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Is it good governance that leads to growth or vice versa? Applying a "complexity" framework to China’s great economic and bureaucratic transformation, Professor Ang argues that governance and growth necessarily interact and coevolve. So-called good governance is not a universal set of institutions—its particular forms vary dramatically at early and late stages of development. Moreover, the adaptive processes of coevolution do not universally happen or work. Understanding how reformers tackled problems of adaptation illuminates the sources of China’s extraordinary dynamism and the new challenges in the 21^st century. 

Yuen Yuen Ang is Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Michigan. Ang studies development and governance in developing countries, especially China, focusing on the coevolution of state and economy, bureaucracy, and corruption. Her research has appeared in The Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics, The China Quarterly, and other journals. Ang’s book project was supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)/Andrew Mellon Foundation, Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation, Overseas Young Chinese Foundation/1990 Institute, APSA Paul Volcker Junior Scholar Grant, and grants from Stanford, Columbia, and Michigan. A summary essay of Ang's forthcoming book is available at this link. She was awarded the Eldersveld Prize for outstanding research by the UM Political Science Department in 2014. Before joining Michigan, she was an Assistant Professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She obtained her PhD from Stanford University.

This event is part of the New Approaches to China series.

The period from the arrest of the “gang of four” in October 1976 to the final step in the removal of Hua Guofeng in mid-1981 saw CCP rural policy go through a number of phases. The initial emphasis on a moderate version of the Dazhai model gave way to “traditional policies” (luoshi zhengce) by mid-1978; these policies were supplemented in 1979 by “responsibility systems,” the most radical of which, household contracting (baochan daohu), became a sharply divisive issue in 1980, but still not the main aspect of agricultural policy. The tide was moving strongly toward household contracting by mid-1981, but had not yet achieved unambiguous endorsement as the Party policy.

A number of inadequate approaches have dominated the literature, notably 1) a power/policy struggle between Hua Guofeng's neo-Maoists and Deng Xiaoping's reform coalition; 2) the power of the peasants; and 3) the leading role of provincial reformers. The first has no validity, the second and third must be viewed through more complex lenses. The talk will explicate the key factors and present an alternative explanation of the success of rural reform.

Frederick C. Teiwes is Emeritus Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Sydney. He received his B.A. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. He is the author of various books on Chinese elite politics including Politics and Purges in China (1979, 1993), Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China (1984), and Politics at Mao's Court (1990). Some of his most important work has been jointly authored with Warren Sun including The Politics of Agricultural Cooperativization: Mao, Deng Zihui, and the "High Tide" of 1955 (1993), The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1971 (1996), China’s Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Emergence of the Great Leap Forward, 1955-1959 (1999), and The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics during the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972-1976 (2007).

In recent years Chinese courts, in particular those in Henan Province, have begun to place a vast quantity of court options online.  This talk examines one-year of publicly available criminal judgments from one basic-level rural county court and one intermediate court in Henan in order to better understand trends in routine criminal adjudication in China.  The result is an account of ordinary criminal justice that is both familiar and striking:  a system that treats serious crimes, in particular those affecting state interests, harshly while at the same time acting leniently in routine cases.  Most significantly, examination of more than five hundred court decisions shows the vital role that settlement plays in criminal cases in China today.  Defendants who agree to compensate their victims receive strikingly lighter sentences than those who do not.  Likewise, settlement plays a role in resolving even serious crimes, at times appearing to make the difference between life and death for criminal defendants.  These findings provide insight into a range of debates concerning the roles being played by the Chinese criminal justice system and the functions of courts in that system.  Examination of cases from Henan also provides a base for discussing the future of empirical research on Chinese court judgments, demonstrating that there is much to learn from the vast volume of cases that have in recent years become publicly available.

Benjamin L. Liebman is the Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law and the Director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia Law School. His recent publications include “Malpractice Mobs: Medical Dispute Resolution in China,” Columbia Law Review (2013); “A Return to Populist Legality? Historical Legacies and Legal Reform,” in Mao’s Invisible Hand (edited by Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth Perry, 2011); and “Toward Competitive Supervision?  The Media and the Courts,” China Quarterly (2011).

SCID and SCP present a special seminar with Professor Xiaonian Xu

The Chinese economy has grown so fast and for so long. But the “miracle” has started fading in recent years.  Why?  Prof. Xu argues that the reform era can be divided into two fundamentally different phases.  Phase I, from 1978 to the mid-1990s, is characterized by market-oriented reforms, whereas Phase II, from the mid-1990s onward, is dominated by government-led investment and interventions. Though China’s growth performance looks identical in numbers over the two phases, the source of growth has changed from efficiency gains to increased use of resources. Phase II growth is thus unsustainable, and worse, it has brought about structural distortions that severely undermine the economy’s growth potential. To maintain growth even at a moderate level, China needs to go beyond what the leadership has promised and planned.

Dr. Xiaonian Xu is Professor of Economics and Finance at CEIBS. He worked for China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC) since 1999 as Managing Director and Head of Research. The research team under Dr. Xu was ranked No. 1 in 2002 among domestic brokerage firms by Chinese institutional investors. And Dr. Xu himself was voted in the same survey as the best in economics research. Prior to CICC, Dr. Xu was Senior Economist with Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific based in Hong Kong from 1997 to 1998. He worked as a consultant of the World Bank in Washington DC in 1996. Dr. Xu was appointed Assistant Professor of Amherst College, Massachusetts, from 1991 to 1995, teaching Economics and Financial Markets. He was employed by the State Development Research Center of China as a research fellow from 1981 to 1985.
 
Dr. Xu obtained Ph.D. in Economics, University of California, Davis, in 1991, and MA in Industrial Economics in 1981 from People's University of China . He received Sun Yefang Economics Prize in 1996, the highest Chinese award in the field, for his research on China 's capital markets. His research interests include: Macroeconomics, Finance, Financial Institutions and Financial Markets, Transitional Economies, and China 's Economic Reform. Dr. Xu is the recipient of the 2005 and 2006 CEIBS Teaching Excellence Award. Dr. Xu received the prestigious CEIBS Medal for Teaching Excellence in 2010. 

By any measure, China’s economy and defense budget are second only to those of the United States. Yet tremendous uncertainties persist concerning China’s military development and national trajectory, and areas with greater information available often conflated misleadingly. Fortunately, larger dynamics elucidate both areas. Particularly since the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, China has made rapid progress in aerospace and maritime development, greatly facilitating its military modernization. The weapons and systems that China is developing and deploying fit well with Beijing’s geostrategic priorities. Here, distance matters greatly: after domestic stability and border control, Beijing worries most about its immediate periphery, where its unresolved disputes with neighbors and outstanding claims lie primarily in the maritime direction. Accordingly, while it would vastly prefer pressuring concessions to waging war, China is already capable of threatening potential opponents’ military forces should they intervene in crises over islands and maritime claims in the Yellow, East, and South China Seas and the waterspace and airspace around them. Far from mainland China, by contrast, it remains ill-prepared to protect its own forces from robust attack. Fortunately for Beijing, the non-traditional security focus of its distant operations makes conflict unlikely; remedying their vulnerabilities would be difficult and expensive. Despite these larger patterns, critical unknowns remain concerning China’s economic development, societal priorities, industrial efficiency, and innovation capability. Dr. Erickson will examine these and related issues to probe China’s development trajectory and future place in the international system. 

The views expressed by Dr. Erickson are his alone, and do not represent the policies or estimates of any organization with which he is affiliated.

Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is an Associate Professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and a core founding member of the department’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). He is an Associate in Research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies (2008-). Erickson also serves as an expert contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report (中国实时报), for which he has authored or coauthored 25 articles. In spring 2013, he deployed in the Pacific as a Regional Security Education Program scholar aboard USS Nimitz (CVN68), Carrier Strike Group 11.

Erickson received his Ph.D. and M.A. in international relations and comparative politics from Princeton University and graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College with a B.A. in history and political science. He has studied Mandarin in the Princeton in Beijing program at Beijing Normal University’s College of Chinese Language and Culture and Japanese language, politics, and economics in the year-long Associated Kyoto Program at Doshisha University.

Erickson’s research, which focuses on Asia-Pacific defense, international relations, technology, and resource issues, has been published widely in English- and Chinese-language edited volumes and in such peer-reviewed journals as China Quarterly, Asian Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Asia Policy (forthcoming January 2014), and China Security; as well as in Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The American Interest, Foreign Policy, Joint Force Quarterly, China International Strategy Review (published in Chinese-language edition, forthcoming in English-language edition January 2014), and International and Strategic Studies Report (Center for International and Strategic Studies, Peking University). Erickson has also published annotated translations of several Chinese articles on maritime strategy. His publications are available at <www.andrewerickson.com> and <www.chinasignpost.com>.

This event is co-sponsored with CEAS and is part of the China under Xi Jinping series.