NCUSCR Events

With a GDP now rivaling that of the United States, a thriving middle class, and a large global economic network fueled by policies like the Belt and Road Initiative, it is difficult to overstate the extent to which the Chinese economy has changed since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Since 1978, ideological shifts have allowed for the expansive economic reforms and liberalization that propelled the Chinese economy to the superpower status it enjoys today. However, politics has always been a factor in determining economic policy. As a result, the role that economists have played in the story of the “China miracle” has not always been clear. In a new book, Economic Policy Making in China (1949-2016): The Role of Economists, China economics scholar and former World Bank official Pieter Bottelier analyzes the contributions made by numerous Chinese economists, and outlines how they adapted to an often shifting political landscape.

Mr. Bottelier drew upon his research and years of experience in China to identify the contributions made by China’s economists in transforming China’s economy, and what the recent renewed emphasis on ideology may mean for China’s future economic direction.  

Pieter Bottelier is a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies where he previously served as a senior adjunct professor from 1999 to 2015. He has been a senior advisor to China to The Conference Board (2006-2010), a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2009-2012), an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (2001-2003), and a consultant to the Freeman Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (1999). 

In the 1990s, as the dotcom era began to unfold, artificial intelligence (AI) expert and developer Kai-Fu Lee was busy at Apple streamlining many of the company’s early R&D projects. Those initial days, or the era of development, as Dr. Lee has since come describe it, were dominated by American technological innovation. Corporations like Apple and Microsoft paved the way for Silicon Valley companies to become global leaders. However, as Dr. Lee details in a new book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, we have moved to the era of AI implementation, and Silicon Valley is no longer the center of gravity it once was.

While American tech giants remain formidable players, the most prominent companies in areas of speech synthesis, computer vision, and machine translation are all Chinese. Moreover, Chinese consumers are significantly more comfortable than their American counterparts in embracing the growing role of AI in their daily lives. For instance, unlike in the United States, the overwhelming majority of Chinese transactions now occur on platforms such as Weibo, allowing companies to gather data at an unprecedented rate.

With the increasing industrial application of AI, the potential for huge numbers of American and Chinese jobs to be replaced by technology has enormous economic and political implications. On October 2, Dr. Kai-Fu Lee shared his views on the future of AI in both countries, as well as possible risks with the National Committee.

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and president of Sinovation Venture’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures, is a leading technology investment firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Dr. Lee was the president of Google China. Previously, he held executive positions at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. Dr. Lee received his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University both in computer science, as well as honorary doctorate degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong Kong. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

With a trade war brewing between Washington and Beijing, mounting public scrutiny, and repeated warnings by U.S. officials that Chinese investment in certain industries constitutes a national security threat, Chinese investment and commercial activity in the United States face many challenges, which cast doubt on the trajectory of Chinese outward direct investment in the United States.

As these issues flare up, Chinese companies in the United States face another hurdle that has not garnered the same attention: U.S. corporate law and regulation. As Chinese firms expand around the United States, their presence in American courts grows. Chinese companies, including state owned enterprises, must adapt to adhere to American corporate governance standards and legal requirements that are not prevalent in China.

These Chinese companies face a steep learning curve as they navigate the legal and regulatory complexities of a market-based economy. In a new book, The Clash of Capitalisms? Chinese Companies in the United States, Rutgers University Law School Professor Ji Li analyzes the adaptation of these firms to U.S. tax, non-discrimination, and employment law, as well as CFIUS compliance.

Professor Li shared his research, and discussed the future of Chinese investment in the United States and other free market economies, on September 20, in New York City.

Dr. Ji Li is professor of law at Rutgers University and a member of the associate faculty of the division of global affairs. Professor Li received his Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University and J.D. from Yale Law School where he was an Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy. Before joining the Rutgers faculty, he practiced corporate and tax law for several years in the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell. Professor Li’s teaching and scholarship explore a broad range of topics including international business transactions, taxation, contracts, comparative law, Chinese law and politics, and empirical legal studies.

During the 2018-2019 academic year, Professor Li will be in residence at Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study working on his second book, a unified theory of Chinese judicial behavior.

In the waning days of the Qing Dynasty, China, beset by political dysfunction and domestic tumult, struggled to defend against the imperialist intentions of Western powers. Following years of tensions, war between China and Great Britain eventually broke out, the result of which would propel China into the chaos of the so-called “Century of Humiliation.”

In a new book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, author Stephen R. Platt traces the complex origins of the conflict, and reveals how a once profitable and peaceful relationship descended into war.

Dr. Platt discussed his book with the National Committee on July 12th, 2018.  

Stephen R. Platt is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and holds a PhD from Yale University, where his dissertation won the Theron Rockwell Field Prize. He was a member of the 2008-2010 cohort of the National Committee's Public Intellectuals Program. His previous book, a history of the Taiping Rebellion in global context, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (Knopf 2012), was a Washington Post notable book and won the Cundill History Prize.

Hong Kong is a vibrant financial and trade center, but it must confront a variety of issues ranging from skyrocketing real estate prices to questions about its status under the “One Country, Two Systems” framework. Kurt W. Tong, Consul General of the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong and Macau, discussed many of the pressing issues Hong Kong facing Hong Kong, and implications for U.S.-Hong Kong and U.S.-China relations with the National Committee on June 26, 2018.

Kurt W. Tong became the Consul General representing the United States to Hong Kong and Macau in August 2016. As chief of mission, Mr. Tong leads a large interagency team that cooperates with the governments of Hong Kong and Macau in a variety of areas including expansion of trade and bilateral investment; combatting transnational crime; protection of the environment; and educational and cultural exchanges.

Prior to his service in Hong Kong, Consul General Tong was the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs at the Department of State, the most senior career diplomat handling economic affairs for the State Department. Before that, Mr. Tong served as the deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. Earlier, he was the U.S. ambassador for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), managing all aspects of U.S. participation in APEC, while concurrently serving as economic coordinator for the Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Mr. Tong has been a diplomat since 1990, including service as director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council from 2006 to 2008 and as economic minister-counselor in Seoul from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he served as counselor for environment, science and health at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, deputy treasury attaché in Tokyo, and economic officer in Manila. Consul General Tong was a visiting scholar at the Tokyo University faculty of economics from 1995 to 1996. Before joining the Foreign Service, he was an associate with the Boston Consulting Group in Tokyo.

Consul General Tong holds a B.A. from Princeton University, and studied economics at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. He has also studied at the Beijing Institute of Education, Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies in Taipei, Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo, and International Christian University in Tokyo.

Hailed as the “architect of victory” over the Axis Powers in the Second World War by Winston Churchill, and widely credited with devising the program to spur European recovery and limit Soviet expansion at the start of the Cold War, George Marshall’s impact on geopolitics was enormous, shaping U.S. foreign policy even today. Often missed, however, is another challenge he was asked to take on: to broker a peace deal between the Chinese Nationalists and Communists, build a democratic state in China, and prevent a communist victory.

In his new book, The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, author Daniel Kurtz-Phelan describes in detail the complicated negotiations and colorful cast of characters Marshall encountered during his 13-month mission. Mr. Kurtz-Phelan discussed his book, and the impact Marshall’s experience in China would have on domestic U.S. politics and American foreign policy for decades to come, with the National Committee on June 21, 2018.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, who became executive editor of Foreign Affairs in October 2017, was previously a fellow with New America’s international security program. Before that, he was a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a senior advisor to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. From 2010 to 2012, Mr. Kurtz-Phelan advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a member of her policy planning staff. He was also a speechwriter for Secretary Clinton, and a foreign policy advisor during her 2008 presidential campaign. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. He is a graduate of Yale University.

According to the most recent Open Doors Report, published by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in late 2017, China remains the number one sending country of international students to the United States. Approximately 350,000 Chinese currently attend American colleges and universities at the undergraduate and graduate levels. There are also growing numbers of Chinese students at American high schools.

On June 4 the National Committee hosted a program to discuss the impact of Chinese students on American academic institutions (in February 2018 FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats suggested that Chinese students and scholars conduct espionage on American campuses), and what happens when (if?) the students return to China. The first topic was addressed by Ms. Peggy Blumenthal, senior counselor to the president of IIE; while Dr. David Zweig, professor of political science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, shared his research findings on returnees.

Peggy Blumenthal, Senior Counselor to the President, Institute of International Education (IIE). After 20 years of service at the Institute of International Education, Ms. Blumenthal became its chief operating officer in 2005, shifting to the role of senior counselor in 2011.

Selected publications include International Students and Global Mobility in Higher Education: National Trends and New Directions (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), co-edited with Dr. Rajika Bhandari of IIE, and a recent article, “Welcoming the New Wave of Chinese Students on US Campuses: Changing Needs and Challenges”, in the summer 2017 edition of New Directions in Student Services, coauthored with Sonny Lim of Rice University.

David Zweig is Chair Professor, Division of Social Science, and Director, Center on China’s Transnational Relations (www.cctr.ust.hk), at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is an adjunct professor, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan, and Vice-President of the Center on China’s Globalization (Beijing).

He is the author of four books, including Internationalizing China: Domestic Interests and Global Linkages (Cornell Univ. Press, 2002) and a new edited volume, Sino-U.S. Energy Triangles: Resource Diplomacy under Hegemony, with Hao Yufan (Routledge, 2016).

Washington D.C. had never seen anything quite like it: in January, 1919, three foreign diplomats, with no known enemies, assassinated in the city's Kalorama neighborhood. Without any leads or clear motive, the police were baffled until they zeroed in on a suspect, Ziang Sung Wan, a Chinese student living in New York. He was held incommunicado without formal arrest for more than a week until he was browbeaten into a confession.

In The Third Degree: The Triple Murder that Shook Washington and Changed American Criminal Justice, part murder mystery, part courtroom drama and part landmark legal case, author Scott D. Seligman tells the forgotten story of a young man’s abuse by the police and his arduous, seven-year journey through the legal system that drew in Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John W. Davis and even J. Edgar Hoover. It culminated in a landmark Supreme Court ruling written by Justice Louis Brandeis that set the stage for Miranda v. Arizona many years later. The National Committee will partner with the Museum of Chinese in America for the launch of Mr. Seligman’s new book on May 17 in New York City.

Speaker Bio:

Scott D. Seligman is a writer, historian, genealogist, retired corporate executive and career "China hand." He holds an undergraduate degree in history from Princeton University with high honors in American civilization, and a master's degree from Harvard University. Fluent in Mandarin and conversant in Cantonese, he lived in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China for eight years and reads and writes Chinese. He has worked as a legislative assistant in Congress, a businessman in China, and a communications director of a Fortune 50 company.

He is the author of Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York's Chinatown (Viking Books, 2016), The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo (Hong Kong University Press, 2013), Three Tough Chinamen (Earnshaw Books, 2012), the best-selling Chinese Business Etiquette (Hachette, 1999) and Dealing with the Chinese (Warner Books, 1989). He is also co-author of the best-selling Cultural Revolution Cookbook (Earnshaw, 2011) and Now You're Talking Mandarin Chinese (Barron's, 2006).

He has published articles in the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, the Asian Wall Street Journal, the China Business Review, Bucknell Magazine, Howard Magazine, the Jewish Daily Forward, China Heritage Quarterly, The Cleaver Quarterly, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center blog, the New York History blog, the Granite Studio blog and Traces, the Journal of the Indiana Historical Society. He has also created several websites on historical and genealogical topics. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Revolutionary activity in Mao’s China was a public affair: through mass meetings, trials, and self-criticism, China’s communist leaders made class struggle a public, participatory experience. The mass line, however, extended far beyond Red Guard units parading through Beijing. In a new book, Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China, Yale University professor and China historian Denise Y. Ho examines how museum curators in Shanghai sought to reinterpret China’s past through the artifacts they displayed in their exhibitions. Dr. Ho argues that the exhibits provided ‘object lessons’ in ideology and political activism, serving as the medium for both mass education and mass mobilization. Professor Ho joined us on May 8, 2018, for a discussion of her book, museum curation, and how the narrative legacy of China’s historical artifacts was reinvented in Maoist Shanghai. 

Denise Y. Ho is an assistant professor of twentieth-century Chinese history at Yale University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Mao years; she is also interested in urban history, the study of information and propaganda, and the history of memory. Her scholarship has appeared in The China Quarterly, Frontiers of History in China, History Compass, and Modern China, and her writings on art, culture, and history in The Atlantic, ChinaFile, Dissent, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Nation among other publications. Prior to joining the history department at Yale, Professor Ho taught at the University of Kentucky and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

Dr. Ho received her bachelor’s degree in history from Yale, and her master’s and doctoral degrees, also in history, from Harvard. She is a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

In 2014, China announced the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), an ambitious multilateral project aimed at fostering economic development throughout Asia. The AIIB, to be led by China, raised concerns for policymakers in Washington: would AIIB undermine the existing global financial infrastructure and lead to a lowering of standards? Yet, in a dramatic setback for the United States, nearly 60 nations ultimately announced their intentions to join AIIB in 2015, including close allies such as the U.K., Germany, France, Korea, Australia and Israel.

In the two years following the bank’s official launch in January 2016, AIIB has emerged as a regional powerhouse, financing numerous diverse projects throughout Asia. AIIB now commands an impressive capital holding which rivals that of the Asian Development Bank, and a AAA credit rating on par with that of the World Bank.

Amid growing economic tensions between the United States and China, the AIIB has remained largely unknown to the American public. In a new book, A Comparative Guide to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, former AIIB General Counsel Natalie Lichtenstein draws upon her role as an architect of the AIIB charter to provide an in-depth analysis of the bank’s operations, and how the bank compares to other development banks. Ms. Lichtenstein discussed her book and the future of the AIIB with the National Committee on May 2nd in New York City.

Natalie Lichtenstein is a U.S. lawyer who has specialized in legal issues at international financial institutions, and legal development in China, since the 1970s. She was the inaugural general counsel of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the principal drafter of the AIIB Charter. Her work for AIIB drew on her 30-year legal career at the World Bank, where she advised on lending operations in China and other countries for 20 years. During her last decade there, she served in senior positions, specializing in institutional governance issues and reforms. As a young lawyer at the U.S. Treasury Department, she worked on international financial institution matters and normalization of U.S.-China relations.

Ms. Lichtenstein has taught Chinese law in the U.S. since the 1980s, and has consulted on Chinese legal development projects. She is an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a member of the advisory board of the Duke-Kunshan University. In addition to her book on the AIIB, she is the author of numerous articles in professional journals. She received her AB summa cum laude in East Asian Studies and JD from Harvard University.