Please join us for our winter seminar series of four lectures given by multidisciplinary faculty who are leading experts on China's economy and institutions. These lectures will cover discussion topics ranging from rural livelihood and environmental sustainability in China to talent and firm creation in China and will be moderated by Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution co-directors Scott Rozelle and Hongbin Li.

 

Seminar 3: Tuesday, February 23, 2021 | 11:00 - 12:15 am Pacific Time

Entrepreneurial Reluctance: Talent and Firm Creation in China with Professor Ruixue Jia, UC San Diego

An influential theoretical literature has long noted that talent can be used in both the entrepreneur and non-entrepreneur sectors and its allocation depends on the reward restructure. We test this insight by linking administrative college admissions data for 1.8 million individuals with information on firm registration records in China. I will open discussion on the findings of our study including who is more likely to create firms, which firms are more successful, and the overall association between entrepreneurial ability and college entrance exam scores.

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About the Speaker

Ruixue Jia is an associate professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. Jia is interested in the interplay of economics, history and politics. One stream of her research focuses on understanding elite formation and elite influence, in both historical and modern contexts. A second focus of her work is the deep historical roots of economic development. More recently, she started following the ongoing transformation of the manufacturing sector in China and expanded her interest to labor and technology issues.

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Seminar Series Moderators:

Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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 Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). 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 Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner. 

Hongbin Li is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, 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 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.

 

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Register Here

Register once to receive the Zoom meeting link that will be used for all lectures in this series.

Please join us for our winter seminar series of four lectures given by multidisciplinary faculty who are leading experts on China's economy and institutions. These lectures will cover discussion topics ranging from rural livelihood and environmental sustainability in China to talent and firm creation in China and will be moderated by Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution co-directors Scott Rozelle and Hongbin Li.

 

Seminar 2: Tuesday, February 9, 2021 | 11:00 - 12:15 am Pacific Time

A Study of Confucius Institute Teachers Around the World with Professor Jennifer Pan, Stanford University

Confucius Institutes (CI) have been accused of extending Chinese government censorship and propaganda around the world, but there are few systematic studies of how these organizations operate. By combining survey and experimental methods with qualitative analyses, we study the behavior of CI teachers with a focus on how the Chinese government imposes control over teachers and its consequences. 

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About the Speaker

Jennifer Pan is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Stanford University. Her research focuses on political communication and authoritarian politics. Pan uses experimental and computational methods with large-scale datasets on political activity in China and other authoritarian regimes to answer questions about how autocrats perpetuate their rule. How political censorship, propaganda, and information manipulation work in the digital age. How preferences and behaviors are shaped as a result.

Her book, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers (Oxford, 2020) shows how China's pursuit of political order transformed the country’s main social assistance program, Dibao, for repressive purposes. Her work has appeared in peer reviewed publications such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and Science.

She graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government.

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Seminar Series Moderators:

Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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 Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). 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 Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner. 

Hongbin Li is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, 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 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.

 

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Register Here

Register once to receive the Zoom meeting link that will be used for all lectures in this series.

Watch the Recorded Seminar

Please join us for our winter seminar series. Moderated by SCCEI Directors Scott Rozelle and Hongbin Li, the four-part series features leading experts on China, speaking on topics ranging from China's aspirations to build an ecological civilization, to talent and firm creation in China.

 

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Seminar 1: Tuesday, February 2, 2021 | 11:00 - 12:15 am Pacific Time

China’s Dream: Science, Economics, and Policy for an Ecological Civilization with Professor Gretchen Daily, Stanford University

China’s efforts to build an “ecological civilization” constitute the most comprehensive strategy to achieve inclusive, sustainable development by any major economy. The aspiration is to weave the values of nature into the fabric of the economy and society.  How?  I will open discussion of the transformation being attempted and the arc of their development, both in China and globally, focusing on natural capital and economic dimensions.  These include (i) valuing nature’s contributions to people; (ii) determining where and how much nature to protect or restore, in cities and across the country; (iii) aligning livelihood security and investments in nature; and (iv) tracking progress through Gross Ecosystem Product.

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Seminar Series Moderators:

Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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 Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). 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 Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner. 

Hongbin Li is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, 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 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.

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.

The past decade has witnessed a great digital transformation in China. In 2006, China’s online retail sales were merely 3% of U.S. sales. China now hosts the world’s largest e-commerce retail market with a 40% share of global sales. Mobile pay has taken the country by storm so that even beggars are accepting alms through QR codes. What accounts for the leapfrog development in China’s e-commerce market? What are the larger implications of the rise of this 700-million-user online market? This talk will discuss the institutional foundation of China's giant e-commerce market, as well as its political and economic effects.

This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's winter webinar series "Asian Politics and Policy in a Time of Uncertainty."

Lizhi Liu is an Assistant Professor in the McDonough School of Business and a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government. Her research specializes in the politics of trade, technology and innovation, and the political economy of China. Her work has been published by American Economic Review: Insights and Minnesota Law Review, and has been funded by numerous institutions, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Weiss Family Program Fund, and the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies. She received the 2020 Ronald H. Coase Best Dissertation Award from the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics (SIOE), and the 2019 Best Dissertation Award in the area of Information Technology and Politics by American Political Science Association (APSA). 

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/trpJJ0-nJzE

 

About the Event: In the middle of the twentieth century, geophysical science and new technologies pried open three of Earth's most remote and inhospitable regions: Antarctica, the ocean floor, and the exosphere—that is, outer space. As human activity in these frigid zones increased, so too did their status as “global commons,” domains belonging to all, and therefore none. This presentation examines how one issue in particular, nuclear weapons, galvanized the politics of the global commons from the 1950s to the 1970s and sheds light on how the United States navigated the new spaces as part of its Cold War foreign policy.

 

 

About the Speakers: 

Stephen Buono is a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. He earned his PhD in History from Indiana University. At Stanford, he is at work on his first book, The Province of All Mankind, a history of how outer space became a realm of American foreign policy and international law in 1950s and 1960s. Before arriving at CISAC, Stephen was an editor for the journal Diplomatic History and an Aerospace History Fellow with the American Historical Association and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration.

 

Ryan A. Musto is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC. He holds a PhD in history from The George Washington University and master’s degrees in international and world history from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. Prior to joining CISAC, Ryan served as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MIT. His work has been published in Diplomatic History, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Polar Record, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Americas Quarterly, amongst other outlets. Ryan is currently writing a book manuscript on the international history of regional denuclearization.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/zrDq0xRWnhk

 

About the Event: Determination and verification of the nuclear activities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are critical to ongoing disarmament and nonproliferation efforts. This study assesses the complete nuclear fuel cycle of the DPRK, from its capacity to produce fissile material precursors at mining and milling facilities in Pyongsan, to activity at the main Nuclear Scientific Research Center in Yongbyon. An interdisciplinary approach is used to analyze the different stages of the DRPK’s nuclear fuel cycle. In investigating the uranium ore grade and ore production capacity at the mining and milling facilities, we combine analysis of archival geological maps, geological field survey reports, and first-hand collection and geochemical analysis of comparable rock samples from the Korean Peninsula. In analyzing the ongoing activities at fissile material production facilities, we integrate satellite imagery analysis with machine learning algorithms, allowing for automated analysis of large image sets.

 

About the Speaker: Sulgiye Park is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC, Stanford University, where she focuses primarily on investigating the front-end of uranium pathway in North Korea. She looks at the uranium mining and milling processes for disarmament and nonproliferation efforts. Prior to joining CISAC, Sulgiye was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford Geological Sciences and Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, where Sulgiye studied materials' behaviors at extreme environments.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/ISsBNJEKP70

 

About the Event: This chapter builds on my earlier writing during the West African Ebola outbreak, in which I argue that health security paradigms and militarized health interventions engender “defensiveness” in landscapes of care, while they also intensify already securitized landscapes and relationships of development and humanitarian aid. In this chapter, I include insights about the US-authored Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), to suggest that the Government of Sierra Leone’s 2014 adoption of the agenda has helped to strengthen containment and control paradigms at the expense of care, and to prioritize the collection and management of disease event data over other pressing concerns related to health care delivery (cf. Benton 2015). Specifically, I analyze global health security policy discourse and practice outlined in the GHSA and militarized health interventions as they travel and settle in four disparate sites: a rural clinic in eastern Sierra Leone (see Kardas-Nelson and Frankfurter 2018); abandoned and repurposed treatment centers; the Imperial War Museum’s temporary exhibit “Fighting Extremes: From Ebola to Isis;” and US and Sierra Leonean political rhetoric explicitly linking Ebola virus disease and terrorism (whether by metaphor, analogy, or literal means). Reading across these sites, I show how projects of counter-terrorism and humanitarianism subtend global health policy, and become institutionalized in and through the everyday management of public health provision.

 

About the Speaker: Adia Benton is an associate professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Northwestern University, where she is affiliated with the Science in Human Culture Program. She is the author of the award-winning book, HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone, and is currently writing a book about the West African Ebola outbreak.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/GZwdR1cNPAg

 

About the Event: In recent years, the world has increasingly witnessed international conflict along ideological fault lines. Western policymakers warn that authoritarian countries like Russia and China are seeking to exploit divisions within democratic societies to promote autocratic tendencies, while for decades, authoritarian countries have accused the West of doing the same—of manufacturing domestic uprisings as a way to force liberalism upon them. While history is filled with examples of conflicts along these types of ideological lines, there is little consensus among scholars or policymakers about whether states’ governing ideologies matter for their foreign policy behavior and if they do, why.

This presentation will focus in on British and U.S. reactions to the Haitian Revolution to advance our understanding of the relationship between ideology and international conflict. I show that Britain and the United States both initially isolated Haiti due to fears that the Haitians would promote or otherwise inspire the spread of slave rebellions throughout the Caribbean and U.S. South. However, after outlawing slavery in its colonies, Britain’s foreign policy towards Haiti quickly diverged from that of the United States. Britain formally ended its regime dispute with Haiti, deepened its economic links with the country, and even began cooperation with Haitian leaders to police the Atlantic slave trade. Taken together, the case strongly suggests that British and U.S ideological stance on slavery was a primary source of their disputes with the Haitian regime.

 

 

About the Speaker: Lindsay Hundley holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Her primary research examines why states fight over the leadership and institutions of other countries, and her book project explores the role of political ideology in shaping both how leaders perceive threats from other states and their willingness to resort to subversion. In other research, Lindsay leverages advances in political methodology to shed new light on enduring questions in international politics, with a particular emphasis on experimental tests of formal models and the use of machine learning techniques to process and analyze political texts. Her work has been published at the Journal of Politics and International Studies Perspectives.

Before joining CISAC, Lindsay was a pre-doctoral research fellow with the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. At Stanford, she was a Gerald J. Lieberman Fellow -- one of the University's highest distinctions awarded to doctoral students for outstanding accomplishments in research, teaching, and academic leadership.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/RZZT4lXaG1w

 

About the Event: What lies at the origins of major wars?

I argue that major wars are caused by the attempts of great powers to escape their two-front war problem: encirclement. To explain the causal mechanism that links encirclement to major war, I identify an intervening variable: the increase in the invasion ability of the immediate rival. This outcome unfolds in a three-step process: double security dilemma, war initiation, and war contagion.

Encirclement is a geographic variable that occurs in presence of one or two great powers (surrounding great powers) on two different borders of the encircled great power. The two front-war problem triggers a double security dilemma (step 1) for the encircled great power, which has to disperse its army to secure its borders. The surrounding great powers do not always have the operational capability to initiate a two-front war (latent encirclement) but, when they increase their invasion ability (actualized encirclement), the encircled great power attacks (war initiation, step 2). The other great powers intervene due to the rival-based network of alliances for preventing their respective immediate rival from increasing its invasion ability (war contagion, step 3).

I assess my theory in the outbreak of WWI. This article provides ample support to the claim that major wars are caused by a great power that has the limited goal of eliminating its two-front war problem. These findings have important implications for the prospects of major wars, since I anticipate that in the long term China will face the encirclement of India and Russia.

View Draft Paper

 

About the Speaker: Andrea Bartoletti holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. His research interests span on international security and IR theory with a focus on the origins of major wars, polarity and war, U.S. grand strategy in the Indo-Pacific region, and great powers' intervention in civil wars.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olaPuZ0L4fg

 

About the Event: The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998, hailed in a triumphant language, was to finally usher in an era of accountability for atrocity crimes and an end to impunity of such crimes of concern to the international community. Two decades later, that optimism is waning and even the supporters of the ICC have publicly aired their frustration. Amidst a string of high-profile acquittals of defendants, flawed investigations, dismissed charges, lengthy proceedings, and controversial rulings, it has become clear that the Court has not lived up to its promise. Why is it that the ICC seems able to deliver justice only on behalf of states rather than for victims and communities affected by atrocity crimes? International courts operate in a world made primarily of states, which try to leverage the legal institutions and processes, in pursuit of their political and security interests. Even states that do not wield global power are able to use international courts in pursuit of those interests, while the international justice project reframes its mission as delivering “justice for victims”. Moreover, as calls to “fix” the Court gain ground, the broader question of the imperial and the liberal world order that sustain the international justice project remain at the margin of the deliberations.

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1108488773?pf_rd_r=KSYYMSPN9JJKSS2GTW0Y&pf_rd_p=a712d25e-094e-4a8b-b495-0be41c4dbcc9

 

About the Speaker: Oumar Ba is an assistant professor of political science at Morehouse College. His primary research agenda focuses on international criminal justice norms and regimes, and the global governance of atrocity crimes. He also studies worldmaking and visions for and alternatives to the current international order, from Global South perspectives. He is the author of States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court (Cambridge University Press, 2020). His publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Human Rights Quarterly, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, African Studies Review, Journal of Narrative Politics, Africa Today, and African Journal of International Criminal Justice.