five economics journals and top three finance journals between January 2015 and June 2016.

Of the 20 papers, only three were about China's special problems, while the other 17 tested Western theories.

He added that there are four papers in the top five economics journals that study migration, as in Indonesia, India, Mexico and Africa. But there is no such research in these journals on China's migration phenomenon, which should be of more academic value.

He said one of the reasons is lack of a reliable database. His team has been building a household finance database based on surveys done in 2011, 2013 and 2015 on 40,000 Chinese households in 1,400 communities in 363 counties or cities and that this database is open to all scholars.

Zhou Hao said the paper Gan co-authored won a Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Award as this database is the first of its kind in China.