This interview was first published by the Stanford News Service.

The 2020 Summer Olympics have begun this week but public support among the Japanese public for the games has been generally low and their mood can be articulated through the succinct question: “Why are we doing this now?” says Stanford sociologist and Japan Program Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui.

In collaboration with Global:SF and the State of California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, the China Program at Shorenstein APARC presented session five of the New Economy Conference, "Navigating Chinese Investment, Trade, and Technology," on May 19. The program featured distinguished speakers Ambassador Craig Allen, President of the US-China Business Council; David K. Cheng, Chair and Managing Partner of China & Asia Pacific Practice at Nixon Peabody LLP; James Green, Senior Research Fellow at the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University; and Anja Manuel, Co-Founder and Principal of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC. The session was opened by Darlene Chiu Bryant, Executive Director of GlobalSF, and moderated by Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program.

U.S.-China economic relations have grown increasingly fraught and competitive. Even amidst intensifying tensions, however, our two major economies remain intertwined. While keeping alert to national security concerns, the economic strength of the United States will depend on brokering a productive competition with China, the world’s fastest growing economy. Precipitous decoupling of trade, investment, and human talent flows between the two nations will inflict unnecessary harm to U.S. economic interests--and those of California.  

Chinese trade and investments into California have grown exponentially over the last decade. But they have come under increasing pressure following geopolitical and economic tensions between the two nations, particularly in the science and technology sectors. Ambassador Craig Allen, David Cheng, James Green, and Anja Manuel explored the role of Chinese economic activity in California in the context of the greater US-Chinese relationship. Watch now: 

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 now: 

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: