Policy Analysis
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The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a project of breathtaking scale that aims to reshape economic geography and enhance China’s centrality in the world.  Estimates for the costs of infrastructure to create a sea and land network linking more than 60 countries from Asia to Europe run upwards of US $6 trillion.  To date, China has committed several hundred billion yuan and created financial institutions to carry out the Belt and Road vision, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund, alongside the China Development Bank, Export-Import Bank, and state-owned commercial banks. 

Does China have the financial wherewithal to implement this grand scheme?

This talk examines China’s recent development and places the BRI in the long arc of fiscal expansion since the turn of the century.  Under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the government spent lavishly on boosting public services, especially in the rural areas, using buoyant revenues that grew from ¥1.34 trillion to ¥8.3 trillion during the decade of 2000-2010.  The BRI is a signature program in Xi Jinping’s assertive foreign policy, likewise conceived in an era of high growth and high foreign reserve accumulation.  What happens when China’s growth slows?  Will China’s fiscal institutions be robust enough to manage the transition and avoid overextending its finances under the BRI?


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Christine Wong is Professor of Chinese Studies in the Asia Institute and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne. Prior to joining the University of Melbourne, she was Professor of Public Finance and Director of Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was a Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall. She has also held the Henry M. Jackson Professorship in International Studies at the University of Washington, and taught economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of California, Berkeley; and Mount Holyoke College. Christine has more than twenty years of experience in working with the Ministry of Finance and State Tax Administration in China. She has held senior staff positions in the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and worked extensively with other international development agencies including the IMF, OECD, UNDP, UNICEF, and the UK Department for International Development. She is a member of the OECD Advisory Panel on Budgeting and Public Expenditures.

Christine Wong <i>Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Melbourne</i>

Nemstov film posterNemtsov is a documentary film about the late leader of the Russian opposition, directed by his friend and colleague Vladimir Kara-Murza. The film chronicles a remarkable political life. It is a story told by those who knew Boris Nemtsov at different times: when he was a young scientist and took his first steps in politics; when he held high government offices and was considered Boris Yeltsin’s heir apparent; when he led Russia’s democratic opposition to Vladimir Putin. The film contains rare archival footage, including from the Nemtsov family. Nemtsov is a portrait. It is not about death. It is about the life of a man who could have been president of Russia.

The film is in Russian, with English subtitles. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Vladimir Kara-Murza.

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Vladimir Kara-Murza


Vladimir Kara-Murza is vice chairman of the Open Russia movement and chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom. He was a longtime colleague of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Kara-Murza is a former deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party and was a candidate for the Russian State Duma. He has testified on Russian affairs before parliaments in Europe and North America and played a key role in the passage of the Magnitsky Act, a US law that imposed targeted sanctions on Russian human rights violators. Twice, in 2015 and 2017, he was poisoned with an unknown substance and left in a coma; the attempts on his life were widely viewed as politically motivated. Kara-Murza writes regular commentary for the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, World Affairs, and other periodicals, and has previously worked as a journalist for Russian broadcast and print media, including Ekho Moskvy and Kommersant. He directed two documentary films, They Chose Freedom (on the dissident movement in the USSR) and Nemtsov (on the life of Boris Nemtsov). He is the author of Reform or Revolution (Moscow 2011) and a contributor to Russia’s Choices: The Duma Elections and After (London 2003), Russian Liberalism: Ideas and People (Moscow 2007), Why Europe Needs a Magnitsky Law (London 2013), and Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Stuttgart 2018). Kara-Murza is a recipient of the Magnitsky Human Rights Award, the Sakharov Prize for Journalism as an Act of Conscience, and the Geneva Summit Courage Award. He holds an M.A. (Cantab.) in History from Cambridge. He is married, with three children.

This event is cosponsored by the Center for Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies and the European Security Initiative.

Cubberley Auditorium (Education Building)

485 Lasuen Mall

 
Vladimir Kara-Murza Filmmaker
Film Screenings
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In this paper we study the changing multi-dimensional structure of political (ideological) conflict in the European Parliament. We analyze whether a structural change in terms of coalition formation is taking place in the current European Parliament.  Using the roll call votes from the sixth (2004-09), seventh (2009-14), and eighth (2014-19) European Parliaments, we show that, as in the past, two dimensions are needed to explain voting behavior in the European Parliament.  However, we find that the dimensionality of policy space has changed.  Before 2014, the first dimension was left-right and the second dimension was pro/anti-EU; after 2014, the first dimension seems to be related to pro/anti-EU and left-right.  

 

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Image of Prof. Abdul Noury

Abdul Noury is an associate professor in the division of the social sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi. This year he is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

William J. Perry Conference Room
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
616 Serra Street

Abdul Noury Associate Professor of Political Science Speaker New York University Abu Dhabi
Lectures
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Abstract: Individuals (such as Paul Rusesabagina during the Rwandan genocide and Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg during the Holocaust) and groups (including Muslims during the Rwandan genocide, Danes during the Holocaust, and the White Helmets in Syria today) have sought to rescue others during genocides and other atrocity crimes. Even if rare, such rescue can be significant, resulting in hundreds or thousands of lives saved. This talk—drawing on case studies from the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the ongoing conflict in Syria—will consider legal, political, and other approaches to promote rescue during such calamities.
 
Speaker bio: Zachary D. Kaufman, J.D., Ph.D., is a Lecturer in Law and Fellow at Stanford Law School, a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, and a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he taught at Yale and George Washington universities and held academic appointments at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School. Dr. Kaufman has served in all three branches of the U.S. government, including at the Supreme Court, the Departments of State and Justice, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has also served at three international war crimes tribunals (including the International Criminal Court), practiced law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, and worked at Google. The author or editor of 3 books and over 40 articles and book chapters, Dr. Kaufman received his Ph.D. and M.Phil., both in International Relations, from Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar), his J.D. from Yale Law School (where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review), and his B.A. in Political Science from Yale University (where he was the student body president).
Zachary D. Kaufman Stanford Law School, Hoover Institution, Harvard University
Seminars
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Abstract: Over the past decade, fears about the decline of the United States relative to other countries (especially China) have become a prominent feature of American political discourse. While anxiety about losing power on the world stage has been a recurrent phenomenon in the United States since the 1950s, the present bout of pessimism – combining reactions to the disastrous Iraq War, the 2008 financial crisis, and most recently the rise of Donald Trump – makes this the deepest and most serious crisis of confidence in postwar American history. This project explores the domestic political and strategic consequences of anxiety about lost or eroding national status by combining insights from social theory and social psychology. I use evidence from historical cases of decline (including Spain after 1898, France after 1945 and the United Kingdom after 1945) as well as survey experiments to investigate hypotheses about the heterogenous ways in which different individuals and groups react to relative national decline, and how these responses combine to influence the declining state’s politics and foreign policy. 

Speaker bio: Steven Ward is a Junior Faculty Fellow at CISAC for the year 2017-2018 and an Assistant Professor in the Government Department at Cornell University. He holds an MA in Security Studies and a PhD in Government from Georgetown University. He is the author of Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers (Cambridge University Press, 2017). His work has appeared in Security Studies and International Studies Quarterly.

Seminars
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PLEASE NOTE: EVENT START TIME IS NOW 2:00PM

The Oksenberg Lecture, held annually, honors the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg (1938–2001). A senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Professor Oksenberg served as a key member of the National Security Council when the United States normalized relations with China, and consistently urged that the United States engage with Asia in a more considered manner. In tribute, the Oksenberg Lecture recognizes distinguished individuals who have helped to advance understanding between the United States and the nations of the Asia-Pacific.

 

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zouping sq logo
This year, the Oksenberg Conference will be organized around the publication of Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County that has just been published by Stanford University Press. The rural Chinese county of Zouping was a place and topic very dear to Professor Michel Oksenberg’s heart. In 1984, Professor Oksenberg achieved a milestone--obtaining official access for foreign scholars to do research in a rural site in China—the first after Opening and Reform.  Since its opening, eighty-seven U.S. academics have conducted fieldwork in Zouping, generating waves of serious scholarship, resulting in numerous books and articles.  This new volume includes the extensive research notes of Michel Oksenberg, which he sadly was unable to use before he passed away. These notes were used to complete this volume, supplemented with new research by a number of Oksenberg’s own students and his “academic grandchildren.”  It provides a big and clear window onto the surprising changes that have taken place in China over the last two decades of reform.

The conference will convene a panel of China specialists with deep personal and scholarly connections to Zouping who will provide insights into the unfolding history of doing research and fieldwork in China. The panel will also assess through this rural Shandong county the breathtaking as well as surprising changes China has experienced from the 1980s until the present.


For directions to the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center, please click here.


Agenda

2:00-2:15 PM: Welcome and Introduction
 
2:15-3:35 PM:
Panel I: Doing Fieldwork in China: How We Got There and Its Impact

 
Chair: Prof. Steven Goldstein (Smith College)
 
·         Prof. Mary Brown Bullock (Committee on Scholarly Communication with the PRC)
·         Prof. Thomas Gold (U.C. Berkeley)
·         Prof. Thomas Bernstein (Columbia University)
·         Prof. Andrew Walder (Stanford University)
 
3:35-4:55 PM:
Panel II: A Window onto China:  Understanding Continuity and Change

 
Chair: Prof. Jean Oi (Stanford University)
 
·         Prof. Jean Oi (Stanford University)
·         Dr. Douglas Grob (Albright Stonebridge Group)
·         Prof. Charlotte Lee (Berkeley City College)
 
5:00-5:30 PM:  Book signing and sale of Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County

 

Speakers

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Thomas P. Bernstein taught Chinese politics and comparative communism at Indiana, Yale, and Columbia from 1966 to 2007. After retirement, he moved to Irvine, California with an affiliation at University of California, Irvine. He has published on Chinese and Soviet collectivization of agriculture, the Great Leap Forward famine and its Soviet counterpart, Chinese youth and education, and on reform era rural politics. He did research in Zouping in 1985. Most recently he co-edited (with Hua-yu Li) China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present (2010).

 

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Mary Bullock
Mary Brown Bullock, president emerita of Agnes Scott College,  is an educator and scholar of U.S. – China relations.  She served as the founding executive vice-chancellor of Duke Kunshan University from 2012-2015.  Previous positions include distinguished visiting professor Emory University, director of the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and director of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China. She is vice-chair of the Asia Foundation, a trustee of the Henry Luce Foundation, and a member of the Schwarzman Academic Advisory Committee and the Council on Foreign Relations.  She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese history from Stanford University.  Her most recent publications include The Oil Prince’s Legacy: Rockefeller Philanthropy in China (2011) and as co-editor of Medical Transitions in Twentieth Century China (2014).

 

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Thomas B. Gold is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He also served as Associate Dean of International and Area Studies. From 2000-2016 he was Executive Director of the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies. His research addresses issues of social and political change on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. He was a member of the first group of American government-sponsored exchange students to China, spending February 1979-February 1980 at Fudan University. He spent a month in Fengjiacun/Zouping County in 1986 looking at sprouts of private entrepreneurship.

 

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stephen goldstein
Steven M. Goldstein was the Sophia Smith Professor of Government at Smith College from 1968 to 2016. He is now an Associate of the Fairbank Center and the director of the Taiwan Studies Workshop at Harvard University. He has been a visiting faculty member at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Columbia University and United States Naval War College. Goldstein's research interest has been largely related to issues of Chinese domestic and foreign policy. He has published studies of Sino-American relations; Sino-Soviet relations; and the emergence of a Chinese Communist view of world affairs. His current research focus is on the relations between the mainland and Taiwan as well as the evolution of U.S.-Taiwan relations.

 

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doug grob2
Douglas Grob is a Senior Vice President at Albright Stonebridge Group. He previously served as head of the Asia Section of the Congressional Research Service. Prior to that, he served at the U.S. Department of State as a senior advisor on East Asia to the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights. He also served as Staff Director of the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, established by statute as the United States and China normalized trade relations prior to China’s accession to the WTO. Prior to entering public service, he was on the faculty at the University of Maryland, a senior research scholar at the School of Law of Peking University, and a research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center of Stanford University.

 

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Charlotte Lee
Charlotte Lee is the faculty coordinator of the Global Studies Program at Berkeley City College. Prior to that she was the associate director of the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at Stanford University and was an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Hamilton College. From 2012-14, she was Minerva Chair in the Department of Political Science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. As Minerva Chair, she conducted research and briefings on issues in U.S.-China relations. In 2013, she was a visiting assistant professor at Shorenstein APARC. Her book, Training the Party: Party Adaptation and Elite Training in Reform-Era China, was released by Cambridge University Press in 2015. She has taught classes on Chinese politics, international relations, geopolitics and comparative politics. She holds a doctorate and master’s degree in political science from Stanford where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Her bachelor’s degree is in Asian studies and political economy from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

J Oi headshot 1 Jean C. Oi, director of the Stanford China Program
Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the department of political science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is the founding director of the Stanford China Program at Shorenstein APARC. Professor Oi also is the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Her work focuses on comparative politics, with special expertise on political economy and the process of reform in transitional systems.  Oi has written extensively on China’s political economy. Her most recent works include, Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, with Steven Goldstein (2018); Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization, with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017); Going Private in China: The Politics of Corporate Restructuring and System Reform (2011); and Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China’s Transformation, with Scott Rozelle and Xueguang Zhou (2010).

 

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Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, where he is a member of the Department of Sociology and a Senior Fellow at FSI. He has previously taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He has published widely on political economy, social structure, inequality, social mobility, and political conflict under state socialism and afterwards, with a special emphasis on contemporary China. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, former Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. His most recent books are Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement (2009), and China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed (2015).
 

 

 


Register here to secure your seat.


 

Related links:

China Daily Article on Zouping Research

 

Mackenzie Room

Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Building, 3rd Floor

475 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305

 

Thomas P. Bernstein <i>Professor Emeritus of Government, Columbia University</i><br><br>
Mary Brown Bullock <i>President Emerita, Agnes Scott College</i><br><br>
Thomas B. Gold <i>Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley</i><br><br>
Douglas Grob <i>Senior Vice President, Albright Stonebridge Group</i><br><br>
Steven M. Goldstein <i>Sophia Smith Professor Emeritus of Government, Smith College</i><br><br>
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Associate Director, China Program
Charlotte Lee.jpg PhD

Charlotte Lee was the associate director of the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Prior to that she was an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Hamilton College. From 2012-14, she was Minerva Chair in the Department of Political Science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. As Minerva Chair, she conducted research and briefings on issues in U.S.-China relations. In 2013, she was a visiting assistant professor at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Her research on China has been published in peer-reviewed journals. She recently completed a book manuscript on reforms taking place in the Chinese Communist Party entitled Training the Party: Party Adaptation and Elite Training in Reform-Era China (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press).

She has taught classes on Chinese politics, international relations, geopolitics and comparative politics. She holds a doctorate and master’s degree in political science from Stanford, where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Her bachelor’s degree is in Asian studies and political economy from the University of California, Berkeley.

<i>Faculty Coordinator, Global Studies Program, Berkeley City College</i><br><br>

Department of Political Science
Stanford University
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-26044

(650) 723-2843 (650) 725-9401
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics
jean_oi_headshot.jpg PhD

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the department of political science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She is the founding director of the Stanford China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Professor Oi is also the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.

A PhD in political science from the University of Michigan, Oi first taught at Lehigh University and later in the Department of Government at Harvard University before joining the Stanford faculty in 1997.

Her work focuses on comparative politics, with special expertise on political economy and the process of reform in transitional systems. Oi has written extensively on China's rural politics and political economy. Her State and Peasant in Contemporary China (University of California Press, 1989) examined the core of rural politics in the Mao period—the struggle over the distribution of the grain harvest—and the clientelistic politics that ensued. Her Rural China Takes Off (University of California Press, 1999 and Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 1999) examines the property rights necessary for growth and coined the term “local state corporatism" to describe local-state-led growth that has been the cornerstone of China’s development model. 

She has edited a number of conference volumes on key issues in China’s reforms. The first was Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunity in China's Transformation (Brookings Institution Press, 2010), co-edited with Scott Rozelle and Xueguang Zhou, which examined the earlier phases of reform. Most recently, she co-edited with Thomas Fingar, Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future (Stanford University Press, 2020). The volume examines the difficult choices and tradeoffs that China leaders face after forty years of reform, when the economy has slowed and the population is aging, and with increasing demand for and costs of education, healthcare, elder care, and other social benefits.

Oi also works on the politics of corporate restructuring, with a focus on the incentives and institutional constraints of state actors. She has published three edited volumes related to this topic: one on China, Going Private in China: The Politics of Corporate Restructuring and System Reform (Shorenstein APARC, 2011); one on Korea, co-edited with Byung-Kook Kim and Eun Mee Kim, Adapt, Fragment, Transform: Corporate Restructuring and System Reform in Korea (Shorenstein APARC, 2012); and a third on Japan, Syncretism: The Politics of Economic Restructuring and System Reform in Japan, co-edited with Kenji E. Kushida and Kay Shimizu (Brookings Institution, 2013). Other more recent articles include “Creating Corporate Groups to Strengthen China’s State-Owned Enterprises,” with Zhang Xiaowen, in Kjeld Erik Brodsgard, ed., Globalization and Public Sector Reform in China (Routledge, 2014) and "Unpacking the Patterns of Corporate Restructuring during China's SOE Reform," co-authored with Xiaojun Li, Economic and Political Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2018.

Oi continues her research on rural finance and local governance in China. She has done collaborative work with scholars in China, including conducting fieldwork on the organization of rural communities, the provision of public goods, and the fiscal pressures of rapid urbanization. This research is brought together in a co-edited volume, Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization (Brookings Institution Shorenstein APARC Series, 2017), with Karen Eggleston and Wang Yiming. Included in this volume is her “Institutional Challenges in Providing Affordable Housing in the People’s Republic of China,” with Niny Khor. 

As a member of the research team who began studying in the late 1980s one county in China, Oi with Steven Goldstein provides a window on China’s dramatic change over the decades in Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County (Stanford University Press, 2018). This volume assesses the later phases of reform and asks how this rural county has been able to manage governance with seemingly unchanged political institutions when the economy and society have transformed beyond recognition. The findings reveal a process of adaptive governance and institutional agility in the way that institutions actually operate, even as their outward appearances remain seemingly unchanged.

Selected Multimedia

Director of the China Program
Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Date Label
<i>Director, Stanford China Program; William Haas Professor of Chinese Studies, Stanford University</i><br><br>

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-4560 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor
walder_2019_2.jpg PhD

Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor at Stanford University, where he is also a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and Head of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Walder has long specialized in the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His publications on Mao-era China have ranged from the social and economic organization of that early period to the popular political mobilization of the late 1960s and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state. His publications on post-Mao China have focused on the evolving pattern of stratification, social mobility, and inequality, with an emphasis on variation in the trajectories of post-state socialist systems. His current research is on the growth and evolution of China’s large modern corporations, both state and private, after the shift away from the Soviet-inspired command economy.

Walder joined the Stanford faculty in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1981 and taught at Columbia University before moving to Harvard in 1987. From 1995 to 1997, he headed the Division of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Walder has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His books and articles have won awards from the American Sociological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, and the Social Science History Association. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His recent and forthcoming books include  Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement  (Harvard University Press, 2009);  China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed  (Harvard University Press, 2015);  Agents of Disorder: Inside China’s Cultural Revolution  (Harvard University Press, 2019); and  A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Feng County  (Princeton University Press, 2021) (with Dong Guoqiang); and Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China’s Southern Periphery (Stanford University Press, 2023).  

His recent articles include “After State Socialism: Political Origins of Transitional Recessions.” American Sociological Review  80, 2 (April 2015) (with Andrew Isaacson and Qinglian Lu); “The Dynamics of Collapse in an Authoritarian Regime: China in 1967.”  American Journal of Sociology  122, 4 (January 2017) (with Qinglian Lu); “The Impact of Class Labels on Life Chances in China,”  American Journal of Sociology  124, 4 (January 2019) (with Donald J. Treiman); and “Generating a Violent Insurgency: China’s Factional Warfare of 1967-1968.” American Journal of Sociology 126, 1 (July 2020) (with James Chu).

Director Emeritus of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Director Emeritus of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University, July to November of 2013
Graduate Seminar Instructor at the Stanford Center at Peking University, August to September of 2017
<i>Denise O’Leary & Kent Thiry Professor, Stanford University</i><br><br>
Lectures
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Over the last dozen years, Taiwan’s democracy has deepened in important ways. Executive power has rotated twice, from the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian to the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou in 2008, and from Ma to the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen in 2016. The majority in the legislature also changed for the first time in 2016, from the KMT to the DPP. Taiwan’s most recent overall Freedom House ranking is 93/100, significantly higher than the United States. Its freedom of the press ranking is the highest in all of Asia, ahead of Korea and even Japan, and its rule of law and anti-corruption scores are trending in a positive direction as well.

To be sure, serious concerns remain about the practice of democracy in Taiwan, including a poorly institutionalized and often chaotic lawmaking process, incomplete legislative oversight of executive branch actions, and a partisan and increasingly fragmented media environment. Nevertheless, the greatest threat to Taiwan’s continued place among the world’s liberal democracies now appears to be external, not internal. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has always posed an existential threat to Taiwan, but its growing economic influence, rapid military modernization, assertive territorial claims in the region, and aggressive global efforts to isolate Taiwan have accelerated in recent years. Put simply, Taiwan’s long-term future as a democracy is imperiled by China’s rise.

The PRC’s growing power presents difficult security challenges for most of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, not just for Taiwan. But these challenges are rarely considered from a multi-lateral perspective—most analyses of regional security issues instead tend to focus on bilateral or trilateral (US-China-Country X) relationships. This pattern is particularly common in discussions of Taiwan’s security, where the dominant focus is on Cross-Strait and US-Taiwan relations to the neglect of Taiwan’s other relationships in the region.

The goals of this workshop, then, are to place Taiwan’s security challenges in a broader, regional context, to consider possible obstacles to and opportunities for greater regional cooperation on security issues, and to devise a set of recommendations for Taiwan and its partners and allies. Workshop participants will include experts on a wide array of economic, diplomatic, and security topics from Taiwan, the United States, and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region.


Remarks are Off-the-Record.  Recording, reporting and citation of remarks is strictly prohibited.

AGENDA

Monday, March 5 - Koret-Taube Conference Center, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building

9:00-9:30am CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

9:30-9:45am OPENING REMARKS
Larry Diamond, Senior Research Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Karl Eikenberry, Director, U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, Asia-Pacific Research Center

9:45am – 11:30am: PANEL I.
Assessment of US Alliances and the Political and Military Situation in the Western Pacific
Chair: Tom Fingar (APARC, Stanford)
• Overview of Military Trends and US Strategy in Region. Karl Eikenberry (APARC, Stanford)
• US-Taiwan Relations. Robert Wang (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
• US-Japan Relations. TJ Pempel (UC Berkeley)
• US-Korea Relations. Kathy Stephens (APARC, Stanford)

11:30am-1:00pm LUNCH
Keynote Speaker: Robert Sutter (George Washington University) - "Will Trump administration advance support for Taiwan despite China's objections?"

1:15pm-3:00pm: PANEL II.
Trade and Economic Relations in the Western Pacific
Chair: Phillip Lipscy (APARC, Stanford)
• Regional Trade Agreements after TPP: RCEP vs TPP-11. Barbara Weisel (former Assistant US Trade Representative for SE Asia and the Pacific)
• China’s Institution-Building: OBOR, Maritime Silk Road, AIIB. Amy Searight (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
• Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy. Russell Hsiao (Global Taiwan Institute)

3:15-5:00pm: PANEL III.
Maritime Security Issues: The South and East China Seas
Chair: Karl Eikenberry (APARC, Stanford)
• Interpreting Chinese Maritime Strategy in the South China Sea, Don Emmerson (APARC, Stanford)
• China’s Maritime Militia. Andrew Erickson (Naval War College)
• Evolution of US Policy: FONOPS and Beyond. Dale Rielage (Captain, US Navy)
• Taiwan’s Role in Maritime Security Issues. Yeong-Kang Chen, (Admiral (Ret.), ROC Navy)


Tuesday, March 6 - McCaw Hall, Stanford Alumni Center

9:00-9:30am CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

9:30-11:15am: PANEL IV.
Taiwan’s Key Asian Relations
Chair: Kharis Templeman (APARC, Stanford)
• A Taiwanese Perspective on Asian Relations. Lai I-chung (Prospect Foundation)
• NE Asia, Yeh-chung Lu (National Chengchi University)
• SE Asia, Jiann-fa Yan (Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology)

11:30-1:15pm: PANEL V.
Cross-Strait Relations
Chair: Larry Diamond
• The Domestic Politics of Security in Taiwan. Kharis Templeman (APARC, Stanford)
• Beijing’s Taiwan Policy after the 19th Party Congress. Alice Miller (Hoover Institution)
• US Role in the Trilateral Relationship. Raymond Burghardt (former chairman, American Institute in Taiwan)

1:15am-2:15pm LUNCH

March 5: Koret-Taube Conference Center, Gunn–SIEPR Building, 366 Galvez Street, Stanford, CA 94305

March 6: McCaw Hall, Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center, 326 Galvez St, Stanford, CA 94305

Conferences
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keunlee 2012
Keun Lee, winner of the 2014 Schumpeter Prize and a professor of economics at Seoul National University, will explore the Schumpeterian hypothesis that the effectiveness of the national innovation system (NIS) of a country determines its long term economic performance, using the case of South Korea as an example. Professor Lee will present an overview of South Korea’s NIS during the “catch-up” and “post-catch-up” stages; and will compare the Korean case with the NIS of European economies to derive comparative lessons. He will also address specific innovation issues in Korea, such as commercializing knowledge in the public sector.

Professor Lee authored Economic Catch-up and Technological Leapfrogging: Path to Development & Macroeconomic Stability in Korea (2016, E Elgar); and Schumpeterian analysis of Economic catch-up (Cambridge University Press, 2013: awarded Schumpeter Prize). He is currently president of the International Schumpeter Society, a member of the Committee for Development Policy of the UN, an editor of Research Policy, an associate editor of Industrial and Corporate Change, and a council member of the World Economic Forum. He obtained a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked at the World Bank, University of Aberdeen, and the East West Center, Hawaii. One of his most cited articles is a paper on Korea’s Technological Catch-up published in Research Policy, with 1,000 citations (Google Scholar). His H-index is now 35, with 85 papers with more than 10 citations.

Keun Lee <i>Professor of Economics, Seoul National University</i>
Seminars
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the policy and trends in rural education in China over the past 40 years; and also discuss a number of challenges that are faced by China’s rural school system.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors use secondary data on policies and trends over the past 40 years for preschool, primary/junior high school, and high school.

Findings – The trends over the past 40 years in all areas of rural schooling have been continually upward and strong. While only a low share of rural children attended preschool in the 1980s, by 2014 more than 90 percent of rural children were attending. The biggest achievement in compulsory education is that the rise in the number of primary students that finish grade 6 and matriculate to junior high school. There also was a steep rise of those going to and completing high school. While the successes in upscaling rural education are absolutely unprecedented, there are still challenges.

Research limitations/implications – This is descriptive analysis and there is not causal link established between policies and rural schooling outcomes.

Practical implications – The authors illustrate one of the most rapid rises of rural education in history and match the achievements up with the policy efforts of the government. The authors also explore policy priorities that will be needed in the coming years to raise the quality of schooling.

Originality/value – This is the first paper that documents both the policies and the empirical trends of the success that China has created in building rural education from preschool to high school during the first 40 years of reform (1978-2018). The paper also documents – drawing on the literature and the own research – the achievements and challenges that China still face in the coming years, including issues of gender, urbanization, early childhood education and health and nutrition of students.

Keywords Trends, China, Achievements, Policies, Rural education, Shortcomings

All Publications button
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Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
China Agricultural Economic Review
Authors
Alexis Medina
Scott Rozelle
Number
1
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While much of the existing literature examines vote buying in the context of party systems, including both competitive and hegemonic party systems, this talk, based on a study coauthored by Professor Susan Whiting, addresses vote buying in a context in which no political party effectively structures electoral competition—village elections in China. This study argues that the lure of non-competitive rents explains variation over time and space in the phenomenon of vote buying. It tests this hypothesis, derived from an in-depth case study, in a separate sample of 1200 households in 62 villages in five provinces, using villagers’ reports of vote buying in elections and survey data on land takings as an indicator of available rents. While the literature views the introduction of elections as increasing accountability of village leaders to voters, vote buying likely undermines accountability. This study suggests that the regime has tolerated vote buying as a means of identifying and coopting influential economic elites in rural communities.


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susan whiting
Susan Whiting is Associate Professor of Political Science and Adjunct Associate Professor of Law and International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.  She specializes in Chinese and comparative politics, with particular emphasis on the political economy of development.  Her first book, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2001.  She has contributed chapters and articles on property rights, fiscal reform, governance, contract enforcement and dispute resolution to numerous publications. She has done extensive research in China and has contributed to studies of governance, fiscal reform, and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Ford Foundation, respectively.  She, along with colleagues in the law school, is participating in a project on access to justice and legal aid provision in rural China.  Professor Whiting’s current research interests include property rights in land, the role of the courts in economic transition, as well as the politics of fiscal reform in transition economies. Among her courses, she teaches Comparative Politics, Chinese Politics, Qualitative Research Methods, and Law, Development, & Transition, a course offered jointly in the Department of Political Science, the Jackson School of International Studies, and the Law, Societies and Justice Program.


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China Toolkit
This event is part of the 2018 Winter Colloquia; An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.

Susan Whiting <i>Associate Professor of Political Science, Adjunct Associate Professor of Law and International Studies, University of Washington</i>
Lectures
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