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
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…
