The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a project of breathtaking scale that aims to reshape economic geography and enhance China’s centrality in the world.  Estimates for the costs of infrastructure to create a sea and land network linking more than 60 countries from Asia to Europe run upwards of US $6 trillion.  To date, China has committed several hundred billion yuan and created financial institutions to carry out the Belt and Road vision, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund, alongside the China Development Bank, Export-Import Bank, and state-owned commercial banks. 

Does China have the financial wherewithal to implement this grand scheme?

This talk examines China’s recent development and places the BRI in the long arc of fiscal expansion since the turn of the century.  Under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the government spent lavishly on boosting public services, especially in the rural areas, using buoyant revenues that grew from ¥1.34 trillion to ¥8.3 trillion during the decade of 2000-2010.  The BRI is a signature program in Xi Jinping’s assertive foreign policy, likewise conceived in an era of high growth and high foreign reserve accumulation.  What happens when China’s growth slows?  Will China’s fiscal institutions be robust enough to manage the transition and avoid overextending its finances under the BRI?

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Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy is a record of a thirty-year research project that Gary G. Hamilton and Kao Cheng-shu began in 1987.  A distinguished sociologist and university administrator in Taiwan, Kao and his research team (which included Prof. Hamilton during his frequent visits to Taiwan) interviewed over 800 owners and managers of Taiwanese firms in Taiwan, China, and Vietnam.  Some were re-interviewed over ten times during this period.  The length of this project allows them a vantage point to challenge the conventional interpretations of Asian industrialization and to present a new interpretation of the global economy that features an enduring alliance between, on the one hand, American and European retailers and merchandisers and, on the other hand, Asian contract manufacturers, with Taiwanese industrialists becoming the most prominent contract manufacturers in the past forty years.

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This event is organized by the Taiwan Democracy and Security Project, part of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at Shorenstein APARC. Formerly the Taiwan Democracy Project at CDDRL.

- To RSVP please click here -

Please note that this event will take place in Beijing, P.R.C. at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

Some of the world’s most critical flashpoints are concentrated in the Asia-Pacific today. The 2017 Lee Shau Kee World Leaders Forum will examine East Asia’s geopolitical volatilities in the context of China’s rapid rise while assessing the evolving role of the United States in the region. The Forum will first include remarks by the Director of FSI and former U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Michael A. McFaul, on the historical origins and contemporary consequences of President Trump’s worldview. A panel discussion will follow with leading policy experts, including the Director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, Shorenstein APARC, and former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry; Associate Professor and Vice President of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, Yu Tiejun; William J. Perry Fellow in the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC and former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Kathleen Stephens; Executive Director of the China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea and Dean of the School of International Relations at Nanjing University, Zhu Feng; and Shorenstein APARC Fellow at FSI and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council and Assistant Secretary of State of Intelligence and Research, Thomas Fingar.  The expert panel will examine the current state of U.S.-China relations in this increasingly turbulent region.

The Lee Shau Kee World Leaders Forum is an annual event established to raise public understanding of the complex issues China and other countries face in the course of rapid development. The purpose of the Lee Shau Kee World Leaders Forum is to foster engagement among government, academic, private sector and civil society leaders on pressing challenges of global importance that demand creative and innovative solutions.

This year’s event also marks the Tenth Anniversary of the China Program and the Fifth Anniversary of the Stanford Center at Peking University.

Agenda

2:00-2:15 PM                     Welcome remarks

2:15-3:15 PM                     Keynote Address: The Historical Origins and Contemporary Consequences of

                                               President Trump's Worldview, Ambassador Michael A. McFaul

3:15-3:30 PM                     Break

3:30-5:30 PM                     Panel Discussion: The United States, China, and the Asia-Pacific Region

                                                Amb. Karl Eikenberry

                                                Dr. Yu Tiejun

                                                Amb. Kathleen Stephens

                                                Dr. Zhu Feng

                                                Dr. Thomas Fingar

Please note that this event will take place in Beijing, P.R.C. at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

Drawing on his latest book, Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom is Wrong (Oxford University Press, 2017), Yukon Huang will highlight the reform challenges that China's leadership, recently anointed at the 19^th Party Congress, will face. These include dealing with negative global opinions of the country, surging debt levels, a prolonged growth slowdown, entrenched corruption, trade and investment tensions and pressures for political liberalization. Dr. Huang argues that many of the mainstream assumptions for addressing these issues are misguided and that the related policy prescriptions are, therefore, flawed.

A book signing will follow. Copies of Dr. Huang's book will be available for purchase

[[{"fid":"228512","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","alt":"","title":""},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"5":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","alt":"","title":""}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"style":"margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; padding: 0px; float: left; height: 262px; width: 200px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto","data-delta":"5"}}]]Yukon Huang is currently a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Asia Program. He was formerly the World Bank’s Country Director for China. His research focuses on China’s economy and its regional and global impact. He is a featured commentator for the Financial Times on China, and his articles are seen frequently in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Foreign Affairs, National Interest and Caixin. He has authored or co-authored East Asian Visions: Perspectives on Economic Development (2006); Reshaping Economic Geography in East Asia (2009); and International Migration and Development in East Asia and the Pacific (2014). His latest book is Cracking the China Conundrum: Why Conventional Economic Wisdom is Wrong (2017). He has a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a B.A. from Yale University.

Abstract 

Scholars have credited a model of state-led capitalism called the developmental state with producing the first wave of the East Asian economic miracle. Using historical evidence based on original archival research, this talk offers a geopolitical explanation for the origins of the developmental state. In contrast to previous studies that have emphasized colonial legacies or domestic political factors, I argue that the developmental state was the legacy of the rivalry between the United States and Communist China during the Cold War. Responding to the acute tensions in Northeast Asia in the early postwar years, the United States supported emergency economic controls in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to enforce political stability. In response to the belief that the Communist threat would persist over the long term, the U.S. strengthened its clients by laying the foundations of a capitalist, export-oriented economy under bureaucratic guidance. The result of these interventions was a distinctive model of state-directed capitalism that scholars would later characterize as a developmental state.

I verify this claim by examining the rivalry between the United States and the Chinese Communists and demonstrating that American threat perceptions caused the U.S. to promote unorthodox economic policies among its clients in Northeast Asia. In particular, I examine U.S. relations with the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan, where American efforts to create a bulwark against Communism led to the creation of an elite economic bureaucracy for administering U.S. economic aid. In contrast, the United States decided not to create a developmental state in the Philippines because the Philippine state was not threatened by the Chinese Communists. Instead, the Philippines faced a domestic insurgency that was weaker and comparatively short-lived. As a result, the U.S. pursued a limited goal of maintaining economic stability instead of promoting rapid industrialization. These findings shed new light on the legacy of statism in American foreign economic policy and highlight the importance of geopolitics in international development.

Bio

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James Lee is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He specializes in International Relations with a focus on U.S. foreign policy in East Asia and relations across the Taiwan Strait. James also serves as the Senior Editor for Taiwan Security Research, an academic website that aggregates news and commentary on the economic and political dimensions of Taiwan's security.

This event is co-sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), both part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

For this special theme panel, the Taiwan Democracy Project has invited presentations that examine important changes in Taiwan’s party politics and cross-Strait relations since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen and a DPP majority in the legislature in Taiwan in January 2016. The event will be held in San Francisco, CA, directly following the conclusion of the American Political Science Association annual conference there, and is open to the public. Conference attendees with an interest in Taiwan are especially encouraged to attend.

The event will include two panels followed by open discussion:

12:00-1:30pm  

Panel I. Party Politics after the 2016 Elections

1.     Nathan Batto, “The KMT Party Organization”

2.     Austin Wang, “The DPP Party Organization”

3.     Da-chi Liao, “New Party Organizations”

Chair: Larry Diamond, Stanford University

Discussant: Kharis Templeman, Stanford University

2:00-3:30pm  

Panel II. Cross-Strait Relations and Taiwan’s Foreign Policy after the 2016 Elections

4.     Dalton Lin,  “Beijing’s Taiwan Policy after the 2016 Elections”

5.     Shirley Lin,  “Taiwan and the High Income Trap”

Chair: Kharis Templeman

Discussant: Larry Diamond 

The Taiwan Democracy Project is a research program affilated with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Insitute for International Studies, Stanford University. This event is made possible by generous support from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco.