NCUSCR Events

Former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank Justin Yifu Lin presents his view of the Chinese economy's future at the annual Forecast of China’s Economy for 2019, hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and Peking University’s China Center for Economic Research, at the Citigroup Center on January 10, 2019.

Justin Yifu Lin, Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, is director of Center for New Structural Economics, dean of Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development, and professor and honorary dean of the National School of Development at Peking University. He was the senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, 2008-2012.

An expert panel discusses the impact of the U.S.-China trade war on China’s economy and financial markets, the effect of China’s structural economic reform on the global economy, and the recent slowdown and challenges in China’s economy and relevant economic policies. Recorded at the annual Forecast of China’s Economy for 2019, hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and Peking University’s China Center for Economic Research, at the Citigroup Center on January 10, 2019.

Panelists:

Nicholas R. Lardy, Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Catherine Mann, Chief Global Economist, Citi

Lu Feng, Professor, National School of Development (NSD), Peking University (PKU); Director, China Macroeconomic Research Center, PKU

Yao Yang, Dean, NSD, PKU
Zha Daojiong, Professor, School of International Studies, PKU

Moderator: Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Contributor, CNBC

Former Chairman of China Merchants Group and China Merchants Bank Qin Xiao presents his research on the new paradigm that the U.S.-China trade war represents and possible solutions to the conflict at the annual Forecast of China’s Economy for 2019, hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and Peking University’s China Center for Economic Research, at the Citigroup Center on January 10, 2019.

Qin Xiao, who received his Ph.D. in economics from Cambridge University, is a council member of the FSDC (Financial Services Development Council, HK) and guest professor at Tsinghua University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He served as chairman of China Merchants Group and China Merchants Bank; president and vice chairman of China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC); and chairman of CITIC Industrial Bank. He was a deputy to the Ninth National People’s Congress, a member of the 10th and 11th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and an advisor on the Foreign Currency Policy of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. He also served as chairman of APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC) for 2001. His papers and books in economics, management, and social transformation have been published in China and abroad.

Following decades of enmity, on December 15, 1978, the United States and China announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries as of January 1, 1979. Diplomatic rapprochement offered hope that the countries would be able to look beyond their differences to cooperate on the global stage.

On December 18, the National Committee convened a panel representing the diverse fields of business, diplomacy, arts and culture, and academic exchange to reflect on where the bilateral relationship was 40 years ago, is today, and may be headed in the future.

Speaker Bios:

Cathy Barbash is a specialist in cultural diplomacy and creative industry development and an independent producer, working primarily with the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Cuba. Barbash has spent over 35 years managing and consulting to organizations including The Philadelphia Orchestra, the United States Department of State, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, Arts Midwest, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Juilliard School, Nederlander Worldwide Entertainment, China Shanghai International Arts Festival, and the China National Centre for the Performing Arts. She was the lead architect of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s current China tour/residency project. Since normalization of United States-Cuba relations, she has worked with La Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, Casa de las Américas, and the Festival Jazz Plaza Havana.

 

Chas W. Freeman, Jr. is a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He is the former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs (1993–1994), ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1989–1992), principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs (1986–1989), and chargé d'affaires in Bangkok (1984–1986) and Beijing (1981–1984). He served as vice chair of the Atlantic Council (1996-2008), co-chair of the United States China Policy Foundation (1996–2009), and president of the Middle East Policy Council (1997–2009).

 

Mr. Maurice R. Greenberg is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Starr Insurance Companies. Mr. Greenberg retired as Chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG) in March 2005. He formed the American International Group, Inc. (AIG) as a Starr subsidiary, and served as that company’s chairman and CEO until March 2005. Under his nearly 40 years of leadership, AIG grew from an initial market value of $300 million to $180 billion, becoming the largest insurance company in the world.

 

David M. Lampton is Hyman Professor and director of China Studies Emeritus at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he currently is senior fellow at SAIS’ Foreign Policy Institute. He will be an Oksenberg-Rohlen fellow and research scholar at Stanford University’s Asia Pacific Research Center beginning in January 2019. Having started his academic career at the Ohio State University, Dr. Lampton is chairman of the Asia Foundation, former president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and former Dean of Faculty at SAIS. He now serves as a director of the National Committee. He is the author of Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing U.S.-China Relations, 1989-2000 (2001); The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds (2008); and, The Making of Chinese Foreign and Security Policy (editor, Stanford University Press, 2001).

Last Saturday, voters in Taiwan went to the polls in an election widely seen as a referendum on President Tsai Ing-wen. Her party, the Democratic Progressive Party, suffered numerous electoral defeats in crucial local races. The opposition party, the Kuomintang, capitalized on voter frustration with a stagnant economy, rocky relations with the Mainland, and a conservative base that was energized by a referendum on the legalization of same-sex marriage.

The National Committee convened a teleconference call on November 30 with Taiwan experts Jacques deLisle and Margaret Lewis to discuss the ramifications of the election results for Taiwan, cross-Strait ties, and U.S.-Taiwan relations. Professor deLisle called in from Taipei, and Professor Lewis has recently returned from a year in Taiwan. 

 

Jacques deLisle is the Stephen A. Cozen Professor of Law, professor of political science, director of the Center for East Asian Studies, deputy director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, and co-director of the Center for Asian Law at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His writing focuses on China’s engagement with the international legal order, domestic legal reform in China, and Taiwan’s international status and cross-strait relations.

He is the co-editor of China’s Global Engagement (2017), New Media, the Internet, and a Changing China (2016); China’s Challenges (2014); Political Changes in Taiwan under Ma Ying-jeou (2014); and China Under Hu Jintao (2005). His work has appeared in Orbis, theAmerican Journal of International Law, American Society of International Law Proceedings, Journal of Contemporary China, and many other law reviews, foreign affairs, and policy journals. He is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
  Margaret Lewis is a professor of law at Seton Hall University. Professor Lewis’s research focuses on law in mainland China and Taiwan with an emphasis on criminal justice. She has been a Fulbright senior scholar at National Taiwan University, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Public Intellectuals Program fellow with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and a delegate to the U.S.-Japan Foundation's U.S.-Japan Leadership Program. She has participated in the State Department’s Legal Experts Dialogue with China, has testified before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, and is a consultant to the Ford Foundation.
 
Before joining Seton Hall, Professor Lewis served as a senior research fellow at NYU School of Law’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute. Following graduation from law school, she worked as an associate at the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen &; Hamilton in New York City. She then served as a law clerk for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Diego.

During President Obama’s second term in office, the United States and China reached several agreements aimed at curbing each country’s greenhouse emissions, a major factor in climate change. Following years of stalemate, the partnership between the world’s two largest economies and emitters paved way for the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. However, much of this progress remains in question following President Trump’s decision in 2017 to withdraw the United States from the multinational accord.

As the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide per capita, the full withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement has cast doubt on the ability of the international community to combat climate change successfully, and was seen by many as a full retreat of American leadership. However, in a new book, Will China Save the Planet? author Barbara Finamore explains that under Xi Jinping, China has emerged as the leader in environmental governance, and has the potential to fill the void left by the United States.

On November 28, Ms. Finamore discussed her book, and explored how China overcame internal obstacles to transform itself into a pioneer in the clean energy revolution.

 

Barbara Finamore is a senior attorney and Asia director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Ms. Finamore founded NRDC’s China Program, which promotes innovative policy development, capacity building and market transformation in China with a focus on climate, clean energy, environmental protection and urban solutions. Ms. Finamore has had 35 years of experience in environmental law and energy policy, focusing on China for over two decades. She has also worked in NRDC's nuclear nonproliferation program, at the U.S. Departments of Justice and the Interior, and as a consultant to the United Nations Development Programme and the Center for International Environmental Law.

 

The events of the Arab Spring in 2011 demonstrated the potential effect that social media can have when used as a catalyst for social change. In the wake of the uprisings, rumors spread across the Chinese internet of a so-called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ aimed at overthrowing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), prompting a swift government crackdown across both the physical and digital worlds.

Since then, as Chinese social media outlets such as Weibo and Weixin have exploded in popularity, the Chinese government has relied upon an expansive censorship apparatus to monitor and suppress potential unrest of Chinese netizens.

In a new book, Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience, Professor Rongbin Han explores the restrictions imposed on Chinese netizens, and analyzes the activity of hired trolls, including the “fifty-cent army,” who flood Chinese social media platforms with nationalistic messages. 

On November 26, as Professor Han discussed his book, and outlined how the state, along with individual netizens, curtail online expression and allow for the Chinese government to withstand internal pressures.

 

Rongbin Han is an assistant professor in the department of international affairs at the University of Georgia. He received MA and PhD degrees in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, a master’s degree in social sciences from the National University of Singapore, and a bachelor’s degree in international politics from Peking University.

Some of the central arguments of the 2016 presidential campaign emphasized growing American fear and distrust of globalization. Then-candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump energized large portions of the electorate against existing free trade agreements, particularly the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the trade relationship between the United States and China was held up for particular attack. Since he was elected, President Donald Trump has lambasted Chinese trade policies, and has argued that the trade imbalance between the two largest economies was part of a Chinese effort to undermine the United States.

In a new book, Blaming China: It Might Feel Good but it Won’t Fix America’s Economy, author Benjamin Shobert explains how many of the issues raised during the campaign, and general U.S. anxiety about a rising China, is misplaced. According to Mr. Shobert, China has become an easy target for Americans to project their frustrations with the overall political dysfunction, economic difficulties, and foreign policy blunders since 9/11, much of which actually has nothing to do with China.

On November 1, Mr. Shobert offered an alternative view of China, and how Americans should approach the most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century.

Benjamin Shobert is senior associate for international health at NBR, where his work has emphasized market access issues and innovation policies specific to the life science sector in China. He is the director of Healthcare NExT Strategy and Business Development at the Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research group and a lecturer in the Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington. He founded the Seattle-based Rubicon Strategy Group, a consulting firm that specialized in China and Southeast Asia's healthcare, life science, and senior care industries. 

Since the gruesome terrorist attack in the Kunming train station in 2014 carried out by members of a Xinjiang separatist group, and a spate of attacks in Xinjiang since the Urumqi clashes in 2009, the Chinese authorities have grown increasingly concerned about domestic and international Islamist terrorism. The number of arrests in Xinjiang has skyrocketed recently, accounting for 13% of the total number of indictments in China in 2017, even though the population of Xinjiang makes up only 1.5% of the country’s total. The government has banned ‘extremist’ behavior in Xinjiang such as fasting during Ramadan, avoiding alcohol, and wearing veils and growing beards, all practices associated with Islam.

Events in Xinjiang took a disturbing turn earlier this year as allegations grew of the systematic detention of Uyghurs by Chinese authorities in camps throughout the autonomous region. A United Nations report alleged that as many as one million people, or roughly 7% of the Muslim population of Xinjiang, had been sent to these detention facilities. The Chinese government has insisted that the camps are for ‘re-education’ purposes, a claim rejected by the United States government and many others.

China has also been navigating a shifting international context, from concerns over Uyghur fighters in Syria, ISIS propaganda material targeting China, fears over safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the spillover implications of new trafficking routes for Uyghurs fleeing China through Southeast Asia.

The National Committee hosted a conversation with Andrew Small of the German Marshall Fund, an expert on Chinese counterterrorism policy, on October 25, to analyze the reports of the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs in the context of international terrorism.

 

Andrew Small is a senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund's (GMF) Asia Program, which he established in 2006. His research focuses on U.S.–China relations, Europe–China relations, Chinese policy in South Asia, and broader developments in China's foreign and economic policy. 

In a recent Washington Post editorial, western China scholars were taken to task for engaging in self-censorship:

When it comes to China, Americans are victims of an insidious kind of censorship that stunts the debate they hear and read about in nearly invisible ways…  The upshot [of fear of visa denials, concern that university administrators will be upset, and worry that Chinese colleagues will be harmed] is that America’s… leading experts on China often remain silent as its regime becomes ever more repressive. (Washington Post, September 23. 2018)

Where is the evidence?  Professors Rory Truex and Sheena Greitens, fellows in the National Committee’s Public Intellectuals Program (PIP), conducted a study to assess the extent of repression in the China field. On October 22, Professor Truex presented their findings, and Columbia Law School Professor Benjamin Liebman, also a PIP fellow, served as commentator.

Rory Truex is an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. He studies comparative politics, focusing on Chinese politics and non-democratic regimes. His book, Making Autocracy Work, explores the nature of policymaking and representation in China’s legislative system. His current research looks at the nature of repression and human rights abuses in contemporary China. He recently received the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Award for distinguished teaching. 

Benjamin L. Liebman is the Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law and director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia Law School. He is also the director of the Parker School of Foreign and Comparative Law. His current research focuses on the use of computational tools to study Chinese court judgments, the roles of artificial intelligence and big data in the Chinese legal system, Chinese tort law amd criminal procedure, and the evolution of China’s courts. His recent publications include Regulating the Visible Hand: The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism (with Curtis J. Milhaupt), Oxford University Press, 2015, and “Leniency in Chinese Criminal Law: Everyday Justice in Henan,” Berkeley Journal of International Law, 2015.