UPenn Center for the Study of Contemporary China artwork

UPenn Center for the Study of Contemporary China

27 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 year ago - ★★★★★ - 63 ratings

In-depth conversations on Chinese politics, economics, law, and society with faculty, visitors, and guest speakers at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of Contemporary China. Hosted by CSCC Research Scholar Neysun Mahboubi. For more information on the Center, visit https://cscc.sas.upenn.edu

Education Science Social Sciences chinese pennsylvania china cscc economics law mahboubi penn politics upenn
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Episodes

Reporting From a Rising China – Edward Wong

January 01, 2023 02:36 - 2 hours - 155 MB

Western media presence in China has been vastly reduced since February 2020, the consequence both of political tensions and the Covid-19 pandemic. As the Chinese government finally begins to dismantle its “zero-Covid” policy in December 2022, the prospect of Western journalists returning to on-the-ground reporting from China appears more promising than it has in years. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Edward Wong, who reported from China for The New York Times from 2008-2016 a...

U.S. Human Rights Policy Towards China – Amy Gadsden

April 08, 2022 22:53 - 1 hour - 112 MB

While the Chinese government’s actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong lately have been the subject of particular scrutiny from U.S. policymakers, systematic attention to China’s human rights practices, more broadly, has been a consistent feature of U.S. policy towards China in recent decades, through successive Democratic and Republican administrations. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Amy Gadsden, a leading expert on human rights in China, the background to why human rights came t...

China's Overseas NGO Law – Mark Sidel

December 15, 2021 17:37 - 2 hours - 118 MB

In recent years, and especially under the administration of Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has “securitized” all manner of relationships between its citizens and outsiders. An important marker of this trend, which continues to generate intense concern, was the 2016 passage of the Overseas NGO Law, a new legal framework for managing the domestic Chinese operations of nonprofit and educational institutions based abroad. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Mark Sidel, one of the...

China's Rise and IR Theory – Yan Xuetong

November 16, 2020 00:49 - 1 hour - 84.7 MB

No foreign policy topic currently garners more attention in the United States than its relationship with China, especially in light of China’s rise over the past few decades as an economic, technological, military, and strategic power and rival.  In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Yan Xuetong, one of China’s leading experts on international relations, how China’s rise, and its ever more complex and fraught relationship with the United States, look from a domestic Chinese perspec...

China’s Domestic Security Under Xi Jinping – Sheena Chestnut Greitens

June 02, 2020 14:22 - 2 hours - 118 MB

One of the hallmarks of Xi Jinping’s tenure as China’s leader, since 2012, has been the notable strengthening of the state’s coercive architecture, through which it endeavors to control Chinese society.  In particular, Xi Jinping’s administration has substantially restructured the legal and institutional frameworks underpinning China’s domestic security, while also tightening central discipline over security personnel, and pioneering new technology-based methods for surveillance and social c...

Unpacking the Present Crisis in US-China Relations – Ryan Hass

December 06, 2019 23:33 - 1 hour - 81 MB

Whatever the likelihood or implications of a potential truce in the US-China trade war, it seems clear that the overall relationship between the two countries has lately entered into a new, more harder-edged phase, defined by competition and perhaps even conflict in multiple areas: economic, technological, ideological, strategic, and conceivably military as well.  In the United States, heated debates over US-China relations look not just to the present or future, but reach back to past attit...

The Rule of Law in Hong Kong (Part Two) – Johannes Chan

October 24, 2019 13:27 - 2 hours - 128 MB

Dramatic protests in Hong Kong over the past four months, initially over a now-withdrawn draft law that would permit extraditions to mainland China, have brought to worldwide attention broader fears amongst Hong Kong residents that their city is losing its distinctive legal and political characteristics, that were supposedly to be preserved under Chinese rule, according to the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”.  A critical juncture in Hong Kong’s fascinating history appears to have bee...

The Rule of Law in Hong Kong (Part One) – Johannes Chan

June 15, 2019 12:51 - 1 hour - 79 MB

Dramatic protests in Hong Kong this month, over a draft law that would permit extraditions to mainland China, underscore broader fears amongst Hong Kong residents that their city is losing its distinctive legal and political characteristics, that were supposedly to be preserved under Chinese rule, according to the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”.  A critical juncture in Hong Kong’s fascinating history appears to be fast approaching, with ramifications extending far beyond the city it...

How to Be a Sensitive China Watcher – Kaiser Kuo

May 24, 2019 22:04 - 1 hour - 104 MB

Today, the reality and consequences of China’s rise have come to dominate news headlines the world over.  Along with China’s growing wealth and power have come new tensions, with the United States and other countries, that further require better understanding of China’s story, in all its different facets.  Given the stakes, there may never have been a more important time for us to think about how we think about China, whether as professional “China watchers” or more casual observers.  In thi...

Chinese Governance Under Xi Jinping – Victor Shih

April 26, 2019 21:58 - 1 hour - 119 MB

Despite little foreshadowing before he took office, President Xi Jinping has emerged as perhaps the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.  This was reinforced in March 2018 when China’s National People’s Congress voted overwhelmingly to abolish presidential term limits, as had been stipulated under the 1982 PRC Constitution, a feature which had been understood to be critical to the new political settlement after the Cultural Revolution.  In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses wi...

Diagnosing China's State-led Capitalism – Yasheng Huang

April 12, 2019 14:50 - 1 hour - 98.3 MB

As Chinese economic growth slows to its lowest rate in 30 years, there is rising concern (including among some Chinese scholars and officials) about the long-term viability of China's distinctive form of state-led capitalism, sometimes characterized in terms of a "China Model".  Nevertheless, the Chinese government still appears committed to the approach marked by heavy state intervention in the economy that has driven China's growth since the 1990s, and especially since the global financial...

Local Governance and Accountability in China – Dan Mattingly

April 04, 2019 16:49 - 1 hour - 69.6 MB

How do autocratic regimes secure political obedience, and implement unpopular policies, without always resorting to outright coercive tactics?  In a provocative new book, Yale University political scientist Dan Mattingly argues that, in China, state power exercised through local governments relies on local civil society groups—like temple organizations or lineage associations—to quietly infiltrate, observe, and thereby control Chinese rural society.  In this episode, he discusses his book an...

Property Rights and Economic Development in China – Susan Whiting

March 22, 2019 17:51 - 1 hour - 61.3 MB

At least since China’s 1994 fiscal and tax reforms, land-backed development has served as the greatest source of revenue for Chinese local governments—potentially almost 1 trillion US dollars in total this year—as well as a powerful engine both for rapid industrialization and for social discontent.  This circumstance reflects how the state allocation of land-use rights, in China, remains a vestige of the planned economy, and how fiscal pressures on local governments, combined with differenti...

The Evolution of Workers’ Rights in China – Mary Gallagher

March 14, 2019 17:35 - 1 hour - 76.9 MB

Economic reform since the late 1970s, as well as the dynamics of globalization unleashed in full by China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, have significantly complicated the relationship between the Chinese Party-state and Chinese workers.  Some of this complexity was made apparent in the 1990s, after millions of workers were laid off from state owned enterprises, and then it was highlighted again, in a different form, in connection with worker suicides at Foxconn plants an...

Rights Lawyering in China – Teng Biao

March 06, 2019 21:25 - 1 hour - 82.7 MB

Over the past 16 years, there has emerged in China a community of self-identified "rights defense" (weiquan) lawyers, akin to "cause lawyers" in the United States, who select cases and frame legal advocacy with a goal of achieving wider societal impact.  Once celebrated in official discourse, these lawyers have increasingly come under scrutiny and pressure by the Chinese Party-state, that has intensified despite official promotion of "rule of law" concepts since the CCP Central Committee’s F...

Gender Inequality in China – Yun Zhou

February 26, 2019 22:09 - 53 minutes - 50.9 MB

Chairman Mao famously proclaimed that “women hold up half the sky,” and there are many ways in which women’s status, rights, and opportunities have improved under CCP rule.  That said, patriarchal ideas about the role of women have continued to find robust expression in China, in different and evolving ways, since 1949 and through the reform & opening period.  In this episode, Brown University sociologist Yun Zhou discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the landscape of gender inequality in China, wi...

China’s One-Child Policy – Wang Feng

February 19, 2019 21:25 - 1 hour - 91.1 MB

The Chinese government is currently in the process of dismantling the family planning policies which it introduced in the 1970s, and developed alongside its program of reform & opening over the past 40 years—which are most famously associated with the one-child limit for most Chinese families, that was finally converted into a universal two-child limit starting in 2016.  In so doing, the government is attempting to defuse a ticking demographic time bomb, that is not entirely the fault of the...

Taiwan and the Global Order – Shelley Rigger

February 13, 2019 00:44 - 1 hour - 78 MB

What explains Taiwan’s outsized presence in our news headlines, especially over the first two years of the Trump administration?  What can be learned from its raucous process of democratization over the past thirty years?  How will it continue to forge its unexpected identity, against the backdrop of China’s ever-deepening shadow?  In this episode, Davidson College political scientist Shelley Rigger, one of the foremost authorities on Taiwan’s domestic politics and international standing, d...

Overreach and Overreaction: The Crisis in US-China Relations – Susan Shirk

February 07, 2019 19:43 - 1 hour - 185 MB

The following is a live recording of the 2019 Annual Public Lecture at Penn’s CSCC delivered by Susan Shirk, and introduced by the Center’s Director, Avery Goldstein. The event took place on January 31, 2019.  Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com  Special thanks to Justin Melnick and Christopher Passanante

Civil Society and Civic Engagement in China – Bin Xu

November 05, 2018 18:59 - 1 hour - 66 MB

Amidst various commentaries on the 10th anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake, this past summer, a prominent theme has been the sense of possibility for civil society in China that was initially generated by the outpouring of social volunteerism, unprecedented in Chinese history, which followed the disaster.  That earlier optimism about civil society appears less robust in China today, within an overall context of further tightening of the space for independent social organizations and advoc...

Internet Culture and Politics in China – Guobin Yang

October 09, 2018 19:53 - 1 hour - 54.7 MB

Current headlines about how authoritarian regimes have come to harness and even weaponize the internet may obscure how this technology, at one time, was more typically understood to be a democratizing force, across a range of different contexts. In the early days of Chinese cyberspace, for example, popular expression on various internet forums seemed to herald a new stage in political activism, that was pressing the boundaries of traditional state control. In this episode, University of Penn...

Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank – Natalie Lichtenstein

July 02, 2018 18:59 - 1 hour - 64.8 MB

Launched by China in June 2015, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank ("AIIB") currently has eighty-six members and, with $100 billion in capital, has lent around $4 billion to infrastructure projects throughout Asia. The AIIB's very creation is an important marker in China's economic and strategic rise over the past forty years, from a poor country that was entirely outside of the Bretton Woods financial system, to the largest borrower from the World Bank, and now, to the creator of a co...

China & North Korea Relations – John Park

May 08, 2018 21:09 - 59 minutes - 41.2 MB

As the nuclear standoff between North Korea and the United States dominates global headlines, the relationship between North Korea and China, though little understood, has attracted ever greater interest. In this episode, the Harvard Kennedy School's John Park, a leading expert on security issues relating to Northeast Asia, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the complex relationship between North Korea and China, with special attention to the economic dynamics at play since China established dip...

China's Economy & The 19th Party Congress – Damien Ma

March 29, 2018 21:24 - 1 hour - 47.6 MB

China's economy is currently the world's second largest, by GDP, and is generally expected to overtake the U.S. economy within the next decade. In this episode, the Paulson Institute's Damien Ma, a leading expert on Chinese economic trends, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the key features defining China's economy today, and some likely forecasts for the near future, with particular attention to the policy and personnel implications of the recent 19th Party Congress. This episode was recorded ...

Chinese Politics & The 19th Party Congress – Joseph Fewsmith

December 20, 2017 03:00 - 1 hour - 62 MB

China’s 19th Party Congress, held in October 2017, drew significant anticipation and attention, not only among professional China watchers, for its domestic meaning and foreign policy signals, at a time when the PRC is staking out a new role on the world stage. In this episode, Boston University Professor Joseph Fewsmith, one of the leading experts on Chinese elite politics, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the politics surrounding this latest Congress, from specific personnel decisions to bro...

Trump's Visit to China – Avery Goldstein, Jacques deLisle, Amy Gadsden

November 07, 2017 23:41 - 57 minutes - 40 MB

President Trump's November 2017 visit to China, and four other Asian countries, comes at a charged time in US-China relations, when its perennial challenges and opportunities appear in particularly sharp relief. In this episode, Penn experts Avery Goldstein, Jacques deLisle, and Amy Gadsden discuss with Neysun Mahboubi the President's upcoming trip, with special attention to key topic areas that will be implicated by this week's meetings in Beijing and other Asian capitals. The episode was...

China & India Relations – Oriana Skylar Mastro

October 17, 2017 21:03 - 37 minutes - 26.1 MB

China and India share many historical similarities, as well as a complicated relationship shaped by political differences, growing economic ties, ongoing border disputes, and regional competition more generally. In this episode, Georgetown University Professor Oriana Skylar Mastro discusses the Sino-Indian relationship with CSCC Research Scholar Neysun Mahboubi, with particular attention to the recent Doklam standoff that was resolved in August 2017, as well as implications for U.S. security...

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