NCUSCR Events

On August 24, 2015, global financial markets plunged following China’s “Black Monday,” the largest sell-off in the history of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Following a burst in the stock market bubble in June 2015, trillions of dollars were erased from the stock index throughout the summer, with the largest day of losses hitting on Black Monday. The sheer scale of the stock market crash, accompanied by weak manufacturing data and an unexpected devaluation of China’s currency exacerbated long held concerns by some economists that China’s economic development was unstable. In his new book, China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, Arthur Kroeberargues that many of these fears are exaggerated.

To understand the context of the current economic situation, Dr. Kroeber describes how the Chinese economy has evolved since 1979 and the initial reforms of the Deng Xiaoping era. The Communist Party of China has effectively managed the transformation of the economy. The Chinese leadership was able to learn from the examples of other East Asian “development states.” While there are considerable similarities, Dr. Kroeber notes that there are also profound differences between China’s development model and those of Japan and South Korea; the similarities and the differences have a profound impact on the prospects for China’s economy.

As Western economies continue to struggle to rebound from the global financial crisis of 2008, worldwide economic progress has been dependent on China’s unprecedented economic successes. Some analysts fear that systemic flaws in China’s economy will undermine China’s economic potential. Join us as Arthur R. Kroeber discusses the Chinese economy as it moves in a consumer-driven direction amid demographic and environmental challenges, with the National Committee on May 18, in New York City.

Arthur R. Kroeber is head of research at Gavekal, a financial-services firm based in Hong Kong, founder of the China-focused Gavekal Dragonomics research service, and editor of China Economic Quarterly. He divides his time between Beijing and New York. Before founding Dragonomics in 2002, he spent fifteen years as a financial and economic journalist in China and South Asia.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

Some people argue that the global balance of power is shifting away from the North Atlantic and toward the Asia-Pacific as countries such as India and China gain economic, military, and political influence. India and China may appear to be developing new international systems – for example, through the AIIB – that could threaten the post-war order developed by the United States and Western Europe. However, long-simmering tensions between India and China make it clear that they do not form a united bloc, and present an opportunity for the United States to play a role in re-shaping the balance of power throughout the world. 

Given the considerable differences arising between New Delhi and Beijing, and the fact that each country confronts enormous domestic issues including poverty, corruption, and environmental degradation on a huge scale, how can the United States manage its relationships with the two rising Asian powers?  For the third installment of our 50th Anniversary series, China and the World, Ms. Anja Manuel, author of This Brave New World: India, China and the United States, described the Sino-Indian relationship and the role the United States may play in creating a new balance of power with both India and China. Moderated by National Committee President Stephen Orlins, the program was held on May 9, 2016 in New York City.

Anja Manuel is co-founder and partner, along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, of RiceHadleyGates LLC, a strategic consulting firm.

Anja Manuel is also a lecturer in the International Policy Studies Program at Stanford University where she designed and teaches a course on U.S. foreign policy in Asia.

From 2005 to 2007, Anja Manuel served as special assistant to Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns at the U.S. Department of State. In this role, Ms. Manuel was responsible for South Asia policy, Congressional outreach and legal matters. She was part of the negotiating team for the U.S.-India civilian nuclear accord, helped to secure passage of the accord in the U.S. Congress, and was deeply involved in developing U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan.

With the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese communist leadership established a formal alliance with the Soviet Union. The pact between the two communist giants proved to be short-lived as ideological differences between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong, coupled with the growing fear in China of Soviet encirclement, compromised the alliance. Eventually, following several border skirmishes, including a war in 1969, China’s leaders feared a Soviet invasion. To counter this, Mao sought rapprochement with the United States, a move that would define Sino-Soviet relations until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

For the second installment of our 50th Anniversary series, China and the World, Dr. Maria Repnikova, expert on Sino-Russian relations, described the latest developments in the relationship with National Committee President Stephen Orlins on April 18, 2016 in New York City.    

Dr. Maria Repnikova is a scholar of comparative Chinese and Russian media politics and Sino-Russian relations. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where she is completing a book on critical journalists in China.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

Dr. John Garver, author of China’s Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China discussed his book with National Committee on U.S.-China Relations Vice President Jan Berris on April 14, 2016 in New York City.

When the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, China was in a state of disarray. Decades of occupation and civil war had left the country fractured and impoverished. The nation embarked on an ambitious effort to overhaul its economic and political systems. While its domestic agenda was the priority for the Communist Party of China, China had to develop a foreign policy, particularly to deal with the world’s capitalist countries in the midst of the Cold War.

With memories of the “century of humiliation” fresh in Chinese people’s minds, countering inroads of Western bourgeois liberalism was at the top of the international agenda during the early years of the PRC. As the Cold War evolved, however, so, too, did China’s foreign policy concerns.  Following Stalin’s death, China’s leadership grew increasingly skeptical of the Soviet Union and the intentions of its new Premier, Nikita Khrushchev. The Sino-Soviet split exposed what author and scholar John W. Garver considers the real force shaping the PRC’s foreign policy: regime survival. While many political scientists have analyzed China’s approach to the split through a realist lens, focusing on national interest, Dr. Garver argues that de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union threatened the ideological foundation of the Chinese communist regime. 

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

In the months leading up to the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, China began making a series of pledges to overhaul its environmental and energy policies. To curb emissions, it announced the creation of a cap-and-trade program, restrictions on domestic coal production, and investment in renewable energy. At the Paris conference, China’s top climate negotiator expressed confidence in the measures and policies China was putting into place.

However, questions remain whether China’s new approaches will be sufficient to curb global climate change. Despite being the world’s largest investor in green energy, China is still the world’s largest producer of greenhouses gases. Furthermore, recent allegations that China has been underreporting carbon emissions have cast doubt on China’s ability to meet its international environmental commitments.

On April 5, 2016 at the National Committee’s New York offices, Mark L. Clifford, author of The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia’s Environmental Emergency, discussed his latest research with National Committee President Stephen Orlins.

Mark L. Clifford is the Hong Kong-based executive director of the Asia Business Council. Previously he was editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Standard, and the Asia regional editor for BusinessWeek.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

Dr. Elanah Uretsky’s recent book, Occupational Hazards:  Sex, Business, and HIV in Post-Mao China,  follows a group of Chinese businessmen and government officials as they conduct business in Beijing and western Yunnan Province, uncovering informal networks that result in political favors for the businessmen. The networks are built on liquor, cigarettes, food, and sex; risky behaviors turn into occupational hazards.

Occupational Hazards follows men both powerful and vulnerable - to China's growing epidemics of sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS. Examining the relationships between elite masculine networking practices and vulnerability to HIV infection, the book includes the stories of numerous government officials and businessmen who visit commercial sex workers but avoid HIV testing for fear of threatening their economic and political status. Their lives are complicated by a political system that does not publicly acknowledge the risks and by international approaches to disease control that limit the reach of public health interventions. Dr. Uretsky offers insights into how complex socio-cultural and politico-economic negotiations affect the development of and approaches to China's HIV epidemic. 

Dr. Uretsky discussed her research with the National Committee on March 15, 2016 in New York City. She is a medical anthropologist in the departments of global health, anthropology, and the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.

Despite its implementation at a time of global concern about over-population, China’s one-child policy developed into one of the most controversial social policies of the twentieth century. Between 1970 and 1976, the Chinese government successfully led the “Long, Late, and Few” campaign which aimed to curtail population growth at a time of limited resources. However, by the end of the decade, after a brief decline China’s population growth rate began to rise again, prompting the leaders to reexamine their efforts. In response, in 1980 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China announced the implementation of the so-called one-child policy, in which Han couples would be limited to one child. There were exceptions, particularly for rural families.

The contentious population control policy lasted for more than three decades; in late 2015 the Chinese government announced that families would be allowed to have two children. The one-child policy has had tremendous demographic repercussions far beyond a significantly reduced birth rate. Acclaimed author and journalist Mei Fong has spent years documenting and analyzing the impact of the policy. In her book, One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment, Ms. Fong writes about the origins of the policy and some of its unintended consequences including the creation of “little emperors” (spoiled children), a huge gender imbalance, and a rapidly aging population. Mei Fong discussed her book with the National Committee on March 8, 2016 in New York City.  

Bio:

As a journalist Mei Fong covered Hong Kong and China for the Wall Street Journal, winning a shared Pulitzer Prize for her stories on China’s transformative process ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She is believed to be the first Malaysian to win a Pulitzer. Her stories on China’s migrant workers also won a 2006 Human Rights Press Award from Amnesty International and the Hong Kong Correspondents Club, as well as awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia and Society of Professional Journalists. After leaving China, she joined the faculty at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications. She is currently a fellow at New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Given its experience of colonialism, Africans have long been suspicious of Chinese intentions on the continent. Recent allegations of unprecedented Chinese state-sponsored acquisitions of African farmland have alarmed many who now fear that Africa, with its large tracts of untouched arable land, will enter a new colonial era.

In her book, Will Africa Feed China?, leading expert and National Committee director Deborah Bräutigam analyzes the nature of Chinese agricultural investment in Africa. After conducting research in several African countries, Dr. Bräutigam discovered that despite claims of a calculated Chinese plan to control rural Africa for its own purposes, Chinese agricultural investment in Africa has been remarkably limited; in fact, China exports more agricultural goods to Africa than it imports. 

The concern is not limited to agriculture; Chinese investment throughout Africa has generally been viewed through a neocolonial lens. The widespread suspicion calls into question the foundation of Sino-African relations. Dr. Bräutigam discussed her book, and Chinese policy in Africa at the first installment of our 50th Anniversary special series, China and the World, on February 25, 2016 in New York City. 

Dr. Deborah Bräutigam is the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy, director of the International Development Program, and director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Her most recent books include The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Will Africa Feed China? (OUP, 2015). Before joining SAIS in 2012, she taught at Columbia University and American University.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

Born to American missionaries in northern India, John Birch went to China in 1940 as an Independent Baptist missionary. Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Birch volunteered for the U.S. Army to fight the Japanese in China and was recruited by Claire Chennault, leader of the Flying Tigers and the U.S. 14th Air Force, as a field intelligence officer.

John Birch is better known today for what happened after he was shot and killed by Chinese Communist forces in the days immediately following Japan’s surrender. In the acrimonious debate over the "loss" of China, U.S. Senator William Knowland claimed that Birch was a martyr whose murder revealed the true intentions of the Communists. Thirteen years after Birch's death, a retired businessman from Boston named Robert Welch chose him as the figurehead of an anti-communist advocacy group, the John Birch Society.

In John Birch: A Life (Oxford, 2016), Terry Lautz, a longtime scholar of U.S.-China relations and director of the National Committee, unravels the mythology surrounding John Birch after conducting extensive archival research, interviewing Birch’s brothers, analyzing letters he wrote, and traveling to the places in China where he lived and died. In addition, Dr. Lautz explores the perception that John Birch is the personification of the longstanding American ambition to save and defend China. Terry Lautz discussed his book with the National Committee on February 11 in New York City.

Bio:

Dr. Terry Lautz is a Moynihan Research Fellow and interim director of the East Asia Program at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He is former vice president of the Henry Luce Foundation, a director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, chair of the board of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

Dr. David M. Lampton delivered the 10th annual Barnett-Oksenberg Lecture on Sino-American Relations in Shanghai on November 23, 2016. This annual forum affords the opportunity for a frank and forthright discussion of current and potential issues between the two countries and is the only ongoing lecture series on U.S.-China relations that takes place in Mainland China. A transcript of Dr. Lampton’s prepared remarks is available here: https://www.ncuscr.org/content/managing-relations-between-two-big-powers-david-m-lampton-2015-barnett-oksenberg-lecture

Dr. David Lampton is the George and Sadie Hyman Professor and director of SAIS-China and China studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Dr. Lampton is former president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and the author of numerous books, including The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money and Minds.

The program is cosponsored by the National Committee and the Shanghai Association of American Studies, with the cooperation of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.