NCUSCR Events

Bin Xu: Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China

On May 12, 2008, a massive earthquake rocked central Sichuan, killing 87,000 people and leaving five million homeless in the second worst natural disaster in China’s modern history (the first was the Tangshan earthquake of 1976). As news of the event spread, hundreds of thousands of volunteers poured into Sichuan from all over China to help wherever they were needed. Many cooked, cleaned, and cared for survivors, but the sudden explosion of civic engagement also led to more politically orien...

Jennifer Lin: Shanghai Faithful – A Chinese Christian Family

After the United States and China established diplomatic relations in 1979, those who had left China around 1949 were able to visit family members who had remained in China. Three decades of separation gave rise to many unanswered questions on both sides. One such question inspired young journalist Jennifer Lin: “Do you have any idea what happened to us?” she was asked at a family reunion in Shanghai in 1979. She then embarked on a 30-year quest to uncover her family history. The daughter of...

Scott Tong: A Village With My Name

China’s rapid economic growth that has accompanied its “Reform and Opening” over the last four decades is the subject of millions of pages of discussion and analysis. Yet it is rarely contextualized within the long arc of China’s quest for modernity stretching back at least to the mid-19th century. Long before Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, enterprising Chinese engaged the outside world through trade, education, and other mediums, laying the foundation for China’s modernization. From this perspect...

Mary Gallagher: Authoritarian Legality in China

Over the last three and a half decades, China’s rise has largely been underpinned by two great transitions: from socialism to capitalism, and from agriculture to industry. The workplace and the institutions that govern it have served as the critical link that enabled these transitions to take place. As these processes continue, the interests of the central government and Chinese workers have converged upon improved working conditions and formalization of employment. Workers have naturally so...

Michael Meyer: The Road to the Sleeping Dragon

In his third book on China, acclaimed reporter and travel writer Michael Meyer provides an account of his 22 years of engagement with the country. Beginning with his arrival as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Sichuan in 1995, The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground Up recounts how he came to understand the country that looms so large on today’s global stage. By sharing his deeply personal journey over two decades, the book offers a unique perspective on China’s culture a...

U.S.-China Science and Technology: Nancy Liu and Lawrence Sullivan

For nearly 200 years, China has looked to the west as the source of the most modern and cutting-edge technologies. From the Self-Strengthening Movement in the 19th century to the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) and Made in China 2025, Chinese leaders have consistently sought to foster homegrown technologies and scientific discovery that can compete on a global stage. In 2015, Dr. Tu Youyou became China’s first Nobel Laureate in science after her breakthrough in malaria treatments that has sa...

The Souls of China: Religion in China After Mao, with Ian Johnson

The Communist Party of China has long had an uneasy relationship with religion.  Its antipathy reached a crescendo during the Cultural Revolution when religion was attacked as part of the “Four Olds” campaign; public worship and ceremony were banned, members of the clergy were imprisoned or sent to forced labor, and religious buildings and texts were destroyed.  Since the death of Mao, and especially in recent years, religion has seen a resurgence, as people search for meaning in a rapidly c...

Isaac Stone Fish: Why Isn’t Beijing Doing More to Constrain North Korea

As tensions continue to grow between Washington and Pyongyang, understanding China’s role in enabling or constraining its neighbor is more important than ever. In the lead-up to President Trump’s first trip to China, Isaac Stone Fish provided an overview of China’s relationship with North Korea, examining its interests there and outlining what leverage Beijing has over Pyongyang, as well as examining how the Sino-North Korean relationship affects Sino-American relations. The discussion, cond...

Pan Guang: China and the Middle East

In recent years, China has taken an increasingly active role in global affairs. From the managers of state owned enterprises to political and military leaders, Chinese have looked abroad, including to the resource rich Middle East. What does Chinese engagement mean for the region? What opportunities and challenges does the Belt and Road Initiative bring? Dr. Pan Guang, professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Vice President of Chinese Association for Middle East Studies and di...

Robert Gottlieb & Simon Ng: U.S.-China Urban Environmental Change

Over the past four decades, global cities have emerged in both the United States and China, including Hong Kong. In the process, they have absorbed their local environments and expanded their commercial networks around the world. As the urban landscapes and global reach of Chinese and American cities have grown, so have their environmental footprints. Challenging issues of air and water quality, water supply, transportation, land use, and food have accompanied rapid urban growth. In many cas...

Maria Repnikova: Media Politics in China

  Popular images of Chinese media generally cast it as an agent of state propaganda. This is hardly surprising given the history of Chinese official media, and the swift suppression of those who openly criticize the regime. Yet the dichotomy between media and the party, with the former perpetually dominated by the latter, is complicated by the emergence of what Maria Repnikova, in her new book, terms “critical journalism.” In Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarian...

Scott Kennedy: China's Innovation Drive

  In recent years, China has devoted massive resources to advancing its capacity for technological innovation. The resulting deluge of R&D activities has brought Chinese companies significant commercial success. However, the massive resources China has mobilized are not yet efficiently translating into successful outputs, resulting in a “low metabolism” of inputs into technology innovation. Scott Kennedy, deputy director of China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Stud...

Lenora Chu and Gish Gen: East-West Creativity Gap – Myth or Fact?

In a globalized world where millions of people travel between east and west each year and formerly separate cultural zones now overlap, it has never been more important to understand the values and perspectives that inform cross-cultural relations. Two new works of cultural observation and commentary put the differences in education, identity, and politics in the United States and China in perspective: Lenora Chu’s Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to ...

Cheng Li on the Rising Influence of Think Tanks in China

A call to action by President Xi Jinping has led to significant resources being devoted to the development and expansion of China’s think tanks. While some critics have derided them as “tanks without thinkers,” China’s think tanks play a growing part in the crafting of domestic and foreign policies. In addition, their connections to party leadership make them an invaluable window through which foreign scholars and officials can observe both the Chinese intellectual discourse and policymaking...

Women in the Arts from Greater China: Author Michelle Vosper

Creating Across Cultures is a collection of stories about visionary women in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan who defied cultural and social expectations to become leaders in the arts. Working in the literary, visual and performing arts, these women journeyed outside their cultures, engaging with the international artistic community. Their personal histories open windows onto the larger, historical trajectory of China over three generations, while their artwork delves into social realitie...

2017 U.S. Foreign Policy Colloquium Keynote Address: The Honorable Wendy R. Sherman

Strong cooperation between the United States and China has the potential to address the most pressing global issues of the 21st century. However, engagement between the two countries is influenced by a range of flash points and historic differences. The Honorable Wendy R. Sherman identified these key areas driving cooperation and addressed the current challenges facing the U.S.-China relationship in the keynote address of the 2017 U.S. Foreign Policy Colloquium in Washington, D.C., on June 1...

The Belt and Road Forum: Reflections from Chinese Experts

Last month China held a major international forum on its Belt and Road Initiative, the first of its kind since Beijing announced the project in 2013. Drawing official delegations, scholars, entrepreneurs, as well as representatives from financial institutions and media organizations from 130 nations, the forum was an important step in China’s drive to develop infrastructure and connectivity along the “Belt and Road Corridors” from China to Africa, Europe, South and Southeast Asia. Though man...

Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers and Western Economists with Author Julian Gewirtz

For nearly three decades Mao’s China closed itself to the influence of non-Marxist thought as it established a rigid command economy. When Mao died in 1976, China’s leaders embarked on a large-scale process of learning from abroad. The intellectual breadth of Chinese reformers in those early years was remarkably broad as they sought input from Nobel Prize winning economists, World Bank officials, free market fundamentalists, and an unlikely array of other partners. Many who participated in t...

China's Universities and the Belt and Road: Gerard Postiglione

As China has become a global power, it has sought to build an exportable educational model that will influence international education, while at the same time supporting the interests of the Communist Party.  China has simultaneously in some ways strengthened its commitment to the Western university model and embraced its emphasis on the liberal arts and sciences as a way to drive innovation and economic progress. Chinese universities serve multiple constituencies: Chinese who will work in C...

China's Banking: The Untold Story - James Stent

China watchers have long predicted the imminent collapse of China’s banking system. Between increased reliance on unstable funding sources, and an expanding credit to GDP gap, experts’ concerns are not unwarranted. Yet the collapse has not happened. In China’s Banking Transformation: The Untold Story, former banking director James Stent looks at what the experts have been missing, and why their predictions have not materialized. On June 5, 2017, Mr. Stent joined National Committee President ...

Hong Kong and Beijing: A Complicated Relationship – David Zweig

In 2014, Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement grabbed international headlines, shut down the city’s largest commercial districts, and generated concern about Hong Kong’s political future. Images of city streets awash in yellow, and protesters clashing with police quickly spread around the world, and many observers believed the movement heralded significant changes to Hong Kong’s political structure. Three years after calm was restored, questions remain: what is the political mood on Hong Kong campu...

Social Assistance in China: Author Qin Gao

Even as the China’s economic reforms in the 1980s and 90s laid the foundation for it to become an economic powerhouse, increasingly wide gaps opened up between rich and poor, leaving behind those ill equipped to compete in a market economy. The massive changes taking place were also reflected in the uneven distribution of social welfare benefits, which tended to accrue to those best positioned to succeed under the new system. In 1993, Shanghai implemented a minimum livelihood guarantee or di...

How the Past Shapes China’s Push for Power: Author Howard French

Author Howard French discusses his new book Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Shapes China's Push for Global Power. Until the mid-19th century, China occupied the premier place in East Asia’s political order. Exercising cultural and political hegemony through a set of tributary relationships with its neighbors, China’s imperial bureaucrats developed a conception of rule different from the Westphalian idea of individual nation states. After more than a century of political turmoil, C...

China’s Domestic Security: Author Sheena Greitens

In March 2011, China’s spending on internal security surpassed the budget for external defense for the first time. This was widely interpreted as evidence that China’s internal security apparatus – long seen as a highly repressive pillar of Communist Party rule – was tightening its control. In an upcoming piece for the China Quarterly, political scientist, China expert, and National Committee Public Intellectuals Program fellow Sheena Greitens challenges this understanding by contextualizing...

Author John Pomfret: The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom

Award-winning author John Pomfret discusses his newly published The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom, tracing the history of Sino-American relations, in a conversation with National Committee President Stephen Orlins on January 23, 2017 in New York. Although the contemporary U.S.-China relationship has grown out of Nixon and Kissinger’s visits to China in the 1970s, the foundations of Sino-American exchange are hundreds of years old. Since the establishment of the United States, mi...

Strategy and American Power in Asia Pacific: Author Michael Green

American strategic engagement with the Asia Pacific has deep roots in American history, going back to the nation’s founding. Despite the difficulties of formulating and maintaining a coherent grand strategy amid democratic competition, the United States has, over more than 200 years, developed a distinctive approach to the region based on its interests and national identity. In a new book, By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783, Center for S...

Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Author Syaru Shirley Lin

The election of Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen in January 2016 brought renewed uncertainty to cross-strait relations. Taiwan is more economically integrated with mainland China than ever before, yet the PRC continues to pose a threat to Taiwanese self-government, and has not renounced the use of force to achieve unification. Even as the core dilemma between security and economics has driven Taiwanese politics for over two decades, shifting political winds on the island have refocused attent...

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap: Author Yuen Yuen Ang

Before 1978, China was a poor country with a planned economy overseen by a Maoist bureaucracy. Today it has the world’s second largest economy, a robust and growing middle class, and is a key driver of global growth. What explains this rapid transformation? In her new book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang traces the joint evolution of the economy and governance, describing how China employed a strategy of “directed improvisation” to harness weak institutions to build market...

Teleconference: Reflections on the Trump-Xi Summit

Presidents Donald J. Trump and Xi Jinping met April 6-7, 2017 at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. As the two men met for the first time, much hinged on their discussions. Despite President Trump’s tough-on-China campaign rhetoric and provocative tweets since the election, he and his advisors have adopted a more conciliatory line since assuming office. China regarded the new administration warily after President Trump broke diplomatic protocol and accepted a call from Taiwan’s president i...

Hollywood Made in China: Author Aynne Kokas

China’s booming film market has become an essential consideration for the production of Hollywood movies and is expected to overtake the U.S. market by 2017. In an effort to take advantage of this growth, American entertainment conglomerates are increasingly partnering with Chinese studios, and producing products for the Chinese market. So far, they have been highly successful, with four of the ten all-time highest grossing films in China produced by U.S. studios. As American entertainment c...

Ending Myths About Chinese Overseas Development: Brad Parks, AidData

Over the last decade, China has emerged as one of the largest suppliers of international development finance, with a large and growing overseas development budget. Yet China does not release detailed information about the “where, what, how, and to whom” of its development aid. This presents an obstacle for policy makers, practitioners, and analysts who seek to understand the distribution and impact of Chinese development finance.   Since 2013, AidData has led an ambitious effort to devel...

Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright on U.S.-China Relations

As the U.S.-China relationship continues to deepen in complexity, the two countries must manage strategic competition, negotiate trade and investment challenges, and cooperate on areas of mutual interest. We explored these issues, among others, in a program featuring former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger in conversation with National Committee President Stephen Orlins, on December 5, 2016 in New York City.  Dr. Albright and Dr. Kissinger reflected on Sino-America...

Business Environment in China – USCBC Survey: John Frisbie

Heading into 2016, some expected a sharp decline in China’s economic growth. So far, China has avoided a hard landing and continues to meet its modified growth targets, but the slowdown is clearly real. As China adjusts to its “new normal,” business leaders remain anxious about the long term prospects of the world’s second largest economy.  Slowing growth has reduced American corporate profits, but China is still the most attractive emerging market in the world, and most companies have decid...

Hong Kong in the Shadow of China: Richard Bush

Unresolved questions about Hong Kong’s political future, long hidden beneath the surface of the territory’s bustling commercial activity, burst to the forefront in 2014 in response to proposed electoral reforms. Since then the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong has developed into a significant challenge to Beijing’s vision for the former British colony. The Umbrella Movement, the 2015 “Fishball Revolution,” and the recent LegCo oath-taking controversy, which have drawn a lot of media attent...

The Era of Xi and Trump: Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Jiayang Fan

Modern China historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom and the New Yorker magazine’s Jiayang Fan joined the National Committee for a discussion of how international ambitions, a contentious historical legacy, and official doctrine fuel common misconceptions about U.S.-China relations on December 12, 2016. Despite more than 300,000 Chinese students currently studying in the United States, increasingly integrated economic relations, booming cross-border tourism, and more high-level dialogues than ever b...

Chinese Leadership and the Tide of History: Kerry Brown

Do leaders make history or does history make leaders? At a National Committee program on November 10, 2016, in New York City, Kerry Brown tackled these perennial questions as he talked about the Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, which he edited—the first work of its kind in over a century. Brown presented Chinese biography as a uniquely useful way to understand historical events, and discussed the influence of individual Chinese leaders, in different fields, over the last four decad...

China and Southeast Asia: Bates Gill, Evelyn Goh, Chin-Hao Huang

Many challenges face the United States as it looks across the Pacific to Southeast Asia, including the implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, tensions in the South China Sea, and China’s economic initiatives in the area such as the establishment of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the One Belt One Road (including the “Maritime Silk Road”) policy, among others. On June 20, 2016 in New York City, Drs. Bates Gill, Evelyn Goh, and Chin-Hao Huang discussed the evolvin...

China and Europe: Philippe Le Corre

As China’s economy has expanded rapidly in recent decades, outbound Chinese FDI has reached record levels, and Chinese investors seeking opportunities abroad have seized on Europe as a preferred destination for outbound FDI. A massive influx of Chinese capital represents both opportunities and challenges for future Europe-China relations. Many relatively small countries view surging Chinese investment as a welcome new source of funding that can reduce dependence on the EU and western Europ...

South China Sea Tribunal Decision: Expert Briefing with Peter Dutton

Leaders Speak: Former Commerce Secretary and U.S. Trade Representatives

What does record Chinese investment in the United States mean for Sino-American relations? What are the biggest benefits from and challenges to the U.S.-China trade relationship? These and other current issues were explored in a program featuring former Commerce Secretary Barbara H. Franklin and former U.S. Trade Representatives Carla A. Hills and Susan C. Schwab, in conversation with National Committee President Steve Orlins. Secretary Franklin, Ambassador Hills and Ambassador Schwab also r...

Book Launch: Street of Eternal Happiness - Author Rob Schmitz

Within the past few decades, China has undergone a series of profound social changes stemming from globalization and its own domestic economic reforms and political development. Cultural attitudes deeply embedded in China for centuries have changed seemingly overnight with the expansion of the Chinese middle class. Perhaps no city in China quite exemplifies this colossal transformation like Shanghai. Once a moderately sized port city, Shanghai has quickly become a sprawling global financia...

Maoism at the Grassroots: Authors Matthew Johnson & Jeremy Brown

The political ideology of Mao Zedong swept China following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and still has an impact on life in contemporary China. Maoism at the Grassroots, edited by Matthew D. Johnson and Jeremy Brown, examines the first decades of the People’s Republic of China from the perspective of ordinary people. While the Mao era is often regarded as a time of Party-state dominance—achieved through massive political campaigns such as the Great Leap Forwa...

China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know – Author Arthur Kroeber

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 ...

China, India and the U.S.: Author Anja Manuel

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 ...

China and the World: Russia – Dr. Maria Repnikova

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 leade...

History of China’s Foreign Relations: Author John Garver

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 an...

The Greening of Asia: Author Mark Clifford

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 approache...

Occupational Hazards: Sex, Business and HIV in China – Author Elanah Uretsky

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 ...

One Child: China's Most Radical Experiment - Author Mei Fong

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 r...

“Will Africa Feed China?” Author Deborah Brautigam

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...