In this talk, prominent political activist Sanaa Seif and award-winning journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous will discuss the current political conditions in Egypt, the massive expansion of the carceral state under the rule of Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and the country’s role within the geopolitical shifts reshaping the region. At the heart of the conversation will be the newly released book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, authored by Seif's brother Alaa Abdel-Fattah, one of the most high-profile political prisoners in Egypt. The book will be available for purchase at the event.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Sanaa Seif is an Egyptian filmmaker, producer, and political activist. She has been imprisoned three times under the Sisi regime for her activism, most recently from the summer of 2020 until December 2021, when she was abducted by security forces after trying to get a letter in to her brother in prison. Hundreds of cultural figures and dozens of institutions campaigned for her release.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist based in Cairo. For eight years he worked as a producer and correspondent for the TV/radio news hour Democracy Now! In 2011, he returned to Egypt to cover the revolution. Since then, he has reported for a number of print and broadcast outlets from across the region. He received an Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media for his coverage of the Egyptian revolution and an Emmy award for his coverage of the Donald Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban. He is currently an editor and reporter at Mada Masr, Egypt's leading independent media outlet.

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.​

This year’s Oksenberg Conference, "Prospects for the New Sino-Russian Partnership,” explores the “why” and “so what” of this newly bolstered alliance that has been declared as a partnership “with no limits.” What does it mean for the U.S. and other non-autocratic states? Given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the unprecedented economic sanctions that the US and its allies have slapped on Russia in the wake of that attack, the more immediately important question is: What does this alliance mean for China? How strong is this new bond with Russia? China now finds itself in an extremely difficult position as it tries to protect its own economic relationships with the US and its allies in Europe and Asia. What can or will China do about Russia? How was this alliance sold to the domestic audience of each country?

A roundtable of experts on China and Russia, including those with extensive government experience, joins us to examine this critically important relationship and address the many questions that it raises. Each panelist will present 10-12 minutes of opening remarks before turning to a moderated discussion. During the last 20 minutes, the moderator will pose curated questions to the roundtable from the audience.

The Oksenberg Conference is held annually and honors the legacy of the late Stanford professor Michel Oksenberg (1938-2001), who was a Senior Fellow at Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Professor Oksenberg also served as a key member of the National Security Council when the U.S. normalized relations with China, and consistently urged that the U.S. engage with Asia in a more considered manner. In tribute, the Oksenberg Lecture recognizes distinguished individuals who have helped to advance understanding between the U.S. and the nations of the Asia-Pacific.

Panelists in alphabetical order:

Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova is a political scientist, China scholar, Head of Political Science Doctoral Programme and China Studies Centre at Rīga Stradiņš University, Head of the Asia program at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, a member of the China in Europe Research Network (CHERN) and European Think Tank Network on China (ETNC). She has held a Senior visiting research scholar position at Fudan University School of Philosophy, Shanghai, China, and a Fulbright visiting scholar position at the Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University. Bērziņa-Čerenkova publishes on PRC political discourse, contemporary Chinese ideology, EU-China relations, Russia-China, and BRI and her most recent monograph is Perfect Imbalance: China and Russia.

Thomas Fingar is the former first Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, currently at Stanford as a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. From 2005-2008, he served as the first Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and, concurrently, as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar previously served as Assistant Secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-2001 and 2004-2005), Principal Deputy Assistant (2001-2003), Deputy Assistant Secretary for Analysis (1994-2000), Director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-1994), and Chief of the China Division (1986-1989). Fingar's most recent books are Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020), and From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford, 2021)

Alex Gabuev is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research is focused on Russia's policy toward East and Southeast Asia, political and ideological trends in China, and China's relations with its neighbors—especially those in Central Asia. Prior to joining Carnegie, Gabuev was a member of the editorial board of Kommersant publishing house and served as deputy editor in chief of Kommersant-Vlast, one of Russia's most influential newsweeklies. He has previously worked as a nonresident visiting research fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and taught courses on Chinese energy policy and political culture at Moscow State University. Gabuev is a Munich Young Leader of Munich International Security Conference and a member of Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (Russia).

Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. McFaul is also an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (eds. with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

Evan Medeiros is a Professor and Penner Family Chair in Asia Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and former top advisor on the Asia-Pacific in the Obama Administration, responsible for coordinating U.S. policy toward the Asia-Pacific across the areas of diplomacy, defense policy, economic policy, and intelligence. Prior to joining the White House, Medeiros worked for seven years as a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and served at the Treasury Department as a Policy Advisor-China to Secretary Hank Paulson Jr., working on the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue. Medeiros is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, a member of the International Advisory Board of Cambridge University's Centre for Geopolitics, and a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jean Oi (Moderator) is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She also directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at FSI and is the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Oi has published extensively on political economy and the process of reform in China. Her books include State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government and Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform. Recent edited volumes include Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, co-edited with Steven Goldstein, and Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China's Future, co-edited with Thomas Fingar. 

Using 'big data' computational techniques to scrutinize cases covering 2009–2016 from all 252 basic-level courts in two Chinese provinces, Henan and Zhejiang, Ethan Michelson reveals that women have borne the brunt of a dramatic intensification since the mid-2000s of a decades-long practice of denying divorce requests. This talk discusses key findings from his new book of the same name. Michelson's analysis of almost 150,000 divorce trials reveals routine and egregious violations of China's own laws upholding the freedom of divorce, gender equality, and the protection of women's physical security. Michelson takes the reader upstream to the institutional sources of China's clampdown on divorce and downstream to its devastating and highly gendered human toll, showing how judges in an overburdened court system clear their oppressive dockets at the expense of women's lawful rights and interests.

Ethan Michelson is the James and Noriko Gines Department Chair in East Asian Languages and Cultures as well as Professor of Sociology and Law at Indiana University Bloomington, where he has been teaching courses on law and society, law and authoritarianism, and contemporary Chinese society since 2003. He has won several awards for his published research on China’s legal system.

Air pollution is a silent and invisible killer more lethal than violence, diseases, and smoking.  More than 95 percent of the global population lives in areas with unhealthy air by WHO standards.  Moreover, long-term exposure to polluted air can increase the probability of succumbing to COVID-19.  

Scientific solutions to contain air pollution are available, but limited progress has been made in implementing them.  Temporally, there has been an uneven success in reducing pollution even in the same locality over time, as exemplified by the exercise of political power to change the color of the sky leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics (aka Olympic Blue).  

In this talk, Professor Shen will discuss her new book, The Political Regulation Wave: A Case of How Local Incentives Systematically Shape Air Quality in China (Cambridge University Press, 2022).  Departing from extant works, which focus on air data manipulation or the effect of campaigns, the book asks, what explains the systematic temporal variation in actual and reported air quality after controlling for top-down implementation campaigns?  Making use of new data, approaches, and techniques from across social and environmental sciences, the book shows that local leaders ordered different levels of regulation over time based on what their political superiors desired, leading to the titular “waves” of regulation and pollution.  However, the effectiveness of their regulatory efforts depends on the level of ambiguity in controlling a particular pollutant.  When ambiguity dilutes regulatory effectiveness, having the right incentives and enhanced monitoring is insufficient for successful policy implementation.

You can read and download her book in pdf format here.

Shiran Victoria Shen forged her own path at Stanford University by simultaneously completing a Ph.D. in political science and an MS in civil and environmental engineering in five years after graduating Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and with high honors from Swarthmore College. Her research explores the intersections of political science, public policy, environmental sciences, and engineering, with a particular understanding of how local politics influence environmental governance. Her first book, The Political Regulation Wave: A Case of How Local Incentives Systematically Shape Air Quality in China, was published by Cambridge University Press in March 2022.  In dissertation form, it was the recipient of two major association awards, the American Political Science Association’s Harold D. Lasswell Award and the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s Ph.D. Dissertation Award. Earlier versions of its parts received the American Political Science Association’s Paul A. Sabatier Award for the best paper in science, technology & environmental politics and the Southern Political Science Association’s Malcolm Jewell Award for the best overall graduate student paper.

You can learn more about her work at http://svshen.com and follow her on Twitter @SVictoriaShen.

Erin A. Snider joins ARD to discuss her recently released book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

For nearly two decades, the United States devoted more than $2 billion towards democracy promotion in the Middle East with seemingly little impact. To understand the limited impact of this aid and the decision of authoritarian regimes to allow democracy programs whose ultimate aim is to challenge the power of such regimes, Marketing Democracy examines the construction and practice of democracy aid in Washington DC and in Egypt and Morocco, two of the highest recipients of US democracy aid in the region.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork, novel new data on the professional histories of democracy promoters, archival research and recently declassified government documents, Erin A. Snider focuses on the voices and practices of those engaged in democracy work over the last three decades to offer a new framework for understanding the political economy of democracy aid. Her research shows how democracy aid can work to strengthen rather than challenge authoritarian regimes. Marketing Democracy fundamentally challenges scholars to rethink how we study democracy aid and how the ideas of democracy that underlie democracy programs come to reflect the views of donors and recipient regimes rather than indigenous demand. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER 

Erin A. Snider is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. Her research and teaching focus on the political economy of aid, democracy, and development in the Middle East. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, a Fulbright scholar in Egypt, a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and a Carnegie Fellow with the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. Her first book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid in the Middle East was published with Cambridge University Press. Other research has been published in International Studies Quarterly, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Middle East Policy, among other outlets. She holds a PhD in politics from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

This event is co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Center for African Studies at Stanford University.​

China Chats with Stanford Faculty 

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Friday, May 13, 2022          6 - 7 PM Pacific Time 
Saturday, May 14, 2022    9 - 10 AM Beijing Time

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From Education to World Development

Ensuring that every child in the world achieves basic skills is a key development goal emphasized in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. But how far is the world away from reaching this goal? And what would achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 mean for world development?  This talk will outline the development of an achievement data base for all of the countries of the world along with estimation of the economic gains from educational improvement. 

This Stanford alumni event will feature Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He will be joined by Scott Rozelle, the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University, who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the research. A question and answer session with the audience will follow the discussion.

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About the Speakers
 

Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues, and he was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021. His widely-cited research spans many policy-related education topics including the economic value of teacher quality, the finance of schools, and the role of education in economic growth. His latest book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth, identifies the close link between the skills of the people and the economic growth of the nation. He has authored or edited 24 books along with over 250 articles. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
 

 

Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University.  For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner.

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Questions? Contact Debbie Aube at debbie.aube@stanford.edu

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Watch the recording: 

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The fundamental reason for the extreme leverage today in China’s banks, enterprises and the state itself is found in the decentralized fiscal arrangements of highly self-reliant local governments. This problem has been compounded by the excessive stimulus lending over the past decade. As a result Beijing has promoted the creation of an extensive shadow banking system designed to protect the stability of the major state banks. Stepping back this has led to the state’s growing leverage. This presentation focuses on the impact of the shadow banking system on the state’s finances and compares the costs of China’s response to the global financial crisis with the US response.

Carl Walter joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as visiting scholar with the China Program for the 2021-2022 academic year. Prior to coming to APARC, he served as independent, non-executive Director at the China Construction Bank. He was also previously a visiting scholar with APARC during the winter and spring terms of the 2012–13 academic year after a career in banking spent largely in China. 

His research interests focus on China's financial system and its impact on financial and political organizations. During his time at Shorenstein APARC Walter will continue his book project on how fiscal reforms in China have impacted the banking system, the overall economy and the prospect for financial reform going forward. Walter has contributed articles to publications including Caijing, the Wall Street Journal and the China Quarterly. He is also the co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundations of China's Extraordinary Rise (2012) and Privatizing China: Inside China's Stock Markets (2005).

Walter lived and worked in Beijing from 1991 to 2011, first as an investment banker involved in the earliest SOE restructurings and overseas public listings, then as chief operation officer of China's first joint venture investment bank, China International Capital Corporation. Over the last ten years he was JPMorgan's China chief operating officer as well as chief executive officer of its China banking subsidiary.

Walter holds a PhD in political science from Stanford University, a certificate of advanced study from Peking University and a BA in Russian Studies from Princeton University.

 

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This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.

 

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.

 

Once considered incapable of innovation, China’s contribution to technological advancement has become impossible to ignore as it continues its historic rise. Now home to such tech giants as Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei, China is competing in the global market. But what does this technological success mean in the context of China's internal and international politics, particularly its tense relationship with the United States? Will efforts to decouple help or hinder progress in tech? Can China’s educational system produce the next generation of innovators and propel them to the forefront of technology? What effects, if any, is the recent tightening on tech giants having on the sector at large? In this program, experts Denis Simon, Senior Adviser to the President for China Affairs at Duke, and Dan Wang, technology analyst for Gavekal Dragonomics, will be discussing the status and consequences of decoupling for the US and China and their technological sectors.  

 

Denis Fred Simon is Senior Adviser to the President for China Affairs at Duke and Professor of China Business and Technology at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.  He also serves as Executive Director of the Center for Innovation Policy at Duke.  Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Simon has more than four decades of experience studying business, competition, innovation and technology strategy in China. In 2006, he was awarded the China National Friendship Award by Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing.  Prior to returning to Duke, Dr. Simon served as Executive Vice Chancellor at Duke Kunshan University in China (2015-2020).  Simon’s career included spells as senior adviser on China and global affairs in the Office of the President at Arizona State University; vice-provost for international affairs at the University of Oregon; and professor of international affairs at Penn State University’s School of International Affairs. He also has had extensive leadership experience in management consulting having served as General Manager of Andersen Consulting in Beijing (now Accenture) and the Founding President of Monitor Group China.

Simon is the author of several books including Corporate Strategies Towards the Pacific Rim; Techno-Security in an Age of Globalization; and China’s Emerging Technological Edge: Assessing the Role of High-End Talent.

 

Dan Wang is the Shanghai-based technology analyst for Gavekal Dragonomics, the China economics research firm. He tracks the prospects for China's industrial policy, US regulatory measures and the activities of multinationals in China. He has given keynotes for a variety of organizations and his work is widely cited in the press. Dan previously worked in Silicon Valley and studied philosophy at the University of Rochester. Dan's essays have been published in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and he is a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion

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This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, New Frontiers: Technology, Politics, and Society in the Asia-Pacific, sponsored by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

 

 

This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.

 

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.

 

Policies implemented by the CCP in Xinjiang since c. 2016 have become a central issue in PRC international relations, leading to international determinations that those policies constitute genocide; scrutiny of global supply chains for Xinjiang cotton, textiles and polysilicon; US sanctions on companies and individuals and Congressional inquiries directed at Airbnb and other multinationals operating in Xinjiang; and diplomatic boycotts of the Olympics. The assimilationist policies, if most extreme in Xinjiang, are related to the broader Zhonghua-izing campaign against religion and non-Mandarin language and perhaps even to intensified control over Hong Kong and efforts to intimidate Taiwan—an aggressive intolerance of cultural and political diversity that is emerging as a central feature of Xi Jinping’s tenure. This talk will review the Xinjiang crisis to date and suggest how we should understand these events and trends.

James Millward is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, teaching Chinese, Central Asian and world history. He joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as visiting scholar with the China Program for the 2022 winter quarter. He is also an affiliated professor in the Máster Oficial en Estudios de Asia Oriental at the University of Granada, Spain. His specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments on current issues regarding the Uyghurs and PRC ethnicity policy. Millward has served on the boards of the Association for Asian Studies (China and Inner Asia Council) and the Central Eurasian Studies Society, and was president of the Central Eurasian Studies Society in 2010. He edits the ''Silk Roads'' series for University of Chicago Press. His publications include The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013), Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (2007), New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004), and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998). His articles and op-eds on contemporary China appear in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and other media.  

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.

 

China’s rapidly growing local government debt problem has long been recognized by foreign observers as a risk, but inside China, only recently was this problem called out as alarming.  Why has local government debt been allowed to grow with little direct intervention from central authorities?  Based on a forthcoming paper, Oi will show how a “grand bargain” the central authorities entered into with the localities allowed Beijing to take the lion’s share of tax revenues after 1994, but also allowed localities to gain new resources and power as a quid pro quo.  While the bargain provided an expedient and seemingly successful strategy that worked for more than a decade to fuel rapid local state-led growth, it had significant costs that are now becoming increasingly visible.  Because land finance was the core means by which localities raised revenue, Oi also will help explain why the problems with property developers like Evergrande are so important to China’s future economy.   

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Professor Oi has published extensively on China’s reforms. Recent books include Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Thomas Fingar (Stanford University Press, 2020); Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, co-edited with Steven Goldstein (Stanford University Press, 2018); and Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization, co-edited with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017). Current research is on fiscal reform and local government debt, continuing SOE reforms, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

 

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This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.