About the event: Questions about the likelihood of conflict between the United States and China have dominated international policy discussion for years. But the leading theory of power transitions between a declining hegemon and a rising rival is based exclusively on European examples, such as the Peloponnesian War, as well as the rise of Germany under Bismarck and the Anglo-German rivalry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What lessons does East Asian history offer, for both the power transitions debate and the future of U.S.-China relations?
Examining the rise and fall of East Asian powers over 1,500 years, we point out that East Asia historically has functioned very differently than did Europe; and even today the region has dynamics that are not leading to balancing or competitive behavior. In fact, the East Asian experience underscores domestic risks and constraints on great powers, not relative rise and decline in international competition. The threat of a US-China war from power transition is lower than often recognized, and the East Asian region is more stable than normally recognized.

About the speaker: Xinru Ma is an inaugural research scholar at the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab within the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where she leads the research track on U.S.-Asia relations. Her work primarily examines nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security, with a methodological focus on formal and computational methods. Her work is published in the Journal of East Asian Studies, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Global Security Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, and edited volumes by Palgrave. Her co-authored book, Beyond Power Transition, is published by Columbia University Press.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

Big Data China 3rd Annual Conference (Virtual)

The Turning Point? U.S.-China Relations, Economic Growth, and the Race for Technology Leadership

The event will be broadcast live from this webpage and YouTube.

Join the third annual conference of Big Data China, a collaborative project by CSIS Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics and Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI). China experts in the policy and academic communities will discuss the key challenges in U.S.-China relations, recent shifts in China's economic governance, and the global implications of technology competition with China.

AGENDA
 

8:00 - 8:30 am: Keynote Speech: Craig Allen, President, U.S.-China Business Council
 

8:45 - 9:45 am: Panel 1: Charting U.S.-China Relations: Key Challenges and Choices for the Incoming Administration

Moderator: Scott Kennedy, CSIS

Panelists:
Wendy Cutler, Asia Society Policy Institute
Bonnie S. Glaser, German Marshall Fund Indo-Pacific
Dennis Wilder, Georgetown University

10:00 - 11:00 am: Panel 2: China’s Economic Stimulus: A Short-Term Fix or Path to Sustainable Recovery?

Moderator: Scott Rozelle, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions

Panelists:
Ling Chen, Johns Hopkins SAIS
Andrew Polk, Trivium China
Margit Molnar, OECD
Logan Wright, CSIS

11:15 - 12:15 pm: Panel 3: Decoupling vs. De-risking: The Competitive Dilemma in Tech Innovation

Moderator: Ilaria Mazzocco, CSIS

Panelists:
Greg Allen, CSIS
Rebecca Arcesati, MERICS
Samm Sacks, Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center
Kevin Xu, Interconnected
 

FEATURING
 

EVENT PARTNERS
 

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Federico Fabbrini is Full Professor of European Law at the School of Law & Government of DCU, the Founding Director of the Brexit Institute and of the Dublin European Law Institute (DELI). He holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute and previously held academic positions in the Netherlands and Denmark. He has been a Fellow in Law & Public Affairs at Princeton University and a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute.

Hesham Sallam is a Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL, where he serves as Associate Director for Research. He is also Associate Director of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. Sallam is co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine and a former program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. His research focuses on political and social development in the Arab World. Sallam’s research has previously received the support of the Social Science Research Council and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is author of Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt (Columbia University Press, 2022), co-editor of Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World (University of Michigan Press, 2022), and editor of Egypt's Parliamentary Elections 2011-2012: A Critical Guide to a Changing Political Arena (Tadween Publishing, 2013). Sallam received a Ph.D. in Government (2015) and an M.A. in Arab Studies (2006) from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh (2003).

About the event: With the wider Russian war on Ukraine in its third year and greater uncertainty as a new U.S. administration prepares to take power in January 2025, this event brings together experts from across Stanford to discuss how states around the world view the conflict and its potential resolution. Some states have aligned with Ukraine, the United States and the European Union, viewing Russia’s aggression as a gross violation of international law. Others, such as North Korea, Iran and China, have supported Russia economically and militarily. Some emerging powers, such as Brazil and India, have advocated for a peaceful and negotiated end to the conflict. And many developing states, which have complicated cross-cutting relations with Ukraine, Russia, the United States, the European Union and China, have chosen to remain unaligned, even if they recognize the war is a violation of the UN Charter. Erin Baggot Carter, Sumit Ganguly, and Harold Trinkunas will compare the full range of policy responses from across the globe. Scott Sagan, co-director of the Center of International Security and Cooperation, will moderate the discussion.

About the speakers:

Erin Baggott Carter is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, a faculty affiliate at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute, and a nonresident scholar at the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego. She has previously held fellowships at the CDDRL and Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University.

Dr. Carter's research focuses on Chinese politics, propaganda, and foreign policy. Her first book, Propaganda in Autocracies (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), uses an original dataset of eight million articles in six languages drawn from state-run newspapers in nearly 70 countries to explore how political institutions determine propaganda strategies. She is currently working on a book on how domestic politics influence US-China relations. Her other work has appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, and International Interactions. Her work has been featured by a number of media platforms, including the New York Times and the Little Red Podcast.

Sumit Ganguly is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a distinguished professor emeritus of political science and is the Tagore Chair Emeritus in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University–Bloomington. He is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of more than 20 books on the contemporary politics of South Asia. Professor Ganguly is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently the editor in chief of the International Studies Review.

Harold Trinkunas is the Deputy Director and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Dr. Trinkunas served as the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow and director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on issues related to foreign policy, governance, and security, particularly in Latin America. Trinkunas has written on emerging powers and the international order, ungoverned spaces, terrorism financing, borders, and information operations.

Trinkunas has co-authored Militants, Criminals and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder (Brookings Institution Press, 2017), Aspirational Power: Brazil’s Long Road to Global Influence (Brookings Institution Press, 2016) and authored Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela (University of North Carolina Press, 2005). He co-edited and contributed to Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2021), Three Tweets to Midnight: The Effect of the Global Information Ecosystem on the Risk of Nuclear Conflict  (Hoover Institution Press, 2020), American Crossings: Border Politics in the Western Hemisphere (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty (Stanford University Press, 2010), Global Politics of Defense Reform (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), and Terrorism Financing and State Responses (Stanford University Press, 2007).

Dr. Trinkunas also previously served as an associate professor and chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He received his doctorate in political science from Stanford University in 1999. He was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

About the Event: Kim Jong Un’s recent remarks highlighting the goal of exponentially increasing North Korea’s nuclear arsenal underscore the regime’s aggressive pursuit of advanced nuclear capabilities. This growing threat poses a critical concern for global security, particularly amid escalating geopolitical tensions and the burgeoning military cooperation between Russia and North Korea. This study utilizes an integrated methodology, combining satellite imagery, geological analysis, and technical assessments, to evaluate North Korea’s fissile material production capacity and strategic resources availability necessary to fulfill its nuclear ambitions. By examining the evolving state of North Korea's plutonium production and uranium enrichment capacities, as well as its efficiency of mining operations and critical metal reserves, this research provides key insights into the country’s potential for sustained nuclear development, highlighting how control over strategic resources remains a pivotal factor in North Korea’s pursuit of military development and geopolitical leverage.

About the Speaker: Sulgiye Park is a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where she specializes in North Korea and China’s nuclear fuel pathway. She received her Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from Stanford University, focusing on nuclear materials in extreme environments. She later worked at the Stanford Institute of Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES), fabricating nanodiamonds for technological applications, which granted her a Jamieson Award. As a Stanton and MacArthur Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Dr. Park focused on the critical nexus between natural resource management, strategic supply chains, and nuclear security. Her work highlighted the foundational role of geologic resources in enabling nuclear ambitions, including geologic analyses of North Korea’s uranium and critical metal reserves. She utilized open-source intelligence to monitor nuclear activities, providing insights into nonproliferation challenges. Dr. Park also examined regulatory frameworks for U.S. nuclear waste management and studied rare-earth metal production and critical metal supply chain vulnerabilities, emphasizing their strategic importance for national security and technological innovation.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.