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FSI's research on the origins, character and consequences of government institutions spans continents and academic disciplines. The institute’s senior fellows and their colleagues across Stanford examine the principles of public administration and implementation. Their work focuses on how maternal health care is delivered in rural China, how public action can create wealth and eliminate poverty, and why U.S. immigration reform keeps stalling. 

FSI’s work includes comparative studies of how institutions help resolve policy and societal issues. Scholars aim to clearly define and make sense of the rule of law, examining how it is invoked and applied around the world. 

FSI researchers also investigate government services – trying to understand and measure how they work, whom they serve and how good they are. They assess energy services aimed at helping the poorest people around the world and explore public opinion on torture policies. The Children in Crisis project addresses how child health interventions interact with political reform. Specific research on governance, organizations and security capitalizes on FSI's longstanding interests and looks at how governance and organizational issues affect a nation’s ability to address security and international cooperation.

APARC Scholars Respond to "Chinese Influence and American Interests" Report

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On November 29, 2018, a working group, co-chaired by Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Hoover Institution, and Orville Schell, Arthur Ross director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations, released the report “Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance," which documents the extent of China’s influence-seeking activities in American society. The report details a range of assertive and opaque “sharp power” efforts that China has stepped up within the United States in multiple sectors. These, argue members of the working group, penetrate deeply the social and political fabric of our democratic society and exploit its openness. 

APARC’s Donald K. Emmerson and Thomas Fingar provided the Chinese international affairs website Dunjiaodu with their own commentaries on the report. English language versions of both pieces were published by IPP Review (here and here), and are provided below.

APARC also hosted a special roundtable discussion of the report's findings and recommendations, featuring Diamond and Schell. You can listen to the event's audio recording on our website.

Comment on "Chinese Influence and American Interests"
By Donald K. Emmerson
December 24, 2018

Chinese Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance is an important and timely report. It deserves translation into Chinese and wide circulation inside the PRC. It should be made available on-line for free downloading by people in China from all walks of life, including scholars, teachers, authors, entrepreneurs, and officials from Beijing down to the lowest levels of administration throughout the country. Relations between the US and China are far too important to the citizenries of our two countries to restrict access to the report to a miniscule proportion of China’s population—the elite English-reading few who enjoy privileged (uncensored) exposure to critical facts and comments regarding the Chinese government’s behavior abroad.

I willingly attended a meeting of the Working Group on Chinese Influence Activities in the United States. My academic specialty is Southeast Asia, including its relations with China, so I chose not contribute text to the report. Understandably, not every sentence in its the 199 pages exactly matches what I might have preferred to read or decided to write. (Relevant is my “Singapore and Goliath?” in the April 2018 Journal of Democracy.) But I supported the Working Group’s work and I agree with its outcome.

Included in the report is a dissenting opinion by Susan Shirk. I respect her view. But I am less concerned than she that the report risks “putting all ethnic Chinese under a cloud of suspicion.” The word “constructive” in the report’s subtitle explicitly conveys the Working Group’s desire neither to stereotype nor denigrate people of Chinese descent. At the meeting I attended, this wish was repeatedly expressed. I endorse and appreciate the editors’ caution that, alongside our critique, we “must be mindful to do no harm,” and that the report should not be misused to disparage ethnically Chinese people, who have indeed, as the editors state, made “enormous” contributions to American progress. I would merely enlarge that gratitude to include the economic, political, and cultural benefits attributable to ethnic Chinese individuals, historically and now, throughout the world—my own specialty, Southeast Asia, notably included.

"Flies and Barriers": On the China-U.S. Relationship
By Thomas Fingar
December 20, 2018

The recent report of the Working Group on Chinese Influence Activities in the United States was not timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Reform and Opening and the restoration of US-China diplomatic relations but it provides “teaching moment” opportunities for reflection on the ways in which China and the United States have managed the challenges of deeper engagement. I hope that the full report will be available in China and urge readers of this commentary to read it and to think about the issues it raises. I had no role in the preparation of the report but concur with the views expressed by Susan Shirk in her dissenting opinion.

One cluster of issues centers on important asymmetries in the US-China relationship. The report describes numerous ways in which Chinese entities interact with institutions and individuals in the United States and correctly notes the almost complete absence of legal and procedural impediments to such interaction. One cannot say the same about China. Four decades into the era of reform and opening, China remains far less open to foreign ideas, interaction, and influence than is the United States. I encourage readers to ask why that is the case and to consider the consequences and implications for China’s future development. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, the concerns raised in the Working Group report represent “flies” that entered the United States through the window of extensive engagement with China. The report calls for dealing with the flies, not closing the window. China seems increasingly determined to prevent the intrusion of foreign “flies” by erecting (or failing to lower) barriers.

Asymmetries in access are not limited to the dimensions of US-China relations discussed in this report. The US economy remains far more open to goods, investment, and ownership from China than China is to comparable forms of engagement by Americans. For decades, US laws, policy, and citizens accepted — even fostered — such asymmetries to strengthen our allies and partners. China has benefitted from this asymmetry, as have dozens of other countries. Policies to make our partners and allies stronger and more prosperous were designed to — and did — enhance American security and prosperity, but almost three decades after the end of the Cold War, many Americans understandably ask why we continue to accept such a high degree of inequality. What made sense during the Cold War and before our partners became stronger and more prosperous now seems unfair and unwise. As a result, American thinking about the ways we interact with other nations is shifting from acceptance of asymmetries to demands for reciprocity and equal treatment.

Some Chinese commentaries on the Working Group report have asserted that it reflects waning self-confidence and fear of China’s rise. Such assessments are wrong. Belief that we should receive essentially the same treatment from other countries as they accord to the United States and American citizens, firms, NGOs, and other entities reflects the strength of our commitment to fairness, not fear of competition. The long-held consensus that US policy should treat all countries (except explicit enemies, which China was from 1950 until the late 1960s) equally regardless of how they treated the United States has eroded significantly. That consensus is being replaced by calls for stricter reciprocity and treating other countries in the same way that they treat us. This sentiment is not limited to engagement with China but the Working Group report captures the emerging consensus by noting that Chinese media have far greater access to the United States than American reporters, newspapers, and broadcasts have to Chinese audiences. That is a fact, not an expression of paranoia or lack of confidence. Indeed, readers of this commentary might reflect upon why it is that China seems to lack confidence in the ability of its people to make their own judgments about foreign ideas and compete with foreign firms.

I was in China when the report was published and many Chinese interlocutors depicted its findings and recommendations as “proof” that the United States had abandoned engagement and reverted to containment policies designed to thwart China’s rise. Both their characterization of the report and their assertions about American policy are wrong. None of these interlocutors had read the report (their opinions were based on negative commentary), and I suspect that many would change their assessment if they had a chance to do so. I also suspect that many in China would change their minds about whether the United States is attempting to “contain” China if they had access to more — and more accurate — information about American willingness to acknowledge and manage the “flies” of engagement and Chinese efforts to erect barriers to Western ideas.

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Why Xi Jinping’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Has Undermined Chinese Citizens’ Regime Support?

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Populist leaders around the world often fight against corruption in an effort to win public support. Conventional wisdom holds that this strategy works because leaders can signal their benevolent intentions by removing corrupt officials. We argue that fighting against corruption can produce unintended consequences. By revealing scandals of corrupt officials, anti-corruption campaigns can alter citizens’ beliefs about public officials and lead to disenchantment about political institutions. We test this argument by examining how China’s current anti-corruption campaign has changed citizens’ public support for the government and the Communist Party. We analyze the results of two surveys conducted before and during the campaign, and employ a difference-in-differences strategy to show that corruption investigations decrease respondents’ support for the central government and party. We also examine our respondents’ prior and posterior beliefs, and the results support our updating mechanism. 

SPEAKER:
Yuhua Wang
 
Yuhua Wang is an assistant professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University. He received his B.A. from Peking University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Yuhua's research has focused on the emergence of state institutions, with a regional focus on China. Yuhua is the author of Tying the Autocrat’s Hands: The Rise of the Rule of Law in China (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is currently working on a book-length project to examine long-term state development in China. 

Philippines Conference Room
Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
616 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305

Yuhua Wang Assistant Professor, Department of Government at Harvard University

Game Changer?: Elimination of Term Limits and Xi Jinping's Power

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Please note: RSVP's are full for this event. Please email PLABOON@STANFORD.EDU to add your name to the waitlist.

 

During its March 2018 National People’s Congress (NPC) meeting, the PRC’s national delegates voted nearly unanimously to eliminate term limits for China’s president and vice president. Alongside this dramatic announcement, the NPC further announced drastic re-organization of Party and state such that the Chinese state administration saw significant cuts, consolidation and centralization of power under the CCP.

At this watershed moment, leading experts on Chinese politics will examine what these Constitutional changes bode for China’s future and Xi Jinping’s rule. Are these game changers? Is China abandoning key parts of Deng Xiaoping’s legacy?  How will these affect China’s authoritarian resilience or governance system going forward?  What are the short- and long-term implications of this decision for China’s continuing stability, sustained economic growth and foreign policy?

Please join us for this special panel event with top China experts as they discuss the significance and implications of the recent NPC decisions and Constitutional amendments.

fewsmith
Joseph Fewsmith is professor of international relations and political science at the BU Pardee School. He is the author or editor of eight books, including, most recently, The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China (January 2013). Other works include China since Tiananmen (2nd edition, 2008) and China Today, China Tomorrow (2010). Other books include Elite Politics in Contemporary China (2001), The Dilemmas of Reform in China: Political Conflict and Economic Debate (1994), and Party, State, and Local Elites in Republican China: Merchant Organizations and Politics in Shanghai, 1890-1930 (1985). He is one of the seven regular contributors to the China Leadership Monitor, a quarterly web publication analyzing current developments in China. Fewsmith travels to China regularly and is active in the Association for Asian Studies and the American Political Science Association. His articles have appeared in such journals as Asian Survey, Comparative Studies in Society and History, The China Journal, The China Quarterly, Current History, The Journal of Contemporary China, Problems of Communism, and Modern China. He is an associate of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies at Harvard University and the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer Range Future at Boston University.

 

gallagher
Mary Gallagher is professor of political science at the University of Michigan as well as the director of the Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel Center for Chinese Studies. She received her Ph.D. in politics in 2001 from Princeton University and a B.A. from Smith College in 1991.  In 1989, she was a foreign student in China at Nanjing University. Gallagher later taught at the Foreign Affairs College in Beijing from 1996-1997 and was a Fulbright Research Scholar from 2003 to 2004 at East China University of Politics and Law in Shanghai, China. In 2012-2013, she was a visiting professor at the Koguan School of Law at Shanghai Jiaotong University. Her book, Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State is out from Cambridge University Press this year. Gallagher have also written/edited several other books, including Contagious Capitalism:  Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (Princeton 2005), Chinese Justice: Civil Dispute Resolution in Contemporary China (Cambridge 2011), From Iron Rice Bowl to Informalization:  Markets, Workers, and the State in a Changing China (Cornell 2011), and Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods, and Field Strategies (Cambridge 2010).

 

miller
Alice Miller is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and lecturer in East Asian studies at Stanford. Miller first joined the Hoover Institution in 1999 as a visiting fellow. She also served as a senior lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, 1999-2014. Before coming to Stanford, Miller taught at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC. From 1980 to 1990, she was a professorial lecturer in Chinese history and politics at SAIS. From 1990 to 2000, she was an associate professor of China studies and, for most of that period, director of the China Studies Program at SAIS. She also held a joint appointment as adjunct associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins from 1996 to 1999 and as adjunct lecturer in the Department of Government, Georgetown University, from 1996 to 1998. From 1974 to 1990, Miller worked in the Central Intelligence Agency as a senior analyst in Chinese foreign policy and domestic politics and as a branch and division chief, supervising analysis on China, North Korea, Indochina, and Soviet policy in East Asia. Miller has lived and worked in Taiwan, Japan, and the People’s Republic of China; she speaks Mandarin Chinese.

 

Shih
Victor Shih is an associate professor of political economy at University of California, San Diego, and has published widely on the politics of Chinese banking policies, fiscal policies and exchange rates. He was the first analyst to identify the risk of massive local government debt, and is the author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation. Prior to joining U.C. San Diego, Shih was a professor of political science at Northwestern University and former principal for The Carlyle Group.Shih is currently engaged in a study of how the coalition-formation strategies of founding leaders had a profound impact on the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party. He is also constructing a large database on biographical information of elites in China.

 

Joseph Fewsmith <br><i>Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Boston University, Pardee School</i><br><br>
Mary Gallagher <br><i>Professor of Political Science; Director, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan</i><br><br>
Alice Miller <br><i>Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University</i><br><br>
Victor Shih <br><i>Associate Professor, School of Global Policy & Strategy, University of California, San Diego</i><br><br>
Conferences

Local Citizenship Regimes in China: Migration, Inclusion, and Economic Development

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PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL NOW RUN FROM 4:45-6:00 PM

 

What explains variation in access to citizenship rights in China? Why do some governments extend citizenship to migrants while others do not? This talk details the structural barriers to accessing citizenship rights in China through the household registration system, hukou, which treats domestic migrant workers as foreigners in their own country. Over the last twenty years, city governments erected local citizenship regimes, controlling who is allowed to become full citizens locally while keeping unwanted populations out. In this talk, Prof. Vortherms details the sub-national variation in these policies and explains the connection between economic growth and citizenship acquisition. When the local economy is exposed to foreign market forces, local governments are incentivized to open citizenship to high-skilled workers, who have greater marginal benefits for the local economy in the presence of foreign production. Protectionism leads to stricter policies for low-skilled and chain migrants, while lower local fiscal capacity can increase opportunities for buying citizenship through investment. This talk tests these hypotheses on an original database of local naturalization policies in 249 cities in China, and concludes with a discussion of the prospects and implications of recent reforms to the household registration system.

Portrait of Samantha Vortherms
Samantha Vortherms is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on comparative political economy, development, social welfare, and survey research. Her current book project, Localized Citizenship in China, examines sub-national variation in access to citizenship rights in China. Prof. Vortherms research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and the Social Science Research Council. Before her time at Stanford, she received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin—Madison and two Master’s degrees in International Relations and Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Samantha Vortherms <i>Postdoctoral fellow, Stanford Shorenstein APARC, Assistant Professor of Political Science, U.C. Irvine</i>
Lectures

The AIIB After Two Years

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For directions to the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center, please click here.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) commenced operations on January 16, 2016. The Bank has approved 24 projects totaling US$4.26 billion to date, and its approved membership totals 84 with 64 members having completed all membership requirements and 20 prospective members in the process of finalizing their membership.
 
President Jin Liqun will give his assessment of the bank’s first two years – its accomplishments and challenges – and the future direction of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. What is the potential impact of AIIB’s financing for regional infrastructure, trade connectivity and economic relations? How can multilateral institutions and various stakeholders best address the US$26 trillion infrastructure gap (from 2016 to 2030) in Asia? How is the AIIB distinguishing itself from other multilateral development banks like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank? What is the AIIB’s commitment and contributions toward global economic governance and best international practices?

Jin Liqun
Jin Liqun is the inaugural President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Before being elected as the Bank’s first president, he served as Secretary-General of the Multilateral Interim Secretariat (MIS) tasked with establishing AIIB. Immediately prior to assuming the role of Secretary-General of the MIS, he was Chair of China International Capital Corporation Limited, China’s first joint-venture investment bank. From 2008 to 2013, he served as Chair of the Supervisory Board, China Investment Corporation. From 2009 to 2012, he served as Deputy Chair then subsequently as Chair of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds. From 2003 to 2008, Jin was Vice President, and then Ranking Vice President, of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), in charge of programs for South, Central and West Asia and private sector operations. He joined the Ministry of Finance in 1980, where he served as Director General and Assistant Minister before becoming Vice Minister in 1998. He was also a Member of the State Monetary Policy Committee. Earlier in his career, he served as Alternate Executive Director for China at the World Bank and at the Global Environment Facility as well as Alternate Governor for China at ADB. Jin holds a master’s degree in English Literature from Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages (now Beijing Foreign Studies University). He was also a Hubert Humphrey Fellow in the Economics Graduate Program at Boston University from 1987 to 1988. Jin is a national of the People’s Republic of China.

 

Mackenzie Room

Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Building, 3rd Floor

475 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305

Jin Liqun <i>President and Chair, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank</i>

Farmland and Fraud: Land Rents and Vote Buying in China’s Village Elections

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While much of the existing literature examines vote buying in the context of party systems, including both competitive and hegemonic party systems, this talk, based on a study coauthored by Professor Susan Whiting, addresses vote buying in a context in which no political party effectively structures electoral competition—village elections in China. This study argues that the lure of non-competitive rents explains variation over time and space in the phenomenon of vote buying. It tests this hypothesis, derived from an in-depth case study, in a separate sample of 1200 households in 62 villages in five provinces, using villagers’ reports of vote buying in elections and survey data on land takings as an indicator of available rents. While the literature views the introduction of elections as increasing accountability of village leaders to voters, vote buying likely undermines accountability. This study suggests that the regime has tolerated vote buying as a means of identifying and coopting influential economic elites in rural communities.

susan whiting
Susan Whiting is Associate Professor of Political Science and Adjunct Associate Professor of Law and International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.  She specializes in Chinese and comparative politics, with particular emphasis on the political economy of development.  Her first book, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2001.  She has contributed chapters and articles on property rights, fiscal reform, governance, contract enforcement and dispute resolution to numerous publications. She has done extensive research in China and has contributed to studies of governance, fiscal reform, and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Ford Foundation, respectively.  She, along with colleagues in the law school, is participating in a project on access to justice and legal aid provision in rural China.  Professor Whiting’s current research interests include property rights in land, the role of the courts in economic transition, as well as the politics of fiscal reform in transition economies. Among her courses, she teaches Comparative Politics, Chinese Politics, Qualitative Research Methods, and Law, Development, & Transition, a course offered jointly in the Department of Political Science, the Jackson School of International Studies, and the Law, Societies and Justice Program.

China Toolkit
This event is part of the 2018 Winter Colloquia; An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.

Susan Whiting <i>Associate Professor of Political Science, Adjunct Associate Professor of Law and International Studies, University of Washington</i>
Lectures
An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

“Thugs-for-Hire”: Subcontracting of State Coercion and State Capacity in China

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This talk will be conducted off the record.

This paper introduces the concept of "Thugs-For-Hire" (TFH) as a form of third-party state coercion. Violence or threat of violence, which is essential to the thugs' actions, helps to push through unpopular policies and subjugate recalcitrant population. Third-party violence as a form of privatized covert repression also allows the state to evade responsibility. Weak states are more likely to deploy TFH than strong states do, mostly for the purpose of bolstering their coercive capacity. Yet, state-TFH relationship is functional only in so far as the state is able to maintain an upper hand in exerting control over the violent agents. Third-party violent coercion is also detrimental to state legitimacy. Focusing on China, a seemingly paradoxical case as it is traditionally seen as a strong state, I examine how local states frequently deploy TFH to evict homeowners, enforce one-child policy, collect exorbitant exactions, and to deal with petitioners and protestors.

Lynette Ong
Lynette H. Ong is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, with a joint appointment at the Munk School of Global Affairs. She writes about authoritarian politics, contentious politics and the political economy of development. She is the author of Prosper or Perish: Credit and Fiscal Systems in Rural China (Cornell University Press, 2012). Her publications have appeared or are forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, International Political Science Review, China Quarterly, China Journal, among others. Her writings have also appeared in the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs and New Mandala.

China Toolkit
This event is part of the 2018 Winter Colloquia; An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.

Lynette Ong <i>Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto</i>
Seminars
An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

Beneath the China Boom: Citizenship, Welfare, and the Making of a Rural Land Market

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China has pivoted away from export-oriented development towards a strategy of domestic urban and infrastructural construction.  This pivot is especially visible in rural China, where migrant laborers withstand uniquely low wages by relying on subsistence farming practices.  Yet, at the same time, this low-waged labor system is disrupted by an ongoing urbanization boom which terminates rural land-use rights.  I argue that two political institutions prop up contradictory developmental dynamics.  First, China’s localized welfare policies strip rural workers of social rights in cities, which compel them to maintain rural households to supplement their low urban wages.  China’s decentralized fiscal system, however, simultaneously requires rural governments to fund social expenditures for a labor force employed elsewhere, which they do by commoditizing and acquiring financing through rural land sales.  Such land commoditization disrupts rural-urban labor migration, however, because it removes the rural wage supplement that enables migrants to withstand low wages.

[[{"fid":"229452","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":{"3":{"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; width: 300px; height: 281px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto","data-delta":"3"}}]]Julia Chuang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston College. Her research uses ethnography to show how the movement of people shapes global economic processes. Her book manuscript, The Changing Foundations of Chinese Development, applies this method to the Chinese economy. It follows labor brokers and migrant workers as they move between the villages where they live and the cities where they work. Her book shows how their migrations reflect ongoing tensions and changes in the way Chinese markets – and their reliance on labor and land in particular – operate today. Publications from this project have appeared in Gender & Society, Journal of Peasant Studies and The China Quarterly.

Professor Chuang received a PhD in 2014 from the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2014 to 2016 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

China Toolkit
This event is part of the 2018 Winter Colloquia; An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.

Julia Chuang <i>Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Boston College, Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences</i>
Seminars
An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

The Institutional Logic of Governance in China

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This talk focuses on the fundamental tensions inherent in governing China. Using examples from bureaucratic personnel management and social media controls, Prof. Zhou Xueguang will explore institutional responses and practices in state policymaking and implementation as governing entities in China have encountered changes and challenges of recent years. The talk will draw from Prof. Zhou’s recent book of the same title (published in Chinese, 中国国家治理的制度逻辑).

XueguangZhou Headshot Logo
Xueguang Zhou is the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of Sociology and a Senior Fellow at FSI, all at Stanford University. His main area of research is institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, focusing on Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships.

One of Zhou Xueguang's current research projects is a study of the rise of the bureaucratic state in China. He studies patterns of career mobility and personnel flow among different government offices to understand intra-organizational relationships in the Chinese bureaucracy.

His recent publications examine the role of bureaucracy in public goods provision in rural China (Modern China, 2011), interactions among peasants, markets and capital (China Quarterly, 2011), multiple logics in village elections (Chinese Social Science 2010, with Ai Yun), and collusion among local governments in policy implementation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations 2011, with Ai Yun and Lian Hong; Modern China, 2010).

 

China Toolkit
This event is part of the 2018 Winter Colloquia; An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China

China has undergone historic economic, social and cultural transformations since its Opening and Reform. Leading scholars explore expanding repertoires of control that this authoritarian regime – both central and local – are using to manage social fissures, dislocation and demands. What new strategies of governance has the Chinese state devised to manage its increasingly fractious and dynamic society? What novel mechanisms has the state innovated to pre-empt, control and de-escalate contention? China Program’s 2018 Winter Colloquia Series highlights cutting-edge research on contemporary means that various levels of the Chinese state are deploying to manage both current and potential discontent from below.

Xueguang Zhou

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-6392 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development
Professor of Sociology
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Xueguang Zhou_0.jpg PhD

Xueguang Zhou is the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development, a professor of sociology, and a Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies senior fellow. His main area of research is on institutional changes in contemporary Chinese society, focusing on Chinese organizations and management, social inequality, and state-society relationships.

One of Zhou's current research projects is a study of the rise of the bureaucratic state in China. He works with students and colleagues to conduct participatory observations of government behaviors in the areas of environmental regulation enforcement, in policy implementation, in bureaucratic bargaining, and in incentive designs. He also studies patterns of career mobility and personnel flow among different government offices to understand intra-organizational relationships in the Chinese bureaucracy.

Another ongoing project is an ethnographic study of rural governance in China. Zhou adopts a microscopic approach to understand how peasants, village cadres, and local governments encounter and search for solutions to emerging problems and challenges in their everyday lives, and how institutions are created, reinforced, altered, and recombined in response to these problems. Research topics are related to the making of markets, village elections, and local government behaviors.

His recent publications examine the role of bureaucracy in public goods provision in rural China (Modern China, 2011); interactions among peasants, markets, and capital (China Quarterly, 2011); access to financial resources in Chinese enterprises (Chinese Sociological Review, 2011, with Lulu Li); multiple logics in village elections (Social Sciences in China, 2010, with Ai Yun); and collusion among local governments in policy implementation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 2011, with Ai Yun and Lian Hong; and Modern China, 2010).

Before joining Stanford in 2006, Zhou taught at Cornell University, Duke University, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a guest professor at Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the People's University of China. Zhou received his Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University in 1991.

The Institutional Foundations of the Chinese Bureaucratic State

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An Expanding Toolkit: The Evolution of Governance in China
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