At the November 2013 Third Plenum, China’s leaders committed to an ambitious program of economic reform.  Now their challenge is to convert those commitments into a realistic and sustained program of change.  Barry Naughton, just back from fall term at Tsinghua University in Beijing, examines the achievements and obstacles, and discusses how these fit in with the other initiatives of Xi Jinping’s complex emerging agenda.

Barry Naughton is a professor at the University of California, San Diego.  He is one of the world’s top experts on the Chinese economy, and a long-term analyst of Chinese economic policy. Naughton received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1986.  Naughton was named the So Kuanlok Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) of the University of California at San Diego in 1998.  He has consulted extensively for the World Bank, as well as for corporate clients.  Naughton is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a non-resident fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.  

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

This talk is presented by the Greater China Business Club (GCBC) of Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Association of Chinese Students and Scholars at Stanford (ACSSS). 

In July 2013, a Ted Talk “A tale of two political systems” was posted, and was instantly viewed millions of times around the world. In the talk, Mr. Eric X. Li, a venture capitalist and a political scientist argued that the universality claim of Western democratic systems was going to be "morally challenged" by China.  

Do you agree? What do you think? Now you have the opportunity to discuss with Mr. Li face to face!

On Nov.6, Mr. Li will come to Stanford and talk with Professor Thomas Fingar on China’s Political System, its status, development, competitiveness and so on. Watch the Ted Talk and come to the event. We look forward to seeing you there!

---

Eric X. Li is a political scientist and an active participant in the intellectual discourses on the re-emergence of China as a great power and its impact on the world.  His writings on comparative political governance and international relations have been widely published in leading publications such as the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, and Huffington Post.  His most recent publications, The Life of the Party (Foreign Affairs, January/February, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138476/eric-x-li/the-life-of-the-party), Warring States (http://www.theasanforum.org/warring-states-the-coming-new-world-disorder/) and his talk at TED Global 2013 (http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_systems.html), have generated active debates around the globe.

Mr. Li is a native of Shanghai.  He received his B.A. in Economics from University of California, Berkeley, M.B.A. from Stanford Business School, and PhD from Fudan University’s School of International Relations and Public Affairs.

Thomas Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford during January to December 2009. 

From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2004–2005), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001–2003), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994–2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989–1994), and chief of the China Division (1986–1989). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (AB in government and history, 1968), and Stanford University (MA, 1969 and PhD, 1977 both in political science). His most recent book is Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011).

Professor Yu Keping will systematically survey the dominant processes and key issues of China’s governance changes over the last 30 years since reform. His talk will summarize the major achievements and the ongoing problems of this 30 year long process. It will offer a brief analysis of the underlying reasons for these reforms and the main characteristics of China’s governance model. After enumerating an array of factual evidence, Yu will show that the drive behind China’s governance reforms stems from unitary governance to pluralist governance, centralization to decentralization, rule of man to rule of law, regulatory government to service oriented government, and from internal party democracy to the people’s democracy.

---

Dr. YU Keping is the Deputy President of the Central Compilation & Translation Bureau (CCTB), and the founding Director of the China Center for Global Governance and Development (CCGGD). He also serves as Prof. and Director of the Center for Chinese Government Innovations at Peking University, and Prof. and Director of the Institute of Political Development at Tsinghua University. He was a visiting professor or senior fellow at many top universities, including Harvard University, Duke University in the US and Free University in Berlin. His fields of expertise include political philosophy, comparative politics, globalization, civil society, governance and politics in China. Among his many books are Governance and Rule of Law in China (ed., Brill, 2012) and Democracy Is A Good Thing (Brookings, 2010).  As a leading intellectual in China, Professor Yu was selected as one of the “30 most influential figures in the past 30 years since the reform in China” in 2008 and ranked 19 in “2011 Global Top 100 Thinkers” by Foreign Policy in the US.

WE ARE AT FULL CAPACITY - PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY FOR A SEAT

In China Goes Global, eminent China scholar David Shambaugh delivers the book many have been waiting for—a sweeping account of China's growing prominence on the international stage. Thirty years ago, China's role in global affairs beyond its immediate
East Asian periphery was decidedly minor and it had little geostrategic power. As Shambaugh charts, though, China's expanding economic power has allowed it to extend its reach virtually everywhere—from mineral mines in Africa, to currency markets in the West, to oilfields in the Middle East, to agribusiness in Latin America, to the factories of East Asia. Shambaugh offers an enlightening look into the manifestations of China's global presence: its extensive commercial footprint, its growing military power, its increasing cultural influence or "soft power," its diplomatic activity, and its new prominence in global governance institutions. But Shambaugh is no alarmist. In this balanced and well-researched volume, he argues that China's global presence is more broad than deep and that China still lacks the influence befitting a major world power—what he terms a "partial power."

---

David Shambaugh is professor of political science and international affairs and director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, as well as a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. His most recent books include Tangled Titans: The United States and China; Charting China's Future: Domestic & International Challenges; and China's Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation.

**Books will be available for purchase at the talk.**

In this talk, Mayling Birney presents evidence that China uses a distinctive form of governing, what she calls a “rule of mandates” in contrast to a rule of law. Under a rule of mandates, standards for accountability are relative rather than absolute, as lower officials are effectively directed to adjust the local implementation of the center's own laws and policies in order to meet the center's highest priorities. In China, this governing system has helped promote stability and growth, yet curtailed the potential impact of rule of law and democratic reforms. Birney demonstrates this impact by drawing on evidence from original surveys, interviews, and archival work. Yet she also explains why this governing system is likely to become more problematic for China in the future, potentially jeopardizing even the economic growth and stability it has thus far supported.

---

Dr. Mayling Birney (London School of Economics) is a comparative political scientist with a special expertise in China. She is currently finishing a book about China’s distinctive form of authoritarian governing, in which she highlights its consequences for stability, justice, rule of law, and political reform. Prior to arriving at LSE, Dr. Birney was jointly appointed as a fellow in the Princeton University Society of Fellows and a lecturer in the Woodrow Wilson School.  She has also served as a fellow at the Brookings Institution and as a Legislative Aide in the United States Senate. She holds a PhD in political science from Yale University, an MSc in economics from LSE, and a BA in government from Harvard University.

Will China’s new leadership push through new financial reforms? The private sector is growing rapidly but private firms complain about their inability to get loans.  Reforms undertaken over the past 20 years have brought change, but much remains to be done. There are now many non-governmental banks and financial institutions operating in China, including foreign firms. But how effectively can they operate?   How open is China’s financial system to the non-governmental banks and to foreign participation? Are the challenges different for foreign firms?  How might foreign firms best cooperate with local firms as Chinese firms increasingly globalize?  Two bankers, James Chen, head of Hollyhigh International Capital, the first investment banking firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in Mainland China, and Carl Walter, recently retired Managing Director, JPMorgan Chase, China, will assess the changes in China’s financial realm. 

---

James (Mingjian) Chen is the chairman of Hollyhigh International Capital, the first investment banking firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in Mainland China. He is also an adviser of the Beijing Olympics organization. Chen is a member of the liaison committee in the China National Democratic Construction Association, the chairman of the M&A Elite Club, as well as a member of the Fuping Foundation for poverty alleviation. He also serves as the chief editor of the China M&A Review, and has published Winning the Deal and M&A Revolution.

Chen graduated from Tsinghua University’s Department of Economics and Management in 1993. After graduation, he worked as a trader at China Great Wall Financial Company for several years. He then established Tsinghua Unisplendour and Hollyhigh Investment Company, in 1997 and in 1998 respectively. In addition to his work at Hollyhigh, Chen is actively engaged in M&A projects for international corporations, such as Lafarge, Shell, SK, and Scottish & Newcastle.

Chen’s deal between Teda and the Meilun Group was used as the first M&A case study at Tsinghua University. He has lectured at many renowned institutions, including Harvard University and the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Carl E. Walter worked in China and its financial sector for the past 20 years and actively participated in many of the country’s financial reform efforts. While at Credit Suisse First Boston he played a major role in China’s groundbreaking first overseas IPO in 1992, as well as the first primary listing of a state-owned enterprise on the New York Stock Exchange in 1994. He was a member of senior management at China International Capital Corporation, China’s first and most successful joint venture investment bank where he supported a number of significant domestic and international stock and bond underwritings for major Chinese corporations. More recently at JPMorgan he was China chief operating officer and chief executive officer of its banking subsidiary. During this time Walter helped build a pioneering domestic security, risk and currency trading operation.

A long time resident of Beijing before his recent return to the United States, Walter is fluent in Mandarin and holds a PhD from Stanford University and a graduate certificate from Peking University. He is the co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundations of China’s Extraordinary Rise as well as Privatizing China: Inside China’s Stock Markets.

Early returns suggest that it may not be business as usual in state-society relations, with the Party-state being compelled to respond to an increasingly discontented and vocal society, and that a partial loosening of the tight censorship in media and culture may also be forthcoming. Indicators include changes in CCTV programming—e.g., a more interesting evening news report and the broadcast of the previously banned film V for Vendetta—media coverage of sensitive issues ranging from air pollution to the work of rights lawyers, and the relatively “enlightened” resolution of the Southern Weekend crisis, among other recent developments. What are we to make of these changes and, more importantly, how have these changes been received within China, for example on the ubiquitous and increasingly important Chinese microblogs?

---

Stanley Rosen is a professor of political science at USC specializing in Chinese politics and society and was the director of the East Asian Studies Center at USC’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from 2005–2011. He studied Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong and has traveled to mainland China over 40 times over the last 30 years. His courses range from Chinese politics and Chinese film to political change in Asia, East Asian societies, comparative politics theory, and politics and film in comparative perspective. The author or editor of eight books and many articles, he has written on such topics as the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese legal system, public opinion, youth, gender, human rights, and film and the media. He is the co-editor of Chinese Education and Society and a frequent guest editor of other translation journals. His most recent books include Chinese Politics: State, Society and the Market [Routledge, 2010 (co-edited with Peter Hays Gries)] and Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema [Hong Kong University Press, 2010 (co-edited with Ying Zhu)]. Other ongoing projects include a study of the changing attitudes and behavior of Chinese youth, and a study of Hollywood films in China and the prospects for Chinese films on the international market, particularly in the United States.

In addition to his academic activities at USC, Professor Rosen has escorted eleven delegations to China for the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (including American university presidents, professional associations, and Fulbright groups), and consulted for the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the Los Angeles Public Defenders Office and a number of private corporations, film companies, law firms and U.S. government agencies.

In recent years, China has had several confrontations with Vietnam, the Philippines and most recently Japan, over maritime sovereignty issues in the South and East China Seas. The popular press and specialists alike often portray these disputes as a clear indication of Beijing's growing willingness to coerce or intimidate its neighbors and disregard international norms and laws in the pursuit of its national objectives. Some observers associate Chinese behavior with a long-term strategic plan to dominate the Asia-Pacific. Dr. Michael D. Swaine, a senior associate in the Asia Program and a China national security specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will offer his interpretation of the interests, motives, and policies driving Chinese behavior in this potentially volatile area, and assess the implications for the United States and other Asian powers.

---

Michael Swaine joined the Carnegie Endowment as a senior associate after twelve years at the RAND Corporation. He specializes in Chinese security and foreign policy, U.S.–China relations, and East Asian international relations. One of the most prominent U.S. analysts in Chinese security studies, he is the author of more than ten monographs on security policy in the region. At RAND, he was a senior political scientist in international studies and also research director of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy.

Swaine was appointed as the first recipient of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy Chair in Northeast Asian Security in recognition of the exceptional contributions he has made in his field.

Prior to joining RAND in 1989, Swaine was a consultant with a private sector firm; a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley; and a research associate at Harvard University. He attended the Taipei and Tokyo Inter-University Centers for Language Study, administered by Stanford University, for training in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.