In addition to the regular speaker series and other co-sponsored events, CSCC convenes an informal “Weekly Forum,” noon on weekdays in the CSCC conference room. These sessions are envisioned as “brown-bag lunches” at which graduate students or faculty can informally introduce or present work in progress. This will be a great way for all of us to get to know one another and learn more about the kinds of work on contemporary China being done across Penn’s campus. Please email us your thoughts and suggestions on how to best organize the Friday Forum and to let us know when you would like to volunteer to discuss some of your work. Even on days when no discussion is scheduled, people are welcome to bring their lunch to eat with others in the CSCC conference room.
Past Weekly Forums
Participatory Autocracy: Private Entrepreneurs, Legislatures, and Property Protection in China
Yue Hou, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
Why do individuals in authoritarian systems seek office in formal political institutions such as legislatures, which are often dismissed as weak and ineffective in interest representation? I argue that Chinese…
Ruling Before the Law: The Politics of Legal Regimes in China and Indonesia
William Hurst, Associate Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University
"Ruling Before the Law" begins by arguing that in order to understand the politics of legal institutions in authoritarian, socialist, and post-colonial contexts, we must abandon teleological frameworks such as the…
Departing from the Beaten Path: International Education as Response to Barriers, Stress and Risk in the Chinese Educational System
Natalie Young, Ph.D. Student, Department of Sociology
China represents an extreme case of larger trends in the internationalization of education. In recent years, this has included the emergence of international schools for Chinese nationals in…
Who Believes The People's Daily? Bias and Credibility in Authoritarian Media.
Rory Truex, Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
How do citizens living in authoritarian contexts perceive and process state-controlled news? Building on existing research on media bias in the U.S. context, this paper uses a unique survey experiment of…
Unpacking China's New Court Reform Plan
Moderator: Jacques deLisle, Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law & Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania; Speaker: Susan Finder, Visiting Fellow, Center for Chinese Law, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law; Commentator: Neysun Mahboubi, Research Scholar, Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania
The Supreme People's Court of China has recently publicized its new Five Year Reform Plan, outlining various steps for improving the "independence of judicial power", even while categorically rejecting "Western…
The Internalization of Institutional Constraints: Barriers to Inter-organizational Collaboration among Chinese NGOs
Ran Liu, Ph.D. Student, Department of Sociology
Based on in-depth interviews and observational data from NGO practitioners in China, this study examines the practice of inter-organizational collaboration and the impact of…
Chinese Social Welfare in Demand-Side Perspectives: Redistributive Preferences and Policy Effect on Public Support of Government
Xian Huang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
In order to understand the social foundations of the Chinese government’s expansive welfare policy in the past decade and the effectiveness of that strategy on regime support and stability in China, I developed two…
Racing to the bottom and to the top: divergent environmental governance strategies in China's cities
Peter Lorentzen, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley
China’s fiscal decentralization has been praised as an important driver of its economic growth. Inter-jurisdictional competition has arguably incentivized officials to promote economic development. However,…
Sovereignty Costs and China’s Socialization into International Society: Evidence from China’s Approach to Hard Law
Jing Tao, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program (CWP) Commentator, William W. Burke-White, Richard Perry Professor of Law , Inaugural Director, Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania
This study uses three types of hard law with mandatory dispute settlement mechanism, i.e. bilateral investment treaties (BITs), the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and the Rome Statute of…
(CANCELLED) A New Stage of Social Science Data Collection in China
Professor Weidong Wang, Department of Sociology, Renmin University, China
In recent years, the arising of academic survey data has brought the social-economic fundamental data collection in China into a new stage. Around 2010, several Chinese Universities respectively started their…