China 21

Andy Rothman speaks with Victor Shih on the opportunities and volatility of investing in the People's Republic and the outlook on China's impact on global economic growth. They discuss the risk of including China's bonds and SOEs in passive indices, the challenge of data verification and spurring entrepreneurship, how to actively look for the dynamic industries and avoid risks, and the rebalancing of the economy towards services and consumption.

Andy Rothman is an Investment Strategist at Matthews Asia. He has a leading role in shaping and presenting the firm’s thoughts on how China should be viewed at the country, regional and global level. He is the author of the Sinology investment analysis column. Rothman lived and worked in China for more than 20 years, analyzing the country’s economic and political environment. Rothman's Sinology column mentioned in the podcast is entitled: "Has the China Collapse Finally Arrived?"

Victor Shih is the Ho Miu Lam Chair in China and Pacific Relations and associate professor of political economy at UC San Diego School of Global Policy & Strategy. His latest book is Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation.

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego, and is a production of the 21st Century China Center

Editor: Samuel Tsoi

In the critical period of China’s opening in the 1980s, Chinese policymakers invited Western economists to learn and debate the way forward for China, and that’s the subject of fascinating research by Julian Gewirtz in his book “Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China” Gewirtz is currently a Fellow in History and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He completed doctorate in history at the University of Oxford, and he is interviewed by Charlie Vest, a Master’s Candidate in Chinese Political and Economic Affairs here at the School of Global Policy & Strategy, and he is the Editor-in-Chief for the China Focus blog.

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Editor: Samuel Tsoi

As President Trump’s team continues trade negotiations in Beijing this week, we bring you this recently recorded conversation between GPS professors Natalia Ramondo, Barry Naughton and Victor Shih. They discuss the current threat of tariffs by both countries, and implications on multilateral trade norms, the effectiveness of Chinese industrial policy and American innovation strategy.

Natalia Ramondo is an associate professor of economics at GPS, Barry Naughton is the Sokwanlok professor of international affairs, and Victor Shih is the Ho Miu Lam professor of political science.

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Editor: Samuel Tsoi

Ian Johnson joins Richard Madsen to discusses how today’s Chinese Communist Party is striving for a national set of values, and how ordinary Chinese are seeking for deeper meaning in their lives, and the lessons for the rest of the world in this global populist moment.

Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter in China for over 20 years, for various publications, including The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, and is author of a new book: The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao.

Dr. Richard Madsen is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UC San Diego. He is the author or co-author of 12 books, including the landmark village study “Chen Village under Mao and Deng” and Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan.” He is currently working on a book about happiness in China, which he describes as an exploration on “searching for a good life in China in an age of anxiety.”

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Host & Editor: Samuel Tsoi

Historian Paul Pickowicz interviews acclaimed author John Pomfret about patterns in the long history of US-China relations, and how it informs the controversies in the current moment of Sino-American relations ranging from the impact of Chinese students on US universities, Xi Jinping’s end to presidential term limits, and trade and business relations.

Dr. Paul Pickowicz is one of the country’s leading historians of modern China with 15 books engaging across disciplines that investigated the impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese peasants, the history of Chinese cinema, Cold War propaganda strategies and Chinese soft-power initiatives.

John Pomfret is an award-winning journalist with The Washington Post and is currently a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Beijing. He is the author of the acclaimed book, Chinese Lessons, and has won several awards for his coverage of Asia, including the Osborne Elliot Prize. He holds degrees from Stanford University and was one of the first American students to study at Nanjing University.

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Host & Editor: Samuel Tsoi

Tai Ming Cheung, Mikko Huotari and Barry Naughton unpack the China factor in the case of the U.S. government’s protection of Qualcomm, and discuss what kind of tools and policies will emerge as the rules of engagement in international investment and technological competition continue to become murky and fraught with geopolitical tensions.

Dr. Barry Naughton is one of America’s most highly respected economists working on China. He holds the Sokwanlok Chair on Chinese International Affairs at UC San Diego School of Global Policy & Strategy (or GPS)

Dr. Tai Ming Cheung is an Associate Professor at GPS, and the director of Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, based here at UC San Diego. He leads IGCC’s Minerva project on The Evolving Relationship Between Technology and National Security in China.

Mikko Huotari is Head of the Geoeconomics and International Security Program at the Mercator Institute of China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin, Europe's largest independent think tank dedicated to research on contemporary China. He is currently a visiting scholar at here at the 21st Century China Center.

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Host & Editor: Samuel Tsoi

21st Century China Center faculty reflect on Sunday's announcement by Chinese Communist Party to end term limits on the presidency, clearing the way for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely. Even in the context of the party's authoritarian rule, it is a significant break from rules established in the 1980s to prevent the country from returning to the days when Mao Zedong dominated every sphere of the political system.

Susan Shirk is the chair of the 21st Century China Center, Barry Naughton is the Sokwanlok professor of international affairs, and Victor Shih is the Ho Miu Lam professor of political science, and Lei Guang is the Director of the 21st Century China Center.

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Host & Editor: Samuel Tsoi

Professors Fukuyama and Naughton trace the origins of the Chinese state, its historic economic modernization, and how the current Xi Jinping era is challenging assumptions and theories about political order and decay. They also discussed the relationship between political freedom and technological innovation and roles of China and US in global leadership.

Dr. Francis Fukuyama is professor of political science at Stanford University, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Dr. Fukuyama is the author of the landmark book on international relations, The End of History and the Last Man. His recent work is equally grand in scale and influence, titled Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy.

Dr. Fukuyama delivered the 2018 Sokwanlok Distinguished Lecture on China at UC San Diego, in which he presented his latest research on China's infrastructure investment as a development strategy domestically and the basis for its ambitious Belt-and-Road initiative abroad.

Dr. Barry Naughton is the Sokwanlok Chair of Chinese International Affairs at the School of Global Policy & Strategy. As one of the world's most highly respected economists, he is an authority on the Chinese economy with an emphasis on issues relating to industry, trade, finance and China's transition to a market economy. Dr. Naughton has written the authoritative textbook "The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth," and has most recently edited the volume titled "State Capitalism, Institutional Adaptation, and the Chinese Miracle."

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Host & Editor: Samuel Tsoi

UCLA sociologist Ching Kwan Lee discusses her new book that is the result of over six years of ethnographic research in Zambia on Chinese capital and labor. In The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa, Prof. Lee analyzes the peculiarity of outbound Chinese state capital by comparing it with global private capital in copper and construction in Zambia. Refuting the rhetorical narratives of “Chinese colonialism” and “south-south cooperation,” Prof. Lee chronicles the multi-faceted struggles that confront and differentiate these two varieties of capital, and discuss their uneven potentials for post-colonial African development, China's Belt-and-Road Initiative, and telling a more nuanced story about Global China. The book is available via Chicago University Press in December 2017: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo22657847.html

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Host & Editor: Samuel Tsoi

Dr. Somkiat Tangkitvanich, President of the Thailand Development Research Institute, discusses current Thailand-China relations and the impact of Chinese investment and infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia.

Dr. Tangkitvanich is a leading Thai expert in the areas of trade and investment policies, innovation policy, education policy and information, communication and technology policy. He is an Eisenhower Fellow and a member of the Trilateral Commission. He obtained his Ph.D. in computer science from Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Dr. Tangkitvanich is a weekly commentator for Thai PBS, Thailand’s public television. He has been instrumental in drafting many laws in Thailand. Under his leadership, the team of thinkers and researchers at Thailand Development and Research Institute was nominated “Person of the Year” in 2012 by the Bangkok Post, for demonstrating that rational debate is the key to healing a fractured nation and advancing development.

Dr. Tangkitvanich was a Pacific Leadership Fellow at the Center on Global Transformation in November 2017.

This episode was recorded at UC San Diego

Host: Samuel Tsoi