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.
Upcoming Weekly Forums
The Logic of Technology Transfer Policy in Rising China
John Minnich, Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program, Columbia University
Past Weekly Forums
Making Ownership Matter: Prospects for China's Mixed-Ownership Economy
Marshall W. Meyer, Tsai Wan-Tsai Professor, Professor of Management and Sociology, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
At the Third Plenum of the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee in November 2013, China’s leaders strongly endorsed the concept of a mixed ownership economy, which the Plenum’s sixty point Decision…
Why is My Milk Blue? China’s Food Safety Crisis and Scale Politics
John Yasuda, Post-doctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
Why is China’s food safety system failing? Rather than explanations based on the country’s level of economic development, corruption, and state capacity, I argue that China’s food safety failures result from its…
Four Worlds of Welfare in China: The Politics and Policy of Chinese Social Health Insurance
Xian Huang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
Contrary to the dominant view in the literature, which suggests that welfare state is a feature of democracies, social welfare has undergone a dramatic expansion over the past decade without significant political…
China and Japan: where to go from here?
Ren Xiao, Professor of International Politics, Fudan University
The territorial dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands between China and Japan has once again emerged as a prominent issue that disrupts regional security in East Asia. Episodes like China’s People’s Liberation…
Politically Connected Polluters Under Smog
Yuhua Wang, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
I conducted an event study of an exogenous pollution shock–smog in the winter of 2013–to examine how the market values of firms in polluting industries and environmental protecting industries, respectively,…
Introduction to the People's Liberation Army
Ken Allen, Senior China Analyst, Defense Group Inc.
The one-hour briefing provides an overview of the People's Liberation Army's history, doctrine, organizational structure, personnel issues, foreign affairs, and levels of conflict.
Ken Allen…
Corruption in the Procurement of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Equipment in China:
Are Multinationals Especially Vulnerable?
Susan Rose-Ackerman, Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence (Law and Political Science), Yale University
Calls for reform of the Chinese healthcare system are voiced at the highest levels, and reform efforts are ongoing and fast changing. Healthcare is an essential service provided by professionals to poorly informed…
Can China Resolve its Labor Question by Improving Labor Standards?
The Regulatory Response to Labor Unrest
Cynthia Estlund, Catherine A. Rein Professor of Law, New York University School of Law
China's initial and preferred strategy for abating labor unrest was to legislate labor standards and improve access to judicial and arbitral enforcement of individual rights claims under the law. …
Why Food Safety Fails in China: The Politics of Scale
John Yasada, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary ChinaCommentator: Song Hualin, Professor, Nankai University Law School; Visiting Scholar, Yale China Law Center
This article examines China’s food safety failures to cast light on how scale has deeply affected its regulatory politics. Contrary to studies that highlight China’s food safety challenges primarily resulting…
From the Great Wall to Many City Walls: China's hukou system and its reform
Professor Fei-Ling Wang, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology
Created in the 1950s, the hukou (户口 household registration) system has been a foundational…