Stay ConnectedIn-depth conversations on Chinese politics, economics, law, and society. Sponsored by the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations, and hosted by Neysun Mahboubi.
For more information, visit:
https://global.upenn.edu/future-of-us-china-relations/
Western media presence in China has been vastly reduced since February 2020, the consequence both of political tensions and the Covid-19 pandemic. As the Chinese government finally begins to dismantle its “zero-Covid” policy in December 2022, the prospect of Western journalists returning to on-the-ground reporting from China appears more promising than it has in years. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Edward Wong, who reported from China for The New York Times from 2008-2016 and served as Beijing bureau chief, the narrative-defining stories he covered in those years, which so much have shaped the present moment in China’s governance and relations with the outside world. Recorded on October 16, 2019, the conversation highlights the unique and valuable “critical empathy” foreign correspondents can offer when deeply immersed in China.
Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, who reports on foreign policy from Washington, D.C. In 23 years at the Times, he has spent 13 years abroad, filing dispatches from dozens of countries, including North Korea, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia. He covered the Iraq War, based in Baghdad, from 2003 to 2007 and reported from China, based in Beijing, from 2008 to 2016. As Beijing bureau chief, he ran the Times’ largest overseas operation. Wong has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and done fellowships at the Belfer Center of Harvard Kennedy School and at the Wilson Center in Washington. He has taught international reporting as a visiting professor at Princeton University and U.C. Berkeley. Wong received a Livingston Award for his coverage of the Iraq War and was on a team from the Times’ Baghdad Bureau that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. He has two awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia for coverage of China. He graduated from the University of Virginia and U.C. Berkeley, and studied Mandarin Chinese at the Beijing Language and Culture University, Taiwan University, and Middlebury College.
Sound engineering: Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
While the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong lately have been the subject of particular scrutiny from U.S. policymakers, systematic attention to China’s human rights practices, more broadly, has been a consistent feature of U.S. policy towards China in recent decades, through successive Democratic and Republican administrations. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Amy Gadsden, a leading expert on human rights in China, the background to why human rights came to be such a major factor in U.S.-China relations, and how this portfolio of issues does (and should) relate to other policy considerations. The episode was recorded on August 16, 2019.
Amy Gadsden is Associate Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, in which capacity she works with Penn’s schools and centers to develop and implement strategies to increase Penn’s global engagement both on campus and overseas, including by advancing Penn’s activities with respect to China. Previously, she served as Associate Dean for International and Strategic Initiatives at Penn Law School, where she built a comprehensive program aimed at expanding the Law School’s global curriculum. As an adjunct faculty member, Dr. Gadsden has taught seminars in international human rights and the rule of law. Before coming to Penn, she served as Special Advisor for China at the U.S. Department of State, and before that she served as China Director for the International Republican Institute. She has published widely on democracy and human rights in China, documenting legal and civil society reform, and was one of the first American scholars to observe and write about grassroots elections in China in the mid-1990s. Dr. Gadsden holds a Ph.D in Qing legal history from the University of Pennsylvania.
Sound engineering: Kaiser Kuo and Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
In recent years, and especially under the administration of Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has “securitized” all manner of relationships between its citizens and outsiders. An important marker of this trend, which continues to generate intense concern, was the 2016 passage of the Overseas NGO Law, a new legal framework for managing the domestic Chinese operations of nonprofit and educational institutions based abroad. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Mark Sidel, one of the preeminent authorities on the nonprofit sector and philanthropy in China, why and how the Overseas NGO Law was drafted, and how to situate the law in the larger story of China’s engagement with foreign nonprofit and educational institutions from the late Maoist period onward. The episode was recorded on April 26, 2019.
Mark Sidel is the Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, he served as Professor of Law at the University of Iowa. He has published widely on the nonprofit sector and philanthropy (with a focus on Asia and the United States), and is a member of the editorial or editorial advisory boards of multiple journals in those fields. In addition to his academic work, he has extensive experience in international philanthropic and funding communities. He first served on the Ford Foundation team that established the Foundation's office in China, and as the Foundation's first program officer for law, legal reform, and nonprofit organizations based in China (Beijing), in the late 1980s. In the early and mid-1990s, he developed and managed the Ford Foundation's programs in Vietnam. Later he developed and managed the regional program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector for the Ford Foundation in South Asia (New Delhi). He now serves as consultant for Asia at the Washington-based International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, focusing on China, India and Vietnam.
Sound engineering: Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
No foreign policy topic currently garners more attention in the United States than its relationship with China, especially in light of China’s rise over the past few decades as an economic, technological, military, and strategic power and rival. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Yan Xuetong, one of China’s leading experts on international relations, how China’s rise, and its ever more complex and fraught relationship with the United States, look from a domestic Chinese perspective, and through the lens of Professor Yan’s distinctive work on IR theory. The episode was recorded on April 20, 2019.
Yan Xuetong is Dean of the Institute for International Relations at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, and Senior Advisor to the Chinese Journal of International Politics. He also serves as President of the Management Board of Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. He is a prolific and influential author, and his recent books include Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power (Princeton, 2011) and Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers (Princeton, 2019). Previously, he served for many years as a research fellow of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, the premier government-connected research institute on international affairs in China. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Sound engineering: Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
One of the hallmarks of Xi Jinping’s tenure as China’s leader, since 2012, has been the notable strengthening of the state’s coercive architecture, through which it endeavors to control Chinese society. In particular, Xi Jinping’s administration has substantially restructured the legal and institutional frameworks underpinning China’s domestic security, while also tightening central discipline over security personnel, and pioneering new technology-based methods for surveillance and social control. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Sheena Chestnut Greitens, a leading expert on the politics of domestic security in Asian countries, how ideas about domestic security have developed in China under CCP rule, what are the institutions that embody them, and where the future may lead for China’s internal security–a discussion made all the more relevant today, when the Chinese state appears to be making use of the COVID-19 crisis to push its methods of social control even further afield. The episode was recorded on May 3, 2019.
In August 2020, Sheena Chestnut Greitens will become an associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, where she will also serve as a Faculty Fellow with the Clements Center for National Security, and a Distinguished Scholar at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Her work focuses on East Asia, authoritarian politics, and American national security policy. She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an adjunct fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of the Digital Freedom Forum at the Center for a New American Security. From 2015 to 2020, Greitens was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Missouri, and co-director of the University's Institute for Korean Studies. Her first book, Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence (Cambridge, 2016) received the 2017 Best Book Award from both the International Studies Association and the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association. She is currently working on two main research projects: one on China's internal security policies and their implications for China in the world, and another on authoritarian diasporas, particularly focused on North Korea. She is active on Twitter, where you can follow her @SheenaGreitens
Sound engineering: Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Whatever the likelihood or implications of a potential truce in the US-China trade war, it seems clear that the overall relationship between the two countries has lately entered into a new, more harder-edged phase, defined by competition and perhaps even conflict in multiple areas: economic, technological, ideological, strategic, and conceivably military as well. In the United States, heated debates over US-China relations look not just to the present or future, but reach back to past attitudes and choices as well, even questioning the basic wisdom of the past 40 years of engagement with China in the first place. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Brookings fellow, and former Obama White House official, Ryan Hass the present landscape in US-China relations, how it has been shaped by prior US and Chinese administrations, and what the current administrations’ respective approaches may deliver. The episode was recorded on May 2, 2019.
Ryan Hass is a fellow and the Michael H. Armacost Chair in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where he holds joint appointments to the John L. Thornton China Center and the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. From 2013 to 2017, he served as Director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council, under President Obama. Previously, Hass served as a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he earned the State Department Director General’s Award for Impact and Originality in Reporting. He also has served at the U.S. Embassies in Seoul and in Ulaanbaatar, and domestically in the State Department’s Offices of Taiwan Coordination and Korean Affairs, respectively. He received multiple Superior Honor and Meritorious Honor commendations during his 15-year tenure in the Foreign Service. At Brookings, Hass focuses his research and writing on enhancing policy development on the pressing political, economic, and security challenges facing the United States in East Asia. You can follow him @ryanl_hass.
Sound engineering: Shani Aviram and Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Dramatic protests in Hong Kong over the past four months, initially over a now-withdrawn draft law that would permit extraditions to mainland China, have brought to worldwide attention broader fears amongst Hong Kong residents that their city is losing its distinctive legal and political characteristics, that were supposedly to be preserved under Chinese rule, according to the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”. A critical juncture in Hong Kong’s fascinating history appears to have been reached, with ramifications extending far beyond the city itself. In this special two-part episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Hong Kong University law professor, and former dean, Johannes Chan the development of Hong Kong’s hybrid legal system—before and after the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, through the Umbrella Movement of 2014—and the challenges now before it. The episode was recorded on April 6-7, 2019.
Johannes Chan is Professor of Law and former Dean (2002-2014) of the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. In his academic work, he specializes in human rights, constitutional law, and administrative law, and has published widely in these fields. His most recent book, Paths of Justice (Hong Kong University Press, 2018), illuminates how Hong Kong’s legal system works in practice by drawing on key cases and Professor Chan’s own legal practice. To this date, he remains the only Honorary Senior Counsel appointed (2003) by the Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeals in Hong Kong. Professor Chan also has served as a visiting professor at a number of universities in Europe, the United States, and Asia, including as the Bok Visiting International Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2014), and the Herbert Smith Freehills Visiting Professor at Cambridge University (2015).
Sound engineering: Shani Aviram and Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Dramatic protests in Hong Kong this month, over a draft law that would permit extraditions to mainland China, underscore broader fears amongst Hong Kong residents that their city is losing its distinctive legal and political characteristics, that were supposedly to be preserved under Chinese rule, according to the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”. A critical juncture in Hong Kong’s fascinating history appears to be fast approaching, with ramifications extending far beyond the city itself. In this special two-part episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Hong Kong University law professor, and former dean, Johannes Chan the development of Hong Kong’s hybrid legal system, before and after the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, and the challenges now before it. The episode was recorded on April 6-7, 2019.
Johannes Chan is Professor of Law and former Dean (2002-2014) of the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. In his academic work, he specializes in human rights, constitutional law, and administrative law, and has published widely in these fields. His most recent book, Paths of Justice (Hong Kong University Press, 2018), illuminates how Hong Kong’s legal system works in practice by drawing on key cases and Professor Chan’s own legal practice. To this date, he remains the only Honorary Senior Counsel appointed (2003) by the Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeals in Hong Kong. Professor Chan also has served as a visiting professor at a number of universities in Europe, the United States, and Asia, including as the Bok Visiting International Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2014), and the Herbert Smith Freehills Visiting Professor at Cambridge University (2015).
Sound engineering: Shani Aviram and Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Today, the reality and consequences of China’s rise have come to dominate news headlines the world over. Along with China’s growing wealth and power have come new tensions, with the United States and other countries, that further require better understanding of China’s story, in all its different facets. Given the stakes, there may never have been a more important time for us to think about how we think about China, whether as professional “China watchers” or more casual observers. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Kaiser Kuo, host of the Sinica Podcast, precepts for analyzing China that Kaiser has distilled from his longtime and varied engagement with the country and its people. The episode was recorded on March 31, 2019.
Kaiser Kuo is host and co-founder of the Sinica Podcast, the most popular English language podcast on current affairs in China, as well as editor-at-large of SupChina. Sinica has run since April 2010, and has published over 400 episodes. Until April 2016, Kaiser served as director of international communications for Baidu, China’s leading search engine. In 2016, he returned to the U.S. after a 20-year stint in Beijing, where his career spanned the gamut from music to journalism to technology. Kaiser also spent a year in Beijing from 1988 to 1989, when he co-founded the seminal Chinese heavy metal band Tang Dynasty as lead guitarist. In May 2016, he was honored by the Asia Society with a leadership award for “revolutionizing the way people live, consume, socially interact, and civically engage.” He speaks frequently on topics related to politics, international relations, and technology in China. You can follow him @KaiserKuo.
Sound engineering: Elijah Melanson and Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Despite little foreshadowing before he took office, President Xi Jinping has emerged as perhaps the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. This was reinforced in March 2018 when China’s National People’s Congress voted overwhelmingly to abolish presidential term limits, as had been stipulated under the 1982 PRC Constitution, a feature which had been understood to be critical to the new political settlement after the Cultural Revolution. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with UC San Diego political scientist Victor Shih the implications of Xi Jinping’s apparent longterm rule for Chinese governance—including for policymaking and bureaucratic incentives, for both domestic and foreign entrepreneurship, and ultimately for the very durability of Chinese Communist Party rule. The episode was recorded on April 26, 2018.
Victor Shih is an associate professor of political economy, and the Ho Miu Lam Chair in China and Pacific Relations, at the School of Global Policy & Strategy at UC San Diego. He has published widely on the politics of Chinese banking policies, fiscal policies and exchange rates, and he was the first analyst to identify the risk of massive local government debt in China. His book Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation (Cambridge University Press, 2012) draws on his training in elite politics, as well as detailed statistical analysis, in providing the classic account of how the Chinese banking sector really works. Professor Shih’s new edited book, Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability: Duration, Financial Condition, and Institutions, is in production at the University of Michigan Press. Prior to joining UC San Diego, he was a professor of political science at Northwestern University, and also served as a principal for The Carlyle Group. He is active on Twitter, where you can follow him @vshih2.
Sound engineering: Nirvan West and Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
As Chinese economic growth slows to its lowest rate in 30 years, there is rising concern (including among some Chinese scholars and officials) about the long-term viability of China's distinctive form of state-led capitalism, sometimes characterized in terms of a "China Model". Nevertheless, the Chinese government still appears committed to the approach marked by heavy state intervention in the economy that has driven China's growth since the 1990s, and especially since the global financial crisis of 2008 and then under President Xi Jinping. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses China's state-led capitalism, and the prospects for reform, with one of the foremost scholars of China's economic development, MIT political scientist Yasheng Huang, whose pathbreaking work has highlighted the contributions of private entrepreneurship to China's "economic miracle" in the 1980s, and the various costs levied by the shift away from that approach. The episode was recorded on April 27, 2018.
Yasheng Huang is Epoch Foundation Professor of International Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he also serves as faculty director of action learning, and runs both China Lab and India Lab, which have provided low-cost consulting services to over 360 small and medium enterprises in those countries. He has published widely in both English and Chinese, and his book Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (Cambridge University Press), based on detailed archival and quantitative evidence spanning three decades of Chinese economic reform, was selected by The Economist as a best book of 2008. His current research projects include a new book on "The Nature of the Chinese State", collaboration with researchers at Tsinghua University to create a complete database of technological innovation in China, and serving as co-PI for a Walmart Foundation supported study of food safety in China. He is or has been a fellow at the Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University; a research fellow at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; a fellow at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan; and a World Economic Forum Fellow. He also has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the OECD, and on a number of advisory and corporate boards of non-profit and for-profit organizations.
Sound engineering: Shani Aviram and Neysun Mahboubi
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
How do autocratic regimes secure political obedience, and implement unpopular policies, without always resorting to outright coercive tactics? In a provocative new book, Yale University political scientist Dan Mattingly argues that, in China, state power exercised through local governments relies on local civil society groups—like temple organizations or lineage associations—to quietly infiltrate, observe, and thereby control Chinese rural society. In this episode, he discusses his book and its core arguments about “soft” authoritarian repression with Neysun Mahboubi, in a conversation which extends to the basic nature of local governance in China and the various mechanisms by which it may (or may not) be held to account. The episode was recorded on April 12, 2018.
Dan Mattingly is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His research focuses on the political economy of development, authoritarian rule, and Chinese politics. His new book on “The Art of Political Control in China” is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, and his articles have previously appeared in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Development, and World Politics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and was later a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. You can follow him on Twitter @mattinglee.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Kaiser Kuo
At least since China’s 1994 fiscal and tax reforms, land-backed development has served as the greatest source of revenue for Chinese local governments—potentially almost 1 trillion US dollars in total this year—as well as a powerful engine both for rapid industrialization and for social discontent. This circumstance reflects how the state allocation of land-use rights, in China, remains a vestige of the planned economy, and how fiscal pressures on local governments, combined with differential pricing of land for purposes of takings compensation versus resale to developers, incentivize what often looks to be predatory behavior. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses China’s property rights regime, especially pertaining to land in rural areas, and how it informs the influential theory that economic growth requires stable property rights, with University of Washington political scientist Susan Whiting, a prominent scholar of China’s political economy of development. The episode was recorded on March 16, 2018.
Susan Whiting is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, in Seattle, where she also holds appointments in the Jackson School of International Studies and the School of Law. Her first book, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2001. She has published articles and chapters on authoritarianism, “rule of law,” property rights, fiscal reform, and rural development in volumes and journals such as Comparative Political Studies and The China Quarterly. She has contributed to studies of governance, fiscal reform, and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Ford Foundation, respectively. Her current research focuses upon property rights in land, the role of law in authoritarian regimes, as well as the politics of fiscal reform.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Kaiser Kuo
Economic reform since the late 1970s, as well as the dynamics of globalization unleashed in full by China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, have significantly complicated the relationship between the Chinese Party-state and Chinese workers. Some of this complexity was made apparent in the 1990s, after millions of workers were laid off from state owned enterprises, and then it was highlighted again, in a different form, in connection with worker suicides at Foxconn plants and strikes at Honda factories in Guangdong Province in 2010. Most recently, the gap between official rhetoric and state practice, as it relates to Chinese workers, has been most dramatically indicated by the crackdown on Marxist student groups and organizers at elite Chinese universities.
In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses the evolution of workers’ rights in China, since the founding of the Chinese Communist Party after the May 4th student movement, and through the present day, with University of Michigan political scientist Mary Gallagher, one of the most influential scholars of Chinese labor and labor mobilization. The episode was recorded on February 14, 2019.
Mary Gallagher is Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, where she is also the Director of the Center for Chinese Studies. Her core research explores the relationships between capitalism, law, and democracy, and her empirical research on China is used to explore those larger theoretical questions. Her books include Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State (Cambridge University Press 2017), Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China (co-editor, with Margaret Woo; Cambridge University Press 2011), and Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (Princeton University Press 2005). In China, Professor Gallagher was a foreign student at Nanjing University in 1989; she also taught at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing from 1996-97; and she was a Fulbright Research Scholar at East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai from 2003-04. You can follow her on Twitter @MaryGao.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Kaiser Kuo
Over the past 16 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 with a goal of achieving wider societal impact. Once celebrated in official discourse, these lawyers have increasingly come under scrutiny and pressure by the Chinese Party-state, that has intensified despite official promotion of "rule of law" concepts since the CCP Central Committee’s Fourth Plenum in 2014. In this episode, scholar and activist Teng Biao, one of China’s earliest and most famous weiquan lawyers, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the history and current predicament of "rights defense" lawyering in China, and charts possible future directions for this work. The episode was recorded on April 11, 2018.
Dr. Teng Biao is an academic lawyer and a human rights activist. He was formerly a Lecturer at the China University of Political Science and Law, in Beijing. Since first coming to wide public attention in connection with the Sun Zhigang incident in 2003, he has provided counsel in numerous human rights cases, including those of activists Chen Guangcheng and Hu Jia, religious freedom claims, and death penalty appeals. He has also co-founded two groups that have combined research with advocacy in human rights cases, the Open Constitution Initiative (Gongmeng) and China Against the Death Penalty. Most recently, he has visited at Harvard Law School, Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, and NYU’s US-Asia Law Institute. He maintains an active blog in Chinese and you can also follow him on Twitter @tengbiao.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani, Justin Melnick, and Kaiser Kuo
Chairman Mao famously proclaimed that “women hold up half the sky,” and there are many ways in which women’s status, rights, and opportunities have improved under CCP rule. That said, patriarchal ideas about the role of women have continued to find robust expression in China, in different and evolving ways, since 1949 and through the reform & opening period. In this episode, Brown University sociologist Yun Zhou discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the landscape of gender inequality in China, with special attention to the implications of the one-child policy and its repeal, as well as the Chinese #MeToo movement and feminist advocacy more generally. The episode was recorded on November 5, 2018.
Yun Zhou received her PhD in Sociology from Harvard University. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University’s Population Studies and Training Center. Her research examines social inequality through the lens of gender, marriage, family, and reproduction. Her most recent work on China’s universal two-child policy, “The Dual Demands: Gender Equity and Fertility Intentions after the One-Child Policy,” was just published in the Journal of Contemporary China. Dr. Zhou also writes extensively for popular audiences on the topics of gender inequality, sexual violence, and reproductive rights in China. Her work has been featured in Tengxun Dajia, Pengpai, Renwu, The South China Morning Post, and Boston Metro, among other outlets. She has also served as a volunteer with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center since 2016. You can follow her at @yunjulietzhou.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani, Kaiser Kuo, and Yue Hou
The Chinese government is currently in the process of dismantling the family planning policies which it introduced in the 1970s, and developed alongside its program of reform & opening over the past 40 years—which are most famously associated with the one-child limit for most Chinese families, that was finally converted into a universal two-child limit starting in 2016. In so doing, the government is attempting to defuse a ticking demographic time bomb, that is not entirely the fault of the one-child policy, but was certainly accelerated by its prolonged tenure.
Considering this looming crisis makes it a particularly appropriate time to ask why and how the one-child policy was introduced in the first place, why it has taken so long to abolish, and what lessons can be drawn that might be used to improve Chinese governance in the future. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi invites sociologist Wang Feng of the University of California—a leading expert on global demography, aging, and inequality—to reflect on the history and social impact of China’s family planning policies and their social impact. The episode was recorded on March 22, 2018.
Wang Feng is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on social inequality in post-socialist societies, global demographic change, and migration in China. His books include Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China (co-editor, with Deborah Davis; Stanford University Press 2008), Boundaries and Categories: Rising Inequality in Post-Socialist Urban China (Stanford University Press 2007), and One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000 (co-author, with James Z. Lee; Harvard University Press 1999). He also has served as Professor at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, and as a Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani, Justin Melnick, and Kaiser Kuo
What explains Taiwan’s outsized presence in our news headlines, especially over the first two years of the Trump administration? What can be learned from its raucous process of democratization over the past thirty years? How will it continue to forge its unexpected identity, against the backdrop of China’s ever-deepening shadow? In this episode, Davidson College political scientist Shelley Rigger, one of the foremost authorities on Taiwan’s domestic politics and international standing, discusses these questions with Neysun Mahboubi, in relaying the dramatic modern story of Taiwan, and what it reflects about shifts in global ordering over time. The episode was recorded on March 16, 2018.
Shelley Rigger is the Brown Professor of East Asian Politics, and Assistant Dean for Educational Policy, at Davidson College. She is also a Senior Fellow with the Asia Program of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, in Philadelphia. Prof. 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, Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (Routledge 1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001). She has also published articles on Taiwan’s domestic politics, the national identity issue in Taiwan-China relations, and related topics. Her current research studies the effects of cross-strait economic interactions on Taiwanese people's perceptions of mainland China.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Anthony Tao
The following is a live recording of the 2019 Annual Public Lecture at Penn’s CSCC delivered by Susan Shirk, and introduced by the Center’s Director, Avery Goldstein. The event took place on January 31, 2019.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Justin Melnick and Christopher Passanante
Amidst various commentaries on the 10th anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake, this past summer, a prominent theme has been the sense of possibility for civil society in China that was initially generated by the outpouring of social volunteerism, unprecedented in Chinese history, which followed the disaster. That earlier optimism about civil society appears less robust in China today, within an overall context of further tightening of the space for independent social organizations and advocacy in recent years. In this episode, Emory University sociologist Bin Xu discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the general landscape of civil society and civic engagement in China, through the particular lens of his widely celebrated new book on the Sichuan earthquake. The episode was recorded on February 22, 2018.
Bin Xu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Emory University. His book, “The Politics of Compassion: the Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China,” published by Stanford University Press, combines cultural sociology with extensive interviews to examine how engaged citizens acted on the ground in the aftermath of the earthquake, how they understood the meaning of their actions, and how the wider political context shaped both. Reviewed as “riveting, provocative, and ultimately heart breaking,” and as “required reading for all students of contemporary Chinese society and politics,” the book has been awarded the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture from the American Sociological Association (2018). In addition to this book, Prof. Xu’s work has appeared in many of the leading journals in sociology and China studies. He also was selected as one of 21 Public Intellectuals in the likewise named fellowship program of the National Committee on US-China Relations for 2016-18.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Justin Melnick
Current headlines about how authoritarian regimes have come to harness and even weaponize the internet may obscure how this technology, at one time, was more typically understood to be a democratizing force, across a range of different contexts. In the early days of Chinese cyberspace, for example, popular expression on various internet forums seemed to herald a new stage in political activism, that was pressing the boundaries of traditional state control. In this episode, University of Pennsylvania Professor Guobin Yang, the preeminent scholar of the sociology of the internet in China, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the evolution of social media platforms on the Chinese internet, over the past 20 years, and their changing political implications. The episode was recorded on March 1, 2018.
Guobin Yang is the Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication and the Department of Sociology, at the University of Pennsylvania. His research generally covers social movements, cultural sociology, political sociology, digital media, global communication, and modern China. His prolific scholarship includes the classic "The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online" (2009) and, more recently, "The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China" (2016). He is the editor or co-editor of four additional books which explore similar themes. He is also active on social media, and tweets at @Yangguobin.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Alex Schein
Launched by China in June 2015, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank ("AIIB") currently has eighty-six members and, with $100 billion in capital, has lent around $4 billion to infrastructure projects throughout Asia. The AIIB's very creation is an important marker in China's economic and strategic rise over the past forty years, from a poor country that was entirely outside of the Bretton Woods financial system, to the largest borrower from the World Bank, and now, to the creator of a competitor institution designed to address some of the World Bank's deficiencies. In this episode, the inaugural general counsel of the AIIB, Natalie Lichtenstein, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the background and early history of the Bank, informed by her distinguished thirty-year career in the legal department of the World Bank, where she advised on lending operations in China from their inception. The episode was recorded on January 23, 2018.
Natalie Lichtenstein was chief counsel for the establishment of the AIIB, and the principal drafter for its Charter, before serving as the Bank's inaugural general counsel. She has just published a new book with Oxford University Press, A Comparative Guide to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is the most comprehensive account of the AIIB thus far. Earlier in her career, she served in the legal department of the World Bank for thirty years, including as Chief Counsel for East Asia. Before that, as a junior attorney in the U.S. Treasury Department, she worked on legal issues related to normalization of relations between the U.S. and China. She has taught Chinese law as an adjunct professor since the 1980s, most recently at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Kaiser Kuo and Nick Marziani
As the nuclear standoff between North Korea and the United States dominates global headlines, the relationship between North Korea and China, though little understood, has attracted ever greater interest. In this episode, the Harvard Kennedy School's John Park, a leading expert on security issues relating to Northeast Asia, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the complex relationship between North Korea and China, with special attention to the economic dynamics at play since China established diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992. The episode was recorded on February 23, 2018 at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, following Dr. Park's lecture on "The Legacy of Beijing’s Sunshine Policy with Chinese Characteristics: What are the Implications for U.S. Policy towards North Korea?"
John Park is a Lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School, where he is Director of the Korea Working Group, as well as a Faculty Affiliate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He previously directed Northeast Asia Track 1.5 projects at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and currently advises Northeast Asia policy-focused officials in the U.S. government. Dr. Park is a frequent media commentator on Asian geopolitical issues, including on CNN, CNBC, BBC, and Bloomberg TV, and he has testified on these issues before both House and Senate committees in the past year. His publications include "Stopping North Korea, Inc.: Sanctions Effectiveness and Unintended Consequences" (with Jim Walsh); "The Key to the North Korean Targeted Sanctions Puzzle"; and "North Korea, Inc.: Gaining Insights into North Korean Regime Stability from Recent Commercial Activities".
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Seung-Youn Oh and Nick Marziani
China's economy is currently the world's second largest, by GDP, and is generally expected to overtake the U.S. economy within the next decade. In this episode, the Paulson Institute's Damien Ma, a leading expert on Chinese economic trends, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the key features defining China's economy today, and some likely forecasts for the near future, with particular attention to the policy and personnel implications of the recent 19th Party Congress. This episode was recorded on December 1, 2017 at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, in connection with the Center's post-Congress policy roundtable featuring Damien Ma and other experts.
Damien Ma is Fellow and Associate Director of the Think Tank at the Paulson Institute, focused on investment and policy programs and leads on various research projects and activities. He is co-author of the book, In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China's Ascent in the Next Decade; he is editor of The Economics of Air Pollution in China by Ma Jun, who was the chief economist of China's central bank; and he has written on the Chinese economy for many outlets including The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, and Slate. He is also co-creator of MacroPolo, a digital hub for cutting edge research on China's political economy.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Wendy Leutert and Nick Marziani
China’s 19th Party Congress, held in October 2017, drew significant anticipation and attention, not only among professional China watchers, for its domestic meaning and foreign policy signals, at a time when the PRC is staking out a new role on the world stage. In this episode, Boston University Professor Joseph Fewsmith, one of the leading experts on Chinese elite politics, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the politics surrounding this latest Congress, from specific personnel decisions to broad policy implications, with special attention to the position of Xi Jinping. The episode was recorded on November 30, 2017 at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, in connection with the Center’s post-Congress policy roundtable featuring Prof. Fewsmith and other experts.
Joseph Fewsmith is Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, specializing in Comparative Politics, Chinese Domestic Politics, and Chinese Foreign Policy. He is the author or editor of eight books, including, most recently, The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China (Cambridge 2013). His articles have appeared in such journals as Asian Survey, Comparative Studies in Society and History, The China Journal, The China Quarterly, Current History, The Journal of Contemporary China, Problems of Communism, and Modern China. He is also one of the seven regular contributors to the China Leadership Monitor, a quarterly web publication sponsored by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Wendy Leutert and Nick Marziani
President Trump's November 2017 visit to China, and four other Asian countries, comes at a charged time in US-China relations, when its perennial challenges and opportunities appear in particularly sharp relief. In this episode, Penn experts Avery Goldstein, Jacques deLisle, and Amy Gadsden discuss with Neysun Mahboubi the President's upcoming trip, with special attention to key topic areas that will be implicated by this week's meetings in Beijing and other Asian capitals. The episode was recorded on November 2, 2017 at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China.
Avery Goldstein is the David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations in the Political Science Department, Director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, and Associate Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on international relations, security studies, and Chinese politics.
Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law & Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also Deputy Director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, as well as Director of the Center for East Asian Studies. His research focuses on contemporary Chinese law and politics, the international status of Taiwan and cross-Strait relations, China’s engagement with the international order, legal and political issues in Hong Kong under Chinese rule, and U.S.-China relations.
Amy Gadsden is Executive Director for Penn Global, in which capacity she works with Penn’s schools and centers to develop and implement strategies to increase Penn’s global engagement both on campus and overseas. In 2016, she was named executive director of Penn China Initiatives to coordinate and develop University strategy and activity in China. In this role she works closely with the Penn Wharton China Center and directs the Penn China Research and Engagement Fund. Before coming to Penn, Dr. Gadsden spent more than a decade working in the foreign policy field with a focus on China. She served as a Country Director for the International Republican Institute and as a Special Advisor for China at the United States Department of State.
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Nick Marziani
China and India share many historical similarities, as well as a complicated relationship shaped by political differences, growing economic ties, ongoing border disputes, and regional competition more generally. In this episode, Georgetown University Professor Oriana Skylar Mastro discusses the Sino-Indian relationship with CSCC Research Scholar Neysun Mahboubi, with particular attention to the recent Doklam standoff that was resolved in August 2017, as well as implications for U.S. security policy. The interview was recorded on September 27, 2017, in advance of Prof. Mastro's lecture at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, on "Autocratic Underbalancing, Regime Legitimacy, and China’s Responses to India’s Rise."
Oriana Skylar Mastro is an assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. This year, she is a Jeanne Kirpatrick Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where she is working on a book about China's approach to global leadership. Prof. Mastro also continues to serve as an officer in the United States Air Force Reserve, for which she works as a Political Military Affairs Strategist at PACAF. You can read more about her work at https://www.orianaskylarmastro.com
Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com
Special thanks to Itai Barsade, Kaiser Kuo, and Nick Marziani
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