Stanford University

Economic Affairs

Beggars Can’t Be Choosers: The European Crisis and Chinese Direct Investment in the European Union

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This seminar is part of the "Europe and the Global Economy" series.

Virtually non-existent five years ago, Chinese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Europe has surged spectacularly in recent years in an international context of declining FDI globally. While the stock of Chinese investment in Europe is still minuscule, the flows show an explosion in the interest of Chinese companies in being present in Europe, both through greenfield investment and through mergers and acquisitions. This surge occurred concomitantly to the explosion of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and the general economic downturn in many countries of the European Union (EU). This paper asks how the European crisis contributed to the surge of Chinese FDI in Europe. In particular, did this surge occur as a result of an explicit strategy formulated by governments in EU Member States in order to dig their countries out of the crisis? The main argument is that the crisis has provided Chinese investors with two types of bargains: economic bargains due to depressed prices and a greater number of assets for sale, and political bargains due to the lessened political resistance to deals that may have been objectionable in flusher times.

Sophie Meunier is Research Scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and Co-Director of the EU Program at Princeton. She is the author of Trading Voices: The European Union in International Commercial Negotiations (Princeton University Press, 2005)  and co-author of The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization (with Philip Gordon, Brookings Institution Press, 2001), winner of the 2002 France-Ameriques book award. She is also the editor of several books on Europe and globalization. Her current work deals with the politics of hosting Chinese investment in Europe. Meunier contributes regularly to the French and American media. She is Chevalier des Palmes Academiques.

Co-sponsored by the the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

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Sophie Meunier Research Scholar, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Co-Director, EU Program Speaker Princeton University
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Europe and the Global Economy Seminar Series
Europe and the Global Economy

Mr. Abe's Scattershot Reforms

Authors
Takeo Hoshi
News Type
Commentary
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Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan for revitalizing the Japanese economy appears to offer something for everyone. Takeo Hoshi argues that before Mr. Abe makes any more announcements, he needs to focus his efforts on a few key priorities.
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Kokkai-gijido, Japanese Diet Building, Tokyo, Japan 2006 | Flickr user Henry Stradford
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Innovation Talent Roundtable

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From executive boardrooms to national capitols, leaders are debating the relative merits of contending models and strategies for attracting, developing, and empowering innovation talent--the people who drive economic growth and value creation through innovation.
 
On June 28, 2013, the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) convened a circle of over 50 policymakers, executives and Stanford community members from 12 countries for an interactive roundtable on innovation talent at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
 
Topics of discussion included:
  • What are key data and trends for innovation talent in Silicon Valley?
  • What strategies are places such as London, Taiwan and Israel employing to become hotbeds of innovation that attract innovation talent?
  • How can companies successfully manage and empower their innovation talent? What best practices have been learned?
  • What insights and implications into innovation talent can be gathered from recent research?
  • How are universities innovating through programs such as Stanford's StartX and the d.school?
Agenda
 

8:30 – 8:45

   Registration
     
8:45 – 9:00   Welcome & Opening Remarks
     
9:00 – 10:15   “The Right Talent, Essentially”
Evan Wittenberg, Senior Vice President, People, Box
Kyung H. Yoon, CEO, Talent Age Associates
Moderator: Greg McKeown (MBA '08), CEO, THIS, Inc.
     
10:15 – 11:10   “The Rx for Innovation”
Baba Shiv, Sanwa Bank, Limited, Professor of Marketing, Stanford Graduate School of Business
     
11:10 – 11:30   Break
     
11:30 – 12:30   “Innovation Talent Spanning Boundaries”
Chunyan Zhou, Director, International Institute of Triple Helix (IITH)
Morten Petersen, Assistant Professor, Aalborg University
Kung Wang, Chair Professor, China University of Technology
Moderator: Henry Etzkowitz, Senior Researcher, H-STAR Institute, Stanford University
     
12:30 – 1:30   Lunch
     
1:30 – 2:10   “Accelerating the Next Generation of Innovation Talent”
Cameron Teitelman (BS '10), Founder & CEO, StartX
Divya Nag, Founder, StartX Med
     
2:10 – 2:40   “Silicon Valley Perspective”
Russell Hancock, President & CEO, Joint Venture Silicon Valley
     
2:40 – 3:00   Break
     
3:00 – 4:30   “Global Policy Perspectives”
Sigal Admony-Ravid, Consul for Economic Affairs to the West Coast, State Of Israel
Chao-Han Liu, Vice President, Academia Sinica
Priya Guha, British Consul General in San Francisco
Angus Lapsley, Director European & Global Issues, Cabinet Office, United Kingdom
     
4:30 - 5:15   Closing Remarks & Networking Reception

For more information please contact Rustin Crandall at: rustin.crandall@gsb.stanford.edu

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Stanford Graduate School of Business

Workshops

The European parliament elections in 2014 are about more than protest votes

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The European Parliament elections in May 2014 are about more than protest votes. In an opinion piece that appeared in The Guardian newspaper Christophe Crombez (The Europe Center) and Simon Hix (The London School of Economics and Political Science) argue that next year's European Parliament elections are the most important such elections to date. European politics has been dominated by the eurocrisis in recent years, and by the austerity policies European governments have followed to combat it. These policies are largely set at the European level, in particular by the EU Commission. At the next European Parliament election voters will be able to determine the composition of the new Commission, because the European Parliament now plays a crucial role in its appointment. Moreover, the major political parties present starkly different solutions to the crisis. European voters will thus have a clear choice to make at next year's elections.


Please click here to view the opinion piece.

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Publication Type
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The Guardian
Authors
Christophe Crombez
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Towards more active monetary easing

Authors
Takeo Hoshi
News Type
Commentary
Date
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Policies seeking to end deflation, the most pressing issue for the Japanese economy, have been put into effect. In this issue of the NIRA Policy Review, Takeo Hoshi points out that deflation is a monetary phenomenon, and as such is a problem which can be solved by monetary policy.

Policies seeking to end deflation, the most pressing issue for the Japanese economy, have been put into effect.  In this issue of the NIRA Policy Review, Takeo Hoshi points out that deflation is a monetary phenomenon, and as such is a problem which can be solved by monetary policy.

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Recent Structural Change of the Chinese Economy and Japan-China Relations

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The structure of the Chinese economy changed dramatically between 2005 and 2009.  It changed from an export-investment leading economy to a domestic-demand leading economy.  Before 2004 China was a huge factory because of its cheap and abundant labor.  After 2010 it has become a huge market because of the rapid increase of their income level.

Not only the rapid growth of China’s GDP, but the rapid increase of the number of middle-class-income people in China whose GDP per capita surpass 10 thousand USD gave Japanese companies many business chances since 2010. Even under the worst political condition between Japan and China after Senkaku territorial dispute most of Japanese companies keep increasing their investment in China because Chinese local governments are so eager to invite the investment of Japanese companies. If Japan and China can realize the normalization of Sino-Japan relations, their win-win relationship should be accelerated.

The Xi Jinping’s administration started officially in March. Chinese ordinary people’s complaint against the Chinese government seems very strong mainly because the former administration put off the resolution of many important problems including the corruption of governmental officials, environmental deterioration, economic inequality. Xi Jinping’s administration should work on these difficult problems. In such a situation it is important for China to normalize Sino-Japan relations to enhance the economic stability.

 

Kiyoyuki Seguchi is the Research Director of the Canon Institute for the Global Studies. His research focuses on the Chinese economy and relations between the United States, China and Japan. He worked for the Bank of Japan from 1982 to 2009. He was the Chief Representative of the Representative Office of BOJ in Beijing from 2006 to 2008, the international visiting fellow at RAND Corporation (Los Angeles, CA) from 2004 to 2005. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tokyo.

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