Using 'big data' computational techniques to scrutinize cases covering 2009–2016 from all 252 basic-level courts in two Chinese provinces, Henan and Zhejiang, Ethan Michelson reveals that women have borne the brunt of a dramatic intensification since the mid-2000s of a decades-long practice of denying divorce requests. This talk discusses key findings from his new book of the same name. Michelson's analysis of almost 150,000 divorce trials reveals routine and egregious violations of China's own laws upholding the freedom of divorce, gender equality, and the protection of women's physical security. Michelson takes the reader upstream to the institutional sources of China's clampdown on divorce and downstream to its devastating and highly gendered human toll, showing how judges in an overburdened court system clear their oppressive dockets at the expense of women's lawful rights and interests.

Ethan Michelson is the James and Noriko Gines Department Chair in East Asian Languages and Cultures as well as Professor of Sociology and Law at Indiana University Bloomington, where he has been teaching courses on law and society, law and authoritarianism, and contemporary Chinese society since 2003. He has won several awards for his published research on China’s legal system.

Air pollution is a silent and invisible killer more lethal than violence, diseases, and smoking.  More than 95 percent of the global population lives in areas with unhealthy air by WHO standards.  Moreover, long-term exposure to polluted air can increase the probability of succumbing to COVID-19.  

Scientific solutions to contain air pollution are available, but limited progress has been made in implementing them.  Temporally, there has been an uneven success in reducing pollution even in the same locality over time, as exemplified by the exercise of political power to change the color of the sky leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics (aka Olympic Blue).  

In this talk, Professor Shen will discuss her new book, The Political Regulation Wave: A Case of How Local Incentives Systematically Shape Air Quality in China (Cambridge University Press, 2022).  Departing from extant works, which focus on air data manipulation or the effect of campaigns, the book asks, what explains the systematic temporal variation in actual and reported air quality after controlling for top-down implementation campaigns?  Making use of new data, approaches, and techniques from across social and environmental sciences, the book shows that local leaders ordered different levels of regulation over time based on what their political superiors desired, leading to the titular “waves” of regulation and pollution.  However, the effectiveness of their regulatory efforts depends on the level of ambiguity in controlling a particular pollutant.  When ambiguity dilutes regulatory effectiveness, having the right incentives and enhanced monitoring is insufficient for successful policy implementation.

You can read and download her book in pdf format here.

Shiran Victoria Shen forged her own path at Stanford University by simultaneously completing a Ph.D. in political science and an MS in civil and environmental engineering in five years after graduating Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and with high honors from Swarthmore College. Her research explores the intersections of political science, public policy, environmental sciences, and engineering, with a particular understanding of how local politics influence environmental governance. Her first book, The Political Regulation Wave: A Case of How Local Incentives Systematically Shape Air Quality in China, was published by Cambridge University Press in March 2022.  In dissertation form, it was the recipient of two major association awards, the American Political Science Association’s Harold D. Lasswell Award and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s Ph.D. Dissertation Award. Earlier versions of its parts received the American Political Science Association’s Paul A. Sabatier Award for the best paper in science, technology & environmental politics and the Southern Political Science Association’s Malcolm Jewell Award for the best overall graduate student paper.

You can learn more about her work at http://svshen.com and follow her on Twitter @SVictoriaShen.

Erin A. Snider joins ARD to discuss her recently released book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

For nearly two decades, the United States devoted more than $2 billion towards democracy promotion in the Middle East with seemingly little impact. To understand the limited impact of this aid and the decision of authoritarian regimes to allow democracy programs whose ultimate aim is to challenge the power of such regimes, Marketing Democracy examines the construction and practice of democracy aid in Washington DC and in Egypt and Morocco, two of the highest recipients of US democracy aid in the region.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork, novel new data on the professional histories of democracy promoters, archival research and recently declassified government documents, Erin A. Snider focuses on the voices and practices of those engaged in democracy work over the last three decades to offer a new framework for understanding the political economy of democracy aid. Her research shows how democracy aid can work to strengthen rather than challenge authoritarian regimes. Marketing Democracy fundamentally challenges scholars to rethink how we study democracy aid and how the ideas of democracy that underlie democracy programs come to reflect the views of donors and recipient regimes rather than indigenous demand. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER 

Erin A. Snider is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. Her research and teaching focus on the political economy of aid, democracy, and development in the Middle East. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, a Fulbright scholar in Egypt, a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and a Carnegie Fellow with the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. Her first book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid in the Middle East was published with Cambridge University Press. Other research has been published in International Studies Quarterly, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Middle East Policy, among other outlets. She holds a PhD in politics from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Center for African Studies at Stanford University.​

China Chats with Stanford Faculty 

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Friday, May 13, 2022          6 - 7 PM Pacific Time 
Saturday, May 14, 2022    9 - 10 AM Beijing Time

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From Education to World Development

Ensuring that every child in the world achieves basic skills is a key development goal emphasized in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. But how far is the world away from reaching this goal? And what would achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 mean for world development?  This talk will outline the development of an achievement data base for all of the countries of the world along with estimation of the economic gains from educational improvement. 

This Stanford alumni event will feature Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He will be joined by Scott Rozelle, 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, who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the research. A question and answer session with the audience will follow the discussion.

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About the Speakers
 

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues, and he was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021. His widely-cited research spans many policy-related education topics including the economic value of teacher quality, the finance of schools, and the role of education in economic growth. His latest book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth, identifies the close link between the skills of the people and the economic growth of the nation. He has authored or edited 24 books along with over 250 articles. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
 

 

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.

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Questions? Contact Debbie Aube at debbie.aube@stanford.edu

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Watch the recording: 

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
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Once considered incapable of innovation, China’s contribution to technological advancement has become impossible to ignore as it continues its historic rise. Now home to such tech giants as Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei, China is competing in the global market. But what does this technological success mean in the context of China's internal and international politics, particularly its tense relationship with the United States? Will efforts to decouple help or hinder progress in tech? Can China’s educational system produce the next generation of innovators and propel them to the forefront of technology? What effects, if any, is the recent tightening on tech giants having on the sector at large? In this program, experts Denis Simon, Senior Adviser to the President for China Affairs at Duke, and Dan Wang, technology analyst for Gavekal Dragonomics, will be discussing the status and consequences of decoupling for the US and China and their technological sectors.  

 

Denis Fred Simon is Senior Adviser to the President for China Affairs at Duke and Professor of China Business and Technology at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.  He also serves as Executive Director of the Center for Innovation Policy at Duke.  Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Simon has more than four decades of experience studying business, competition, innovation and technology strategy in China. In 2006, he was awarded the China National Friendship Award by Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing.  Prior to returning to Duke, Dr. Simon served as Executive Vice Chancellor at Duke Kunshan University in China (2015-2020).  Simon’s career included spells as senior adviser on China and global affairs in the Office of the President at Arizona State University; vice-provost for international affairs at the University of Oregon; and professor of international affairs at Penn State University’s School of International Affairs. He also has had extensive leadership experience in management consulting having served as General Manager of Andersen Consulting in Beijing (now Accenture) and the Founding President of Monitor Group China.

Simon is the author of several books including Corporate Strategies Towards the Pacific Rim; Techno-Security in an Age of Globalization; and China’s Emerging Technological Edge: Assessing the Role of High-End Talent.

 

Dan Wang is the Shanghai-based technology analyst for Gavekal Dragonomics, the China economics research firm. He tracks the prospects for China's industrial policy, US regulatory measures and the activities of multinationals in China. He has given keynotes for a variety of organizations and his work is widely cited in the press. Dan previously worked in Silicon Valley and studied philosophy at the University of Rochester. Dan's essays have been published in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and he is a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion

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

 

 

This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.

 

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.

 

Policies implemented by the CCP in Xinjiang since c. 2016 have become a central issue in PRC international relations, leading to international determinations that those policies constitute genocide; scrutiny of global supply chains for Xinjiang cotton, textiles and polysilicon; US sanctions on companies and individuals and Congressional inquiries directed at Airbnb and other multinationals operating in Xinjiang; and diplomatic boycotts of the Olympics. The assimilationist policies, if most extreme in Xinjiang, are related to the broader Zhonghua-izing campaign against religion and non-Mandarin language and perhaps even to intensified control over Hong Kong and efforts to intimidate Taiwan—an aggressive intolerance of cultural and political diversity that is emerging as a central feature of Xi Jinping’s tenure. This talk will review the Xinjiang crisis to date and suggest how we should understand these events and trends.

James Millward is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, teaching Chinese, Central Asian and world history. He joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as visiting scholar with the China Program for the 2022 winter quarter. He is also an affiliated professor in the Máster Oficial en Estudios de Asia Oriental at the University of Granada, Spain. His specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments on current issues regarding the Uyghurs and PRC ethnicity policy. Millward has served on the boards of the Association for Asian Studies (China and Inner Asia Council) and the Central Eurasian Studies Society, and was president of the Central Eurasian Studies Society in 2010. He edits the ''Silk Roads'' series for University of Chicago Press. His publications include The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013), Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (2007), New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004), and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998). His articles and op-eds on contemporary China appear in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and other media.  

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.

 

China’s rapidly growing local government debt problem has long been recognized by foreign observers as a risk, but inside China, only recently was this problem called out as alarming.  Why has local government debt been allowed to grow with little direct intervention from central authorities?  Based on a forthcoming paper, Oi will show how a “grand bargain” the central authorities entered into with the localities allowed Beijing to take the lion’s share of tax revenues after 1994, but also allowed localities to gain new resources and power as a quid pro quo.  While the bargain provided an expedient and seemingly successful strategy that worked for more than a decade to fuel rapid local state-led growth, it had significant costs that are now becoming increasingly visible.  Because land finance was the core means by which localities raised revenue, Oi also will help explain why the problems with property developers like Evergrande are so important to China’s future economy.   

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Professor Oi has published extensively on China’s reforms. Recent books include Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Thomas Fingar (Stanford University Press, 2020); Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, co-edited with Steven Goldstein (Stanford University Press, 2018); and Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization, co-edited with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017). Current research is on fiscal reform and local government debt, continuing SOE reforms, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

 

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This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.

 

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.

 

In China, market institutions are still being developed and private owned enterprises need help to overcome obstacles arising from the imperfection of market institutions. Such help can come from various levels of the government or state-owned enterprises. It is believed that such help is more likely if a major shareholder of the private enterprise has formed a joint venture with a state shareholder, either directly or indirectly. In this talk, Bai Chong-en will discuss ownership connections among state and private investors (ultimate shareholders) and their changes overtime. He will also examine the relationship between the degree of such connection and some important characteristics of the investors. His model suggests that such connections have played an important role in the growth of the private sector. 

BAI Chong-En is the Mansfield Freeman Chair Professor and dean of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University. He is also the director of both the National Institute for Fiscal Studies of Tsinghua University and the Institute for State-Owned Enterprises of Tsinghua University. He earned his PhD degree in economics from Harvard University. His research areas include institutional economics, economic growth and development, public economics, finance, corporate governance, and Chinese economy.

BAI is a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the “14th Five-Year Plan” National Development Planning Expert Committee, the Chinese Economists 50 Forum, the China Finance 40 Forum, and Chinainfo 100. He was a member of the monetary policy committee of the People’s Bank of China from 2015 to 2018. He served as Adjunct Vice-President of Beijing State-Owned Assets Management Co., Ltd. from August 2011 to December 2012. He was a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution from 2006 to 2007.

 

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This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.

 

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.

 

At the end of 2021 China Evergrande Group—one of China’s biggest property developers—finally defaulted on its bonds. The default didn’t spark a Lehman Moment—as widely prophesied—or any significant market upheaval, but it’s increasingly clear that Evergrande’s problems mark the start of a momentous shift in how China’s economy grows. Over the past 18 months, Beijing has induced a slowdown of the property sector with the goal of better ensuring financial sector stability and the sustainability of property sector growth. However, it has resulted in defaults, restructuring, and consolidation among China’s largest developers, and has implication for local government finance and the pace of economic growth. This talk will discuss the challenges posed by Evergrande’s decline and imminent restructuring, what Beijing is trying to achieve by reining in the property sector, and what risks are involved.

 

Dinny McMahon is the author of “China's Great Wall of Debt: Shadow Banks, Ghost Cities, Massive Loans, and the End of the Chinese Miracle,” a ground up look at the mechanics of China’s political economy, which he wrote while a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. He later moved to MacroPolo, the Paulson Institute’s think tank in Chicago, where he researched China’s efforts to clean up its financial system. Dinny started his career as a financial journalist in China, spending six years in Beijing with The Wall Street Journal, and four years with Dow Jones Newswires in Shanghai, where he also contributed to the Far Eastern Economic Review. Dinny is currently working on a project for the Wilson Center on China’s efforts to reduce its reliance on the US dollar. He also provides independent research on China’s financial system for financial services firms.

 

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This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.