Theoretical Economics Letters, 2018, 8, 609-625 http://www.scirp.org/journal/tel ISSN Online: 2162-2086 ISSN Print: 2162-2078 DOI: 10.4236/tel.2018.83042 Feb. 26, 2018 609 Theoretical Economics Letters Toward a Unifying Perspective on Economic Complexity: The Contribution of Chinese Econophysics Community Christophe Schinckus Department of Economics and Finance, RMIT University Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam Abstract Recent years have witnessed a series of economic problems and financial cri- ses, the recent subprime debacle being one of the worst. All these events called traditional economics into question and new perspectives have been devel- oped to take into account the complexity of economic systems. This essay aims at contributing to a better understanding of a new trend labeled econo- physics through two points: 1) a discussion on the conceptual links between statistical econophysics and agent-based econophysics; and 2) an overview of works dealing with these links that interestingly, emphasize the importance of econophysics in China. Keywords Econophysics, Statistical Physics, Economics, Modelling of Complexity 1. The Necessity of a Scientific Revolution Recent years have witnessed a series of economic problems and financial crises, the recent sub-prime debacle being one of the worst. All these events called tra- ditional approach in economics into question and new perspectives have been developed in the literature in order to take into account the complexity of eco- nomic systems. Economics enters in a period of reflection and several scholars (Bouchaud, Farmer, Foley) wrote that “economy needs a scientific revolution” [1]. Several paths have been investigated, econophysics being one of the most important ones. Interestingly, the label econophysics often refers to a diversity of works from statistical physics to agent-based modelling [2] and the question is whether these approaches are compatible. How can such combination contribute to the scientific revolution evoked earlier? The article published in Nature by How to cite this paper: Schinckus, C. (2018) Toward a Unifying Perspective on Economic Complexity: The Contribution of Chinese Econophysics Community. Theoret- ical Economics Letters, 8, 609-625. https://doi.org/10.4236/tel.2018.83042 Received: December 21, 2017 Accepted: February 23, 2018 Published: February 26, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access