Weekly Forums
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
Past Weekly Forums
Shields of the Republic: The Triumph and Peril of America’s Alliances
Mira Rapp-Hooper, Steven Schwarzman Senior Fellow for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
(If you are interested in joining the virtual book talk and have not received a link via one of our email lists, please email cscc-contact@sas.upenn.edu to request a…
CSCC Future of U.S.-China Relations Project: Can China Save Globalization?
CSCC Future of U.S.-China Relations Project
Susan Thornton, Yale Law School China Center
(If you are interested in joining the virtual book talk and have not received a link via one of our email lists, please email cscc-contact@sas.upenn.edu to request a…
CSCC Future of U.S.-China Relations Project: How Far Will US-China Technology Decoupling Go in the Post-Pandemic Era?
Paul Triolo, Practice Head of Geotechnology, Eurasia Group
(If you are interested in joining the virtual talk and have not received a link via one of our email lists, please email cscc-contact@sas.upenn.edu to request a link…
CSCC Future of U.S.-China Relations Project: Human Rights in China’s COVID Crisis
Sophie Richardson, China Director, Human Rights Watch
(If you are interested in joining the virtual talk and have not received a link via one of our email lists, please email cscc-contact@sas.upenn.edu to request a link…
CSCC Future of U.S.-China Relations Project: China and its Neighbors: How Can the US Compete in an Integrating Asia?
Evan Feigenbaum, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(If you are interested in joining the virtual talk and have not received a link via one of our email lists, please email cscc-contact@sas.upenn.edu to request a link…
CSCC Future of U.S.-China Relations Project: Economic Sources of US-China Rivalry
Arthur Kroeber, Founding Partner & Head of Research, Gavekal Dragonomics
(If you are interested in joining the virtual talk and have not received a link via one of our email lists, please email cscc-contact@sas.upenn.edu to request a link…
More Lawyers, Better Case Outcomes? Evidence from the "Lawyers for All"
Yuhao Wu, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Criminology, UPenn
Providing indigent defendants with publicly financed lawyers is a worldwide practice. China developed a “lawyers for all” program to expand the provision of legal counsel to indigent defendants. Guangdong is among…
The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage
Mara Hvistendahl, Investigative Journalist
(If you are interested in joining the virtual book talk and have not received a link via one of our email lists, please email cscc-contact@sas.upenn.edu to request a…
The Myth of Chinese Capitalism: The Worker, the Factory, and the Future of the World
Dexter Roberts, Reporter and U.S.-China Political, Economics and Business Relations Specialist
(If you are interested in joining the virtual book talk and have not received a link via one of our email lists, please email cscc-contact@sas.upenn.edu to request a…
The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journey with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China
Frank Langfitt, NPR London Correspondent
(If you…
(Cancelled) Globalization of China’s Social Media Apps: The Cases of WeChat and TikTok
Eric Harwit, Professor of Asian Studies, University of Hawaii
The Chinese social media mobile apps WeChat and TikTok each have global subscriber numbers of one billion or more. However, the vast…
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Power Projects: Insights into Environmental and Debt Sustainability
Erica Downs, Senior Research Scholar, Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University
Why are China and Pakistan building so many coal-fired power plants as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (…
From Partner to Bully: Shifting Employment Conditions in Walmart, China
Eileen Otis, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon
Eileen Otis is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. She is the author of the…
Performing Artivism: Feminists, Lawyers, and Online Legal Mobilization in China
Sida Liu, Associate Professor of Sociology and Law, University of Toronto
In authoritarian contexts where the state is the primary performer in the public sphere and legal mobilization is constrained…
Spatial Control and State Power in Disaster-stricken Cities: The Case of the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in China
Huan Gao, CSCC Postdoctoral Fellow
How does the shape of our cities influence our political behavior and relations? This question is particularly important…
Symbolic Power and Subnational Identity in China and the USA
Jonathan Hassid, Associate Professor of Political Science, Iowa State University
Although studies of national patriotism are common, few scholars have examined how subnational (state, province,…
30 Years After: A Retrospection on the Spatial Evolution of a Super Mega-City, Shanghai.
Tong Ming, Professor of Architecture & Urban Planning, Tongji University
As an exceptional city in China, Shanghai has been experiencing continuous changes throughout its 180 years of developing…
China, Hong Kong and Taiwan: Reflections on a Reporting Trip
Trudy Rubin, Worldview Columnist, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Please join Trudy Rubin for a discussion on her recent reporting trip to China.
Trudy Rubin, Worldview columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, has been awarded the Flora Lewis award for commentary…
Discussion with Nathan Law
Nathan Law, Hong Kong democracy activist
Countering Capture: Elite Networks and Government Responsiveness in China's Land Market Reform
Junyan Jiang, Assistant Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Government responsiveness is often viewed as a result of political pressure from the public, but why do politicians facing…
Avoiding A Thucydides Trap in Sino-American Relations (…and Eight Reasons Why That Might Be Difficult)
Gregory Moore, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China
In 2015 Harvard’s Graham Allison wrote an evocative article discussing the “…
Lies to Friends, Truths to Strangers: Preference Falsification 2.0 in Authoritarian China
Haohan Chen, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
With new communication technologies, citizens in authoritarian regimes perform a new type of preference falsification in political talk: lying to friends and telling the truth to strangers. Extending the classic…
The Crisis in US-China Relations: The View from Washington, DC
Jeff Prescott, Senior Fellow, Penn Biden Center
Jeffrey Prescott is a senior fellow of the Penn Biden Center. He served as Vice President Biden's Deputy National Security Advisor and senior Asia advisor, and as Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior…
China's Pragmatic Soft Power in Africa: The Case of Confucius Institutes
Maria Repnikova, Assistant Professor of Global Communication, Georgia State University
Maria Repnikova is the Director of the Center for Global Information Studies and an Assistant Professor in Global Communication at Georgia State University. She is a scholar of…
The United States vs. China: Reporting on a New Era of Great Power Competition
Edward Wong, Diplomatic Correspondent, New York Times
Edward Wong is a diplomatic and international correspondent for The New York Times who reports on foreign policy from Washington, D.C. He has spent most of his 20-year career with the Times abroad, reporting for 13…
Elite Kinship Network and State Strengthening: Theory and Evidence from Imperial China
Yuhua Wang, Associate Professor of Government, Harvard University
Existing theories of state strengthening focus on macro-level factors and assume away individual-level differences among politicians. But state strengthening has distributive consequences that impose more costs on…
Landscape for Urban Growth: Suzhou Industrial Park as Case Study of China's Urbanization Movement
Zhongjie Lin, Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning, PennDesign
This presentation is part of Dr. Lin's ongoing book project on China’s urbanization movement and…
Roundtable Discussion on U.S. – China Relations
Chinese Consul General Huang Ping
Moderated by Professor Jacques DeLisle, Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science; Deputy…
Precarious Expert: Scientists, the State, and Credibility Crises During China’s GMO Controversy
Abigail Coplin, CSCC Postdoctoral Fellow
State legitimacy and food security have historically been deeply entwined in China. While China initially embraced genetically modified organisms (GMOs), vociferous controversy destabilized this consensus. Drawing…
Two Years After the Foreign NGO Law:
Implications for Foreign NGOs, Foundations, and Thinktanks in China
Mark Sidel, Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison
We are now into the third year of implementation of a new law and framework for Chinese security governance of overseas NGOs, foundations and thinktanks in China — which already has one of the largest and most…
Migration and Popular Resistance in Rural China
Yao Lu, Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
Massive rural-urban migration and growing collective resistance are two profound transformations in China. This study examines how migration shapes collective resistance in sending areas. Drawing on…
Roundtable Discussion on Judicial Reform in China
Fu Yulin, Professor of Civil Law, Peking University
Since 2013, China's Supreme People's Court under Chief Justice Zhou Qiang has pushed forward a number of judicial…
Roundtable Discussion with Chu Shulong: China’s Foreign Relations Today
Chu Shulong, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Tsinghua University
Dr. Chu Shulong is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the School of…
Is 'New Malaysia' real or sustainable?
A critical assessment on Malaysia’s social divide and political system
Dr. Chin-Huat Wong, Penang Institute
When democracy went wrong in so many countries, Malaysia's peaceful regime change in May 2019 that ended the world's…
Technology Tensions in the U.S.-China Relationship
Kaiser Kuo, Host of the Sinica Podcast
One of China's top tech company executives is dramatically detained in Canada at the request of the Trump Administration. Hackers traced to China compromise the customer database of one of the U.S.'s largest hotel…
Subnational Hydropolitics: Conflict, Cooperation, and Institution-Building in Shared River Basins
Scott Moore, Ph.D., Director, Penn Global China Program, University of Pennsylvania
Scott Moore offers the first book-length treatment of the distinctive problem of subnational…
Is China an Exception to the Commercial Peace? Trade Interdependence and Chinese Uses of Military Force
Jack Zhang, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, Princeton University
Contrary to commercial peace theories, which predicted that economic engagement would make possible China's peaceful rise, China seems to be engaging in more militarized disputes with its neighbors and trade partners…
Moving the Masses and the Officials’ Resistance in China
Yanhua Deng, Professor of Sociology, Nanjing University
This talk examines an episode of resistance initiated by Chinese officials against their higher-level government by way of mobilizing the masses. In 2005, Huangshi municipal government in Hubei province…
Recent Trends in Media and Communication in China
Chen Hong, Professor and Associate Dean, School of Communication, East China Normal University, Visiting scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication;Zhang Junfang, Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Shanghai International Studies University, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School;Fang Hui, Ph.D. candidate, School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China, Visiting scholar at the Annenberg School;Zhou Ying, Ph.D. candidate, College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University, Visiting scholar at the Annenberg School
The Political Logic of Land Reform in Post-Mao China
Richard Zeng, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science
Why do politicians create institutions that threaten to eliminate their own rent-seeking opportunities? This question is puzzling in a wide range of contexts, where citizens cannot hold policymakers accountable or…
In Pursuit of Monetary Sovereignty: China’s Financial Overhaul in the Global Realm
Mianzhi Francis Cao, Ph.D. Candidate, Faculty of Law, Frankfurt Goethe University, Visiting Scholar, Penn Law
In an age when China openly declares global ambitions, what is the legal contemplation behind China’s financial overhaul？…
The State of Rights Protection Lawyers in China
Teng Biao
Human rights lawyering in China played an important role in the human rights movement since 2003, but it is facing harsh crackdown since Xi Jinping took power. The rising of human rights lawyering reflected the…
China's Rise, International Relations Theory, and Security in a Maritime World
Brian Chao, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania; Hyun-Binn Cho, Pre-doctoral fellow, Institute for Security and Conflict Studies, George Washington University, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania.
The rise of China is shifting the geopolitical focus of international relations to the Indo-Asia-Pacific—a predominantly maritime region. Challenges to security in the maritime domain, however, differ in…
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Taiwan’s Politics at the Mid-point of Tsai Ing-wen’s First Term
Shelley Rigger, Brown Professor of East Asian Politics, Davidson College
Shelley Rigger is the author of Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011) as well as two books on Taiwan's domestic politics, …
Strait and Narrower?: Beijing’s Flight Paths, Taiwan’s International Space, and Regional Security
Jacques deLisle, Scott Kastner, Wojtek Wolfe, Thomas J. Shattuck
Last month, China adopted new civilian aircraft flight paths over the Taiwan Strait, near Taiwan-controlled islands, without consulting Taiwan’s government. Several months earlier, Beijing began dispatching…
The Legacy of Beijing’s Sunshine Policy with Chinese Characteristics: What are the Implications for the U.S. Policy towards North Korea?
Dr. John Park, Director, Korea Working Group, Harvard Kennedy School
The complex relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang remains largely under-examined. In the first part, this talk will explore how the Communist Party of China has been trying to rebuild its relationship with the…
China in Latin America: Origins, Strategy, and Geopolitical Implications
Iacob Koch-Weser, China Trade Enforcement Analyst, Office of the US Trade Representative; Margaret Myers, Director, Latin America & the World Program, Inter-American Dialogue
Over the past decade, China’s influence in Latin America has increased significantly. While the nature and scope of its growing political and economic clout varies considerably across the region, there…
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Commemorating the Life of Professor Luo Haocai
Professor Luo Haocai, who passed away in Beijing on the morning of February 12th, was one of the most significant and consequential figures in the development of modern Chinese law, especially in the field of…
A Revisionist Stakeholder: China and the Post-WWII World Order
Suisheng (Sam) Zhao, Professor of International Studies, University of Denver
Taking advantage of President Trump’s isolationism, President Xi Jinping has vowed to provide “China solution” to the globalization, raising the question if China is to undermine or replace the US-led world order. I…
The Political Mobility of China's Central State-owned Enterprise Leaders
Wendy Leutert, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
CSCC Post-doctoral Fellow Wendy Leutert will present her research and original data on the political mobility of China's central state-owned enterprise leaders. Under the Hu Jintao administration, these leaders…
Establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank: A Lawyer's View
Natalie Lichtenstein, Inaugural General Counsel, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) opened for business in 2016, as a $100 billion multilateral development bank that finances public and private infrastructure projects for Asia. AIIB’s…
Clean Air at What Cost? The Rise of “Blunt Force” Pollution Regulation in China
Denise van der Kamp, CSCC Postdoctoral Fellow
Amidst rising discontent over pollution, the Chinese state faces a dilemma: In the absence of strong regulatory institutions, how can they enforce environmental policies that threaten local industrial interests? In…
China's Economic Statecraft in Asia and Europe
James Reilly, Associate Professor of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney
Never in world history has one government had so much control over so much wealth.Tempted by their broad authority over China’s massive economy, Chinese leaders deploy economic resources in attempts to influence…
Does Centralized Judicial Control Mitigate Local Protectionism in China?
Empirical Study of China Supreme People’s Court’s Decisions on Non-enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (1995-2015)
Shen Wei, Dean & Professor of Law, Shandong University Law School
To fight against local protectionism in court enforcement proceedings, China’s Supreme People’s Court issued a notice requiring intermediate courts have to receive the Supreme People’s Court’s approval before…
Observations on China’s Judicial Reforms
Xixin Wang, Professor of Law, Peking University Law School
Xixin Wang, Vice dean and Professor of Peking University Law School, was appointed as an Associate Chief Judge of Administrative Division of Supreme People's Court of China by NPC's Standing Committee in April 2015.…
Covering China: The People and the Power
Edward Wong, Beijing Bureau Chief, The New York Times
Edward Wong, the Beijing Bureau Chief of The New York Times, talks about his nine years of reporting on China and the challenges faced by Western news organizations in an increasingly authoritarian era.
Networking China: The Digital Transformation of the Chinese Economy
Yu Hong, Assistant Professor of Communication & Journalism, University of Southern California
In recent years, China's leaders have taken decisive action to transform information, communications, and technology (ICT) into the nation’s next pillar industry. Networking China offers an overdue examination of…
Material Nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution Era: The Affective Practices of Revolutionary Music in Contemporary China
Shelley Zhang, Graduate Student, Department of Music, University of Pennsylvania
In this project, I investigate the re-popularization of material culture and music from the Cultural Revolution in contemporary China. Specifically, I explore how my interlocutors from the Hunan province celebrated…
Studying and Working in China
Francis Miller, Senior Academic Consultant, AIC Education
Are you studying Chinese, but aren’t sure about studying abroad? Are you interested in working or interning in China, but aren’t sure how to get started? Hear Francis Miller EALC ’13 share the good, the bad, and the…
Diverging Globalizations: National and Sectoral Pathways to Development in China and India
Roselyn Hsueh, Associate Professor of Political Science, Temple University
China and India are two large, developing countries that have globalized and undergone tremendous development in the last several decades. Yet, they have taken separate paths toward globalization. Dr. Hsueh…
From Economic to Social Media Experiments: The Tensions of Fragmented Authoritarianism
Maria Repnikova, Assistant Professor, Georgia State University; Kecheng Fang, Ph.D. candidate, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
This study examines the latest media experiment under President Xi that aims at revitalizing the Internet by creating new party-funded digital media outlets nationally. Specifically, the paper analyses the model of…
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Making Bureaucracy Work: Patronage Networks and Government Performance in China
Junyan Jiang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
What makes a bureaucracy effective? Conventional theories of bureaucratic effectiveness draw a sharp distinction between high-performing Weberian and low-performing patrimonial administrations, yet this dichotomy…
Public Debt and Private Investment in China
Yi Huang, Assistant Professor of Economics, The Graduate Institute of Geneva
High levels of public debt are correlated with lower economic growth across countries, but questions remain about whether this relationship is causal. Using Chinese data, this paper explores whether increasing public…
Judicial Reform in China: Notes from the Field
Neysun Mahboubi, Research Scholar, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
Just last week, the Chief Justice of China's Supreme People's Court, Zhou Qiang, drew widespread attention for denouncing Western "independence of the judiciary" in a speech to provincial judges. Over the past two…
The Gradients of Power: Evidence from the Chinese Housing Market
Hanming Fang, Class of 1965 Term Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania
Using a large, unique dataset on the Chinese housing market, we propose to measure corruption using the price differences paid by bureaucrat buyers and non-bureaucrat buyers in the housing market. We find that the…
U.S.-China Relations: View from the Administration
Susan Thornton Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, US Department of State
This lecture will speak on the current administrations view of China’s rise, some of the opportunities and challenges, and a discussion of current policy.
Susan Thornton assumed responsibility as Principal…
Voices without Votes: the Policy Consequences of Online Participation in China
Junyan Jiang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
Netizens, Nationalism, and the New Media
Jackson Woods, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
This research examines the relationship between online public opinion and state propaganda concerning foreign policy issues in China. Can the public challenge the Chinese state on foreign policy issues under the…
Making Bureaucracy Work: Patronage Networks and Administrative Performance in China
Junyan Jiang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
The conventional wisdom about bureaucratic effectiveness draws a sharp distinction between the high-performing Weberian bureaucracy and the low-performing patrimonial type. This dichotomous view, however, fails to…
The Revolutionary Ethic and the Spirit of Factionalism in the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Guobin Yang, Associate Professor of Sociology and Communication, University of Pennsylvania
From 1966 to 1968, students and workers in urban China were embroiled in deadly factional battles in what many of them believed to be a revolution of a lifetime – the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In the…
China's Long Quest for Democracy: A Historical Institutional Perspective
Dr. Lin Gang, Professor of Political Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s School of International and Public Affairs
Dr. Lin Gang discusses his new book China's Long Quest for Democracy: A Historical Institutional Perspective. Conceptualizing China as a country…
Looking at State-Society Relations in China through the Lens of Homeowners’ Association Movements
Lei CHEN, Associate Professor and Associate Dean, City University of Hong Kong School of Law
The past two decades have witnessed increased levels of private homeownership and domestic protest in China, despite a growing economy and rising living standards. While the literature on resistance has…
Cyber HIV/AIDS Civil Space and the Role of 'Tongzhi' Grass-root Organizations in China
Prof. CAO Jin, Fudan University School of Journalism, Fulbright scholar at Harvard-Yenching Institute
This talk will focus on the production of queer cyberspace and the “Tongzhi” grassroots organizations which started to emerge at the beginning of twenty-first century as an alternative form of social…
Chinese Citizen or Global Citizen?
Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism among Chinese Students Enrolled in a Canadian Curriculum High School in Beijing
Natalie Young, Ph.D student, Department of Sociology
Although most social scientists recognize that the nation-state continues to regulate the beliefs, actions, and behaviors of its citizens, others suggest that increased transnational mobility and cross-cultural…
Atomized Incorporation: State-Labor Relations in Contemporary China
Sungmin Rho, CSCC postdoctoral fellow
The Chinese regime has experienced an increasing number of labor protests that involve migrant workers since the mid-2000s. This talk addresses why the Chinese regime has growingly become tolerant of the…
The Power of the Power: Censorship in Mainland China and Hong Kong
Rose Luqiu Luwei (闾丘露薇), Journalist & Former Executive News Editor, Phoenix TV
The Chinese government is constantly releasing new regulations to censor media content. In Mainland China, the Party strengthens its control on media agenda-setting and makes sure that the media remembers its…
Chicken Soup for the Soul, Prepared by the Communist Party: How China’s Propaganda Machine Adapts to Social Media
Kecheng Fang, Ph.D. Student, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
With China’s press commercialization started from the late 1970s, the influence of Communist Party mouthpieces had been diminishing. During recent years, however, we see the resurgence of Party media on social media…
The Future of 'Rights Defense' Lawyering in China
Dr. Teng Biao, Visiting Fellow, US-Asia Law Institute, NYU Law School; Co-founder, The Open Constitution Initiative
Over the past 15 years, there has emerged in China a community of self-identified "rights defense" (weiquan) lawyers, akin to "cause lawyers" in the United States, who select cases and frame legal advocacy…
Chinese Legal Reform after the CCP's Fourth Plenum
Wang Zhenmin, Professor and former Dean, Tsinghua University Law School
More than a year ago, the Fourth Plenum of the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Central Committee signaled unprecedented emphasis on “the rule of law” and issued key policy documents to support legal…
Are Only Children More Depressed?: Evidence from China’s One Child Policy
Albert Park, Professor of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
This paper examines the causal effect of growing up as an only child on subjective well-being outcomes, with the latter measured by elevated depressive symptoms and self-rated happiness. Considering the endogeneity…
Critical Journalists and the State in China: The Case of Guarded Improvisation
Maria Repnikova, Postdoctoral Fellow, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
This talk introduces the key findings from Dr. Repnikova’s book project on the relations between China’s critical journalists and the party-state in the past decade. It explains how critical journalists who…
Social Welfare under Authoritarianism: The Politics and Policy of Social Health Insurance in China
Xian Huang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
Contrary to the received wisdom that the welfare state is a feature associated with democracies, social welfare in China has undergone a dramatic expansion over the past decade without democratization or significant…
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…
Public Participation in Governance and Administrative Law Reform in China: An Informal Roundtable
Wang Xixin, Professor of Law and Vice Dean, Peking UniversityJacques deLisle, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Neysun Mahboubi, Research Scholar, Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania
Open to all, light lunch provided.
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…
The Political Process of Chinese Land: Partial Reform, Vested Interests and Small Properties
Shitong Qiao, J.S.D. Candidate, Yale Law School; Research Scholar, U.S.-Asia Law Institute of New York University School of Law
This article investigates the history of land use reform in China and proves that the so-called rural land problem is the consequence of China’s partial land use…
“Good" Censor vs. “Bad" Censor---The Effects of Perceived Censorship Attempt Initiated by Different Sources on Censorship acceptance, Rumor Processing, and Evaluation of Government among Chinese Netizens
Sijia Yang, Ph.D. Student, Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania
China’s virtual public sphere is susceptible to negative consequences of low-quality information and online censorship. The censorship policy as currently adopted and constantly reinforced by the Chinese…
Preparing for the Ocean Century: China's Changing Political Institutions for Ocean Governance and Maritime Development
Tabitha Mallory, Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, Princeton University
Everyone has heard the 21st century referred to as the “Chinese century.” Yet the Chinese are also calling the 21st century the “ocean century.” Last year, China announced plans to consolidate four of its five…
Qadi Justice in Chinese Courts: The Bureaucratization of Islamic Procedural Justice in the People’s Republic of China
Matthew S. Erie, Ph.D., J.D. Postdoctoral Research Associate Princeton University
Fueled by charges of orientalism, current trends in sociolegal studies have denigrated Weber’s insights on Islamic and Chinese law. While factually Weber mis-characterized these legal systems, concepts he developed…
China's Economic Reforms in the 21st Century: Assessment and Outlook (2002-2022)
Prof. Hu Angang, School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University; Dean of Institute of Contemporary China Studies at Tsinghua University
* Lunch Provided
Educational Implications of Ethnic Categorization in China, 1982-2005
Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, Department of Sociology and Graduate School of Education
Interpersonal Networks in Comparative Perspective:
The Core Discussion Networks in China, Japan, and the US
Ning Hsieh, Department of Demography and Department of Sociology
The study compares core discussion networks in three national contexts—China, Japan, and the US, intending to show cross-national differences in the structure of interpersonal networks that are shaped by broader…
The Impacts of Parental Health Shocks on the Human Capital Accumulation of Children in Village Economies
Fan Wang, Department of Economics
Using four waves of household panel data collected over ten years from rural China, I estimate the importance of parental health in the accumulation of the human capital of children in the context of small village…