Stanford University

Environment

FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. David Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has looked at the impacts of increasing wheat and corn crops in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States; and has studied the effects of extreme heat on the world’s staple crops.

Recent Advances in the Development of an Alternative Global Rare Earth Supply Chain

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

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About the Event: With China's rapid rise and the reemergence of Russia as a major power, the global stage is set for multipolar competition for critical metals that support a variety of advanced technologies and provide the foundation for energy transitions, communication, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. While the sources of rare earth elements (REEs) are slowly expanding, the REEs are finding accelerated demand in more applications, such as in electric vehicle batteries and permanent magnet motors. Consequently, many national initiatives are designed to respond to growing demand by discovering new ore deposits, finding substitute elements for specific applications, developing separation and extraction technologies, or recycling end-of-life (EOL) products. Despite these national initiatives, the current global REE supply chain is still highly imbalanced and tightly controlled by just a few countries. Such an imbalance of the critical metals supply chain poses a significant challenge to the energy transition and national security of many countries worldwide. With an in-depth analysis, this research offers insights into the current progress in developing an alternative REE supply chain and the possibilities of future strategic, technological, and economic international engagements.
 

About the Speaker: Dr. Gorakh Pawar is a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Dr. Pawar holds a doctorate in Mining Engineering and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Pawar is researching the global imbalanced critical material supply chain that poses a significant challenge to the energy transition and national security of many countries worldwide. Dr. Pawar is also a research scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy and a recipient of the Early Career Exceptional Achievement Award of Idaho National Laboratory. Dr. Pawar has spearheaded many projects resolving the fundamental scientific bottlenecks in advancing clean energy technologies.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Gorakh Pawar
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Stanford scholars visit the only operating rare earth mine in the United States

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Depend on your smart phone? Enjoy a flat screen tv? How about an electric vehicle, do you drive one? These technologies—and other clean energy, information, and defense applications— all rely on rare-earth elements that could be mined in most parts of the world but are primarily processed and refined only in a limited number of countries, like China.

“Right now, the U.S. doesn’t have enough supply to fulfill the objective of the steady clean energy transition, ensure national security, and achieve long-term economic goals” said Gorakh Pawar, a staff scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory who is a visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.  The importance of rare earths mining is highlighted in the series of reports recently issued by the U.S.  Department of Energy in response to President Biden’s Executive Order "America's Supply Chains" signed in 2021.

“This means that the U.S. depends on other countries and therefore, the U.S. needs a strategic approach to resolve the major rare earth elements supply chain issues urgently,” Pawar added. 

Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility, Mountain Pass, San Bernardino Co., California (Image credit: MP materials.com)

Rare-earth elements “are moderately abundant in the earth’s crust, but they need to be concentrated to be economically viable,” said Sulgiye Park, a Fellow at CISAC. “What we want is concentrated rare-earth reserves because we are going to spend a lot of money mining and processing it.”

Important deposits of rare earths exist in the U.S. and previously the U.S. was self-reliant in domestically produced rare-earth elements, but mining operations have declined over the last several decades, allowing China to command roughly 90 percent of the global market. Now, however, there are signs that domestic production is making a comeback, and CISAC scholars are both studying and providing support to accelerate this resurgence.

Pawar, Park and CISAC co-director Rod Ewing toured the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility in southern California to learn more about its operation and to determine how their research could help support this important industry.

“We were provided with critical insights into MP Materials' strategy for securing the domestic rare earth supply chain that would significantly reduce U.S. economic dependence on foreign REE,” Ewing said.

“The substantial challenges include developing domestic supply chains for mill equipment and capacity to process rare earths, such as neodymium-praseodymium magnets,” Ewing added.

Pawar, Park and Ewing toured the mine for three hours to see the facilities, ask and answer questions. They wanted to understand the facts on the ground, supply chain issues and industry challenges in a more complete way to enhance their own research.

Open pit mine Open pit mine (Sulphide Queen deposit) at Mountain Pass. The open pit is ~600 m wide. A massive carbonatite forms the core of Mountain Pass that hosts REE mineral resources, including bastnäsite. (Image credit: Gorakh Pawar)

Before the trip, Pawar and Park relied on academic literature, open source information, news stories and press releases about rare-earth elements, like this recent White House release titled “Securing a Made in America Supply Chain for Critical Minerals,” which announced a Department of Defense grant to MP Materials, who operate the Mountain Pass mine.

“Open source is great,” Park said. “But if you have a chance to visit the site, you can learn from the people on the ground who provide a whole new perspective. “

The tour also fortified connections so that the Pawar, Park and Ewing could share their own knowledge and policy-relevant research, as well as their network of colleagues who have different areas of expertise.

CISAC was created in 1983 with the goal of bringing together experts in science and technology with experts in policy. The mission statement has always been “to generate new knowledge for a better world.” And this trip to Southern California was another opportunity to fulfill this mission.

About Idaho National Laboratory
Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment.

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From the left: Gorakh Pawar (CISAC researcher), Sulgiye Park (CISAC postdoctoral fellow), and Michael Rosenthal (MP Materials Chief Operating Officer). Image Credit: Rodney Ewing
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A three-person team from CISAC toured the only domestic mine producing rare earths, which are critical for the modern economy.

Kyle Smith

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Kyle is a former US Navy officer and MBA/MIP dual degree candidate interested in private sector approaches to climate and sustainable development.

Master's in International Policy Class of 2022

The Digital Transformation of Southeast Asia: Issues and Prospects

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The digital transformation of Southeast Asia is in full swing.  In 2021, 8 of the 10 ASEAN countries had internet penetration rates higher than those for Asia (64%) and the world (66%).  But digital access is unevenly distributed between and within Southeast Asian countries.  How are the new technologies impacting the region?  Are they helping civil society or the surveillance state—free speech and economic growth or unaccountable concentrations of power and wealth?  Are Huawei and the Digital Silk Road creating a future with Chinese characteristics?  Who will write the rules of the digital road?  How are specific countries coping?  What is ASEAN’s role?  What should the US do?  Two leading experts, Huong Le Thu and Elina Noor, will discuss these and related questions.

Huong Le Thu
Huong Le Thu is a co-author of Digital Southeast Asia, a just-published policy-focused study of the webinar topic.  A prolific and influential policy analyst of security and diplomacy in the region, she has written widely in journals and global media and for international think tanks including, as a non-resident fellow, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Wash., DC).  She has held positions at the Australian National University, the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, and the Institute of International Relations in Taipei. Her alma maters include National Chengchi University (Taiwan, PhD) and Jagiellonian University (Poland, Master’s).  She speaks five languages and has published in four.

Elina Noor
Elina Noor has just launched a podcast, “Between the Binary: Tech and the Global South.”  It assesses technology’s intersections with history, gender, power, and economic growth through the underheard voices of guests from developing countries.  Cybersecurity has figured prominently in her many publications on Southeast Asia.  She is a member of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace and has held key positions at the Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (Hawaii), the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (Malaysia), and the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP). Her higher degrees are from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LLM) and Georgetown University (MA).

Winter2022_series_NewFrontiers
This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, New Frontiers: Technology, Politics, and Society in the Asia-Pacific, sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Via Zoom Webinar
Register: bit.ly/3LjVVTj

Huong Le Thu Senior Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra
Elina Noor Director, Political-Security Affairs, and Deputy Director, Asia Society Policy Institute, Washington, DC
Moderator: Moderator

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
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At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Director, Southeast Asia Program, Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University
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Lawmakers are Slowly Warming Up to Policy on Climate Change

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Melissa Morgan
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2021 was not the year many people hoped for. In addition to the ongoing COVID-10 pandemic and emerging coronavirus variants, last year ushered in a laundry list of unprecedented weather events.

Canada and the Pacific Northwest of the United States were scorched by a record-breaking heat wave. An extended fire season in the American West sent blankets of smoke pollution rolling across the rest of the continent. In India, China and Germany, unseasonal rain storms brought on devastating floods. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA), July 2021 was the hottest July on Earth since global record-keeping began in 1880.

Data clearly shows that these kinds of extreme weather patterns are driven by climate change. But is that fact driving policymakers to make meaningful inroads to address the climate crisis? Marshall Burke, the deputy director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, joins Michael McFaul on World Class podcast to review the latest data on what’s happening with the climate in the field and in the halls of Congress.

Listen here and browse highlights of their conversation below.

Click the link for a transcript of “Taking the Temperature on Climate Change."

Climate Policy in the United States


Changes in climate are going to affect most, if not all, of us in the U.S. And public opinion has certainly changed on this in the last 10 years. Many more Americans are on board that the climate is changing and that we should do something about it. There's much more support for climate legislation across the board from Democrats and increasingly from Republicans.

Anyone who works on climate was really excited to see the platform Biden ran on, because it was really the first mainstream presidential campaign where climate had played a fundamental role. There's been a lot of discussion aboutthe importance of climate, the damages from climate that are already happening, and what we need to do is take aggressive action in the future to deal with the problem.

But there are specific industries who are going to be harmed by this legislation, and they are quite organized in fighting this legislation, and in funding politicians who fight it, and in funding organizations, either transparently or not, that are fighting climate legislation.

We are closer than we’ve ever been to really meaningful legislation on climate change. The optimistic view is that we’re on the right trajectory and that we’re going to get some part of this done eventually. But we’re not there yet.
 

Progress is being made. Emissions are falling. But it’s also important for us to realize what we don’t know.
Marshall Burke
Deputy Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment


COP26: Climate Change on the Global Stage


A “COP” is a “Conference of the Parties,” which is an annual meeting of the signatories of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The main focus of Glasgow was to get countries to be very transparent about how they are going to achieve the ambitions for combating climate change that they articulated at the last major COP summit in Paris.

Was it a success? A lot of countries did come to the table in Glasgow and made commitments in ways that they hadn't done before. There were also new, important agreements on certain greenhouse gasses that we've learned recently are pretty damaging, like methane.

Where we failed to make progress was on something that's called “loss and damage.” Many developing countries argue that they are suffering the damages from climate change even though it is a problem that they have not caused, and they are seeking compensation from developed countries who have been the drivers of climate change. That issue was on the table in Glasgow, but it got put off until next year in Egypt.

The Forecast for the Future


Progress is being made. Emissions are falling in the U.S. They're falling in California. They're falling in the EU. They're pretty flat around the world. And these are not just the per capita emissions, but overall emissions are now going down in many parts of the world, which is a huge success.

Where has that progress come from? In part from government policies that have been successful in mitigation. But the driving factor has really been longer decadal investments by both the public sector and the private sector in technologies that allow us to produce energy in a clean way. It’s a combination of long-term public support through taxes and subsidies for the development of these technologies alongside private sector deployment of these technologies at huge scale.
 

We are closer than we’ve ever been to really meaningful legislation on climate change. But we’re not there yet.
Marshall Burke
Deputy Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment


It’s important for people to know about these successes. But it’s also important for us to realize what we don’t know. Emissions in different parts of the world are falling, and that’s fantastic. But it’s also true that people are already getting sick, being harmed, and dying because of the changes we’re already experiencing.  We’re poorly adapted to the climate we live in now, much less the climate of a two-degree warmer or three-degree warmer future, and the science on that needs to be much more widely understood.

I think a huge role for us as academics is not only to do the research to understand those questions, but to get that information out into the world. The great thing about the Freeman Spolgi Institute and institutions like FSI is that it's part of our mandate to translate this research out into the broader world. The translation of what we already know is important, as is the imperitive to drill down on and study the things that we don't.

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Together For Our Planet: Americans are More Aligned on Taking Action on Climate Change than Expected

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People gather at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, 2021.
Data on the severity of the climate crisis is abundant, but effective policy to adapt to and mitigate the changing climate still lags in most countries, says Marshall Burke.
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Climate expert Marshall Burke joins the World Class podcast to talk through what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and what more needs to be done to translate data on the climate crisis into meaningful policy.

Integrating Nature into Policy & Finance for Transformation in China with Professor Ouyang Zhiyun

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Wednesday, March 9, 2022 | 4:00-5:15 pm Pacific Time

Integrating Nature into Policy & Finance for Transformation in China

In response to escalating ecosystem degradation, China has avowed to transform its development model and build an “ecological civilization” that “harmonizes humanity and nature”. I will discuss science-based policy innovation designed to achieve three key goals in support of this vision.  The first is to secure the vital benefits of nature to people – such as climate stability, water security, and food security – targeting key regions and sectors.  The second is to drive investments in protecting and revitalizing both natural capital and also human livelihoods and well-being.  The third is to evaluate and track progress, moving beyond gross domestic product (GDP) to include a new system of accounts and high-level metric called gross ecosystem product (GEP).  

About the Speaker

 

Dr. Ouyang Zhiyun is Professor and director, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.  His research interests include ecosystem assessment, ecosystem services, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation. In recent years, he has made his main efforts in mainstreaming ecosystem services in policy making for ecosystem conservation, restoration and land management in China, including national ecosystem survey and assessment of China, national framework of ecological redline planning, national key ecological functional area identification, national park network planning, giant panda protection, and national ecological transfer payment. Dr. Ouyang has played a key role in conservation policy innovation in China since 2000.

Seminar Series Moderators

Headshot of Dr. Scott Rozelle

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 Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. 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 headshot

Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). 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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Ouyang Zhiyun
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Displacing fishmeal with protein derived from stranded methane

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Methane emitted and flared from industrial sources across the United States is a major contributor to global climate change. Methanotrophic bacteria can transform this methane into useful protein-rich biomass, already approved for inclusion into animal feed. In the rapidly growing aquaculture industry, methanotrophic additives have a favourable amino acid profile and can offset ocean-caught fishmeal, reducing demands on over-harvested fisheries. Here we analyse the economic potential of producing methanotrophic microbial protein from stranded methane produced at wastewater treatment plants, landfills, and oil and gas facilities. Our results show that current technology can enable production, in the United States alone, equivalent to 14% of the global fishmeal market at prices at or below the current cost of fishmeal (roughly US$1,600 per metric ton). A sensitivity analysis highlights technically and economically feasible cost reductions (such as reduced cooling or labour requirements), which could allow stranded methane from the United States alone to satisfy global fishmeal demand.

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Stanford researchers reveal how to turn a global warming liability into a profitable food security solution

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Nature Sustainability
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Stephen P. Luby
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47–56 (2022)

Carbon Trading vs. Direct Allocation: Theory and Application to China’s Carbon Abatement with Professor Guojun He

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Tuesday, February 15, 2022 | 4:00-5:15 pm Pacific Time

Carbon Trading vs. Direct Allocation:  Theory and Application to China's Carbon Abatement

The Emission Trading System (ETS) and Direct Allocation Scheme (DAS) are two popular schemes to achieve a given target of carbon abatement. We compare their welfare implications under incomplete information and with local externalities of such abatement (e.g., changes in air pollution). We show that the ETS addresses incomplete information but not heterogeneous local externalities; the opposite is true for the DAS. Therefore, the policy choice depends on the relative significance of incomplete information and heterogeneous local externalities. We apply the theoretical results to the Chinese data and discuss why a national ETS can be undesirable.

About the Speaker

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Guojun He is an economist working on environmental, development, and governance issues. Currently, he is an associate professor in Economics and Management & Strategy at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He holds a concurrent appointment at the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago (EPIC) and serves as the research director of its China center (EPIC-China). He is a co-editor of Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and China Economic Review. 

His research tries to address some of the most challenging problems faced by developing countries and seeks to produce empirically-grounded estimates for optimal policy design. The majority of his work focuses on understanding the benefits and costs of environmental policies, while he also has a broader research interest in development and governance issues. His work has been published in leading economics journals (like QJE, AER: Insights, AEJ: Applied) and science journals (like PNAS, Nature: Sustainability, Nature Human Behavior, and The BMJ). 

He has won multiple academic awards, including the Best Paper Award from China Health Policy and Management Society, Masahiko Aoki Best Paper Award Nomination, and notably two Gregory Chow Best Paper Awards from the Chinese Economists Society. He was named a Young Scientist by the World Economic Forum.  

He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Agricultural and Resource Economics from U.C. Berkeley and received undergraduate education from School of Economics at Peking University. ​Before joining HKU, he worked at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Harvard University.​

Seminar Series Moderators:

Headshot of Dr. Scott Rozelle

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 Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. 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 headshot

Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). 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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Guojun He
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