The US-China Podcast

Interviewed by National Committee President Steve Orlins, Professors Cohen and Lewis discuss the findings of their new book, Challenge to China:  How Taiwan Abolished Its Version of Re-Education Through Labor.  Their work draws attention to an under-appreciated aspect of legal reforms in Taiwan and asks how Taiwan's experience might be relevant to its neighbor across the Taiwan Strait.  (Note that this interview was conducted before the announcement at the Third Plenum that Re-education through Labor will be abolished.)

David Sandalow, the Inaugural Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, and former Assistant Secretary of Energy, discusses why the world’s energy future is being shaped in China.  The interview with National Committee Senior Consultant David Youtz explores China’s dramatic energy statistics, the importance of U.S.-China dialogue and cooperation, and the ripple effects of North America’s predicted “energy independence.”

Interviewed by National Committee Senior Director for Education Programs Margot Landman, Tobie Meyer-Fong discusses her new book, What Remains:  Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China.  Meyer-Fong explores the human impact of the Taiping Rebellion, in which some 30 million people died, on those who remained after the fighting ended; how did individuals, families and communities grapple with fundamental questions of loyalty and loss as they struggled to rebuild shattered cities, bury the dead, and make sense of the horrors they had seen?

Interviewed by National Committee President Steve Orlins, Damien Ma and William Adams discuss their new book, In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China’s Ascent in the Next Decade.  China will soon have the world’s largest economy, but Ma and Adams argue that China’s economic growth will constrain it, not empower it, as they believe that China will continue to be shaped by scarcity as has been the case for much of its history. 

Professor Alex Wang (UCLA) discusses how the Chinese Party-state has primarily used top-down bureaucratic targets, rather than laws and regulations, to pursue its environmental protection goals in the last few years.  This approach has motivated local bureaucrats to take action, but not always in ways intended or desired.  Read more in his recent paper in the Harvard Environmental Law Review:http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2128167

Donald Gross, senior associate at Pacific Forum CSIS, discusses his book The China Fallacy:  How the U.S. Can Benefit from China's Rise and Avoid Another Cold War with National Committee Vice President Jan Berris.  Gross warns against attempts to contain China.  He calls, instead, for a stable peace with China that will bring greater American and Chinese prosperity consistent with principles for good Sino-American relations advanced by presidents from Nixon onward. 

China has big plans for hydropower development on the Lancang (Upper Mekong) River, which after flowing south out of Yunnan Province traverses Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.  Find out about these plans and the implications for relations between China and its downriver neighbors on this NCUSCR China podcast.

Commentators have long debated whether the space for civil society is growing or shrinking in China, or whether the concept of civil society is even relevant to China. But to many of those working in the civil society sector in China, the picture is quite clear. Two major trends are emerging in China's civil society space: the rapid growth of grassroots NGOs and the increased use of public advocacy, carried out by actors ranging from NGO networks to microbloggers. Shawn Shieh has developed these from two China Development Brief publications released earlier this year that together show an increasingly pluralistic and informed civil society acting to bring attention to, and help ameliorate, the many problems stemming from China’s rapid growth.

China is undergoing the largest migration in human history: Since the mid-1980s, roughly 300 million people have moved from China's countryside into its cities; between now and 2025, its expected that another 300 million Chinese will make their ways in. Without appropriate urban planning, design, and construction focused on sustainable development, the consequences of this massive urbanization could be dire for China and the world.

Chinese in America endured abuse and discrimination in the late 19th century, but they had a leader and a fighter in Wong Chin Foo (1847–1898), whose story is a forgotten chapter in the struggle for equal rights in America. The first to use the term “Chinese American ” – it was the name he gave to New York’s first Chinese-language newspaper – Wong defended his compatriots against malicious scapegoating and urged them to become Americanized to win their rights. A trailblazer and a born showman who proclaimed himself China’s first Confucian missionary to the United States, he founded America’s first association of Chinese voters in New York and testified before Congress to get laws that denied them citizenship repealed. Wong challenged Americans to live up to the principles they freely espoused but failed to apply to the Chinese in their midst. This evocative biography is the first book-length account of the life and times of one of America’s most famous Chinese—and one of its earliest campaigners for racial equality.