On May 5, 2021, the APARC China Program hosted Professor Yuen Yuen Ang, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan for her program, "The Role of Corruption in China's Speedy, Risky Boom." Based on her recently published book, China's Gilded Age, Ang explored the impact of corruption on China's economy and how it compares to other countries around the world, including the United States during the late 1800s. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

While corrupt countries are usually poor, China appears to be an exception. President Xi Jinping acknowledges that corruption in the country has reached crisis proportions. If this is true, Ang asks, why has China nevertheless sustained 40 years of economic growth and deep transformation?

In fact, Ang argues, China is not as anomalous as it seems; its experience is strikingly similar to America’s Gilded Age during the 19^th century. Ang unbundles corruption into four different types that each harms the economy in a different way. Similar to America’s Gilded Age, reform-era China has steadily evolved toward a particular type of corruption: access money (elite exchanges of power and wealth). Simultaneously, beginning in the 2000s, the central government effectively curbed directly growth-damaging types of corruption such as embezzlement and bureaucratic extortion. Access money fueled commerce by rewarding politicians for aggressively promoting growth and connected capitalists for building more and taking on more risky ventures. But such corruption also produced systemic risks, distortions, and inequality—problems that define China's Gilded Age under Xi's leadership. As a result, China today is a high-growth but risky and imbalanced economy.

Despite popular perceptions that China and the United States are two polar opposites, Ang argues, contemporary China and 19th century America share more similarities than we normally think. Their divergent political systems, however, drove contrasting responses to the excesses of capitalism. Watch now:

On April 21, 2021, the APARC China Program hosted Professor Erin Baggott Carter, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Her program, "When Beijing Goes to Washington: Autocratic Lobbying Influence in Democracies," explored how lobbying from China and China-based companies can affect policy in the United States. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

Professor Baggot Carter based her talk on a dataset drawn from the public records of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act, which includes over 10,000 lobbying activities undertaken by the Chinese government between 2005 and 2019. According to Baggot Carter, the evidence suggests that Chinese government lobbying makes legislators at least twice as likely to sponsor legislation that is favorable to Chinese interests. Moreover, US media outlets that participated in Chinese-government sponsored trips subsequently covered China as less threatening. Coverage pivoted away from US-China military rivalry and the CCP’s persecution of religious minorities and toward US-China economic cooperation. These results suggest that autocratic lobbying poses an important challenge to democratic integrity. Watch now: 

The China Program at Shorenstein APARC had the pleasure of hosting Ryan Hass, Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution for the program "Partner, Competitor, and Challenger: Thoughts on the Future of America’s China Strategy." Hass explored cooperation and competition between the United States and China before engaging in a lively Q&A session with the audience. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

Presently, China is at once a major and increasingly hostile competitor to the U.S., a formidable challenger to U.S. regional and global leadership, and an important partner on a range of transnational challenges. An important and pressing question for many is whether or not it will be possible for both sides to coexist amidst intensifying competition. In his talk, Ryan Hass explored this question by delving into the present and future of US-China relations, as well as the discourse that shapes and is shaped by that relationship. He also discussed the likelihood of conflict between the two countries, particularly surrounding Taiwan, suggesting that it might not be as likely as many of us fear. Listen at this link. 

The China Program at Shorenstein APARC had the privilege of hosting Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies​ (CSIS). The program, entitled "What’s ‘Communist’ about the Communist Party of China?," explored the goals and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as what they might mean for the future of China in the global community. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the goals of the CCP became less clear. As the country began to adopt market reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, CCP theorists were forced into contortions providing ideological justifications for policies that appeared overtly capitalist. Deng Xiaoping’s concept of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” came to be seen as a theoretical fig leaf rather than a description of an egalitarian economic system, and by the 2000s, a consensus emerged that the CCP had completely abandoned any pretense of pursuing the Marxist vision it purported to hold. With the rise of Xi Jinping, however, the Party talks with renewed vigor about Marxism-Leninism and the goal of achieving actual, existing socialism. Has the CCP re-discovered communism?  In his talk, Blanchette discussed the abandoned and existing legacies of Mao Zedong, Marxism-Leninism, and the CCP’s vision of socialism. Watch now: 

On February 24, 2021, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC hosted Dr. Thomas Wright, director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program, moderated the event.

The program, entitled "U.S.-China Relations in the Biden Era," explored the future of US-China relations based on experience from past administrations. Under former President Trump, U.S. relations with China evolved into outright rivalry. In his talk, Dr. Wright discussed whether this rivalry will continue and evolve during a Biden administration by analyzing the roots of strategic competition between the two countries and various strands of thinking within the Biden team. According to Wright, the most likely outcome is that the competition between the two countries will evolve into a clash of governance systems and the emergence of two interdependent blocs where ideological differences become a significant driver of geopolitics. Cooperation is possible but it will be significantly shaped by conditions of rivalry. Watch now:

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Published in APARC’s in-house series, the book is the second volume resulting from APARC’s Stanford Asia-Pacific Research Innovation project. It collects the research findings of participants at the project’s third conference that was held in South Korea in June 2019.

James Liang, a research professor of economics at Peking University and a leading scholar of demographics and social studies, opened the event by situating the discussion about population structure in the context of the U.S.-China technology race. China is quickly catching up with the United States in the quality of its talent pool and the number of its labor resources. It will continue to outpace and surpass the United States in talent and innovation power in the next 10-20 years, Liang says.

China, however, is on a demographic cliff, facing severe population aging and low fertility rates. Its population of young workers aged 25-44 year-olds is projected to decline much faster and sooner than its overall population, leveling out against the labor and innovation gains the United States makes through the inflow of international talent into U.S. universities and entrepreneurial ventures. To sustain its long-term growth in labor quality and innovation, China will need higher birth rates and additional talent gains through migration, argues Liang.

James Feyrer’s book chapter examines the macroeconomic relationship between workforce demographics and aggregate productivity in Asia. Feyrer confirms that the high-income Asian nations like Japan and Korea, and even some middle-income countries of the region, will no longer enjoy a “demographic dividend” boosting aggregate productivity. However, he finds that the negative consequences of shifting to an older population structure may be less severe than previously projected, and even weakening with time. Feyrer believes this may be a result of improved food security and better overall health experienced by old cohorts in childhood, reinforcing the long-reaching impacts of healthcare on societal well-being.

Joon-Shik Park focused on the specific challenges facing Korean society, where birth rates have dropped severely. These historic declines continue to contribute to rising social and political unevenness across Korean society today. Initially seen most visibly in rural areas and smaller villages, Park’s now sees this unevenness affecting the dynamics of medium-sized towns and more urban areas as well. Korea and other aging societies must find viable solutions to address these issues if they are to prevent demographic divides from hobbling development and innovation, Park says.

Closing the book launch event, APARC Research scholar Kenji Kushida offers perspectives from rapidly aging Japan. where the challenges of shrinking and aging populations, rural-to-urban population distribution, and labor shortages spur advances in technology and innovation. Kushida documents this trend across multiple sectors.

He shows that drone technology has increased the productivity of short-staffed surveying firms, while AI-assisted industrial machines allow a broader range of laborers to work in manufacturing. Even in traditionally human-dominated environments like nursing homes, staff increasingly use robots to help improve the physical and mental well-being of elderly patients. Rather than strictly retarding growth, Kushida makes the case that demographic challenges serve as a catalyst for the development and implementation of new technologies.

As the research collected in Demographics and Innovation in the Asia-Pacific demonstrates, the challenges facing aging Asian societies are complex, but there is reason to look to the future with optimism. As the editors of the volume state in their introduction to the book, “Few concepts are as critical for sustained improvement in living standards as innovation.” New technologies and solutions will be foundational to addressing the challenges of the new demographic frontiers many societies are now approaching.