China Chats with Stanford Faculty

The Rise of Robots in China with Professor Hongbin Li

China’s production and adoption of robotic technology have accelerated rapidly in recent years, surpassing Japan, US, and Germany. Stanford professor Hongbin Li and a team of scholars draw on multi-year field research data to show fresh insights into China’s aggressive push into automation—specifically, the increasing use of robots—to maintain its status as the “world’s factory.” His analysis offers an unprecedented look at what’s happening at the factory level, and fresh insight into how rising labor costs, an aging population and government policies are reshaping Chinese manufacturing.

In this Stanford alumni event, Hongbin Li, co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, was joined by Scott Rozelle, co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, who moderated a discussion about the major themes of the research. 

Watch the event recording:

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About the Speakers:

Hongbin Li is the Co-Director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He also founded and served as the Executive Associate Director of the China Social and Economic Data Center at Tsinghua University. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world . He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.

 

Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University.  For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the China Center for Agricultural Policy in Peking University. In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premier Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner.