Stanford University

Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China's Overseas Development Program

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The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power and the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions invite you to Banking on Beijing: The Aims and Impacts of China’s Overseas Development Program on Tuesday, June 7 from 2 - 3PM PT.

Is China a “rogue donor” that uses its largesse to prop up corrupt and authoritarian regimes? Does Beijing bankroll politically motivated and economically inefficient ‘‘white elephants”? What are the risks of borrowing from Beijing? The existing debate about China’s overseas lending and grant-giving activities is largely guided by opinion and conjecture rather than rigorous evidence. In this talk, Dr. Parks will set the record straight with a new dataset of international development finance from China that captures 13,427 projects worth $843 billion across 165 countries over an 18-year period.

Banking On Beijing: The Aims And Impacts Of China’s Overseas Development Program even speaker line up.

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Brad Parks
Larry Diamond
Scott Rozelle
Glenn Tiffert
Panel Discussions
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Impact of Vision Impairment and Ocular Morbidity and their Treatment on Depression and Anxiety in Children: A Systematic Review

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Topic
This systematic review and meta-analysis summarizes existing evidence to establish whether vision impairment, ocular morbidity and their treatment are associated with depression and anxiety in children.

Clinical Relevance
Understanding and quantifying these associations support early detection and management of mental health symptoms in children with vision impairment and ocular morbidity. Additionally, this review provides evidence in favour of insurance coverage for timely strabismus surgery.

Methods
We searched nine electronic databases from inception to February 18, 2021, including observational and interventional studies assessing whether vision impairment and/or ocular morbidity and their treatment are associated with depression and/or anxiety in children. We used narrative synthesis and meta-analysis with the residual maximum likelihood method. A protocol was registered and published on The International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO, CRD42021233323).

Results
Among 28,992 studies, 28,956 (99.9%) were excluded as duplicates or unrelated content. Among 36 remaining studies, 21 (58.3%) were observational studies concerning vision impairment, eight (22.2%) were observational studies concerning strabismus, and seven (19.4%) were interventional studies. Vision-impaired children experienced significantly higher scores of depression (Standard Mean Difference [SMD] 0.57, 95% Confidence Interval (CI) 0.26-0.89, 11 studies) and anxiety (SMD 0.61, 95% CI 0.40-0.821, 14 studies) than normally-sighted children. In particular, myopic children experienced higher scores of depression (SMD 0.59, 95% CI 0.36-0.81, six studies) than normally-sighted children. Strabismus surgery significantly improved symptoms of depression (SMD: 0.59 95% CI 0.12-1.06, three studies) and anxiety (SMD: 0.69 95% CI 0.24-1.14, four studies) in children.

Discussion
Among children, vision impairment is associated with greater symptoms of depression and anxiety. Surgical treatment of strabismus improved these symptoms. Further randomized controlled trials exploring the impact of public health measures for myopia correction on mental health in children are needed. Scaling up access to strabismus surgery could improve the mental health of affected children.

Journal Publisher
Ophthalmology
Authors
Xinshu She
Huan Wang
Matthew Boswell

Stuck in the Middle School Rut: Can Anything Improve Academic Achievement in Rural Chinese Middle Schools?

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Academic achievement in middle schools in rural China remains poor for many students. This study examines whether programmes and interventions can improve academic achievement by reviewing rigorous experimental evaluations of nine programmes (11 interventions) on 47,480 rural middle school students in China. The results find none of the interventions improved academic achievement. Moreover, we find no evidence for heterogeneous treatment effects by student gender, age or previous academic achievement. These results may be due in part to the academically-demanding nature of the middle school curriculum, which is applied universally to students with varying levels of cognitive ability.

Journal Publisher
Journal of Development Effectiveness
Authors
Prashant Loyalka
Scott Rozelle

China's Entrenched Inequality Problem: A Big Data China Event

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Big Data China logo
Join the CSIS Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics and the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) for the launch of the second feature of their collaboration, Big Data China, on May 27, 12:00-1:15 pm ET. Our latest digital report, “How Inequality Is Undermining China’s Prosperity,” written by CSIS Fellow Ilaria Mazzocco, highlights the path-breaking work of Stanford scholars Scott Rozelle, Hongbin Li, and their colleagues. By analyzing data on inequality and its sources, the feature shows how trends in China’s labor market, educational attainment, automation, and rural employment are conspiring to harden inequality, which could hurt prospects for growth and undermine political stability. These developments will complicate how the United States should address the China challenge in the years ahead.

Following a presentation by Scott Rozelle of Stanford University on the key findings of the analysis and its implications for the Washington policy community, Trustee Chair Fellow Ilaria Mazzocco will moderate the panel discussion and questions from the audience. The distinguished panelists for the event include Mary Gallagher of the University of Michigan, Mary E. Lovely of the Peterson Institute and Syracuse University, and Martin K. Whyte of Harvard University.

Watch the Recording:

FEATURING

Scott Rozelle 
Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow, FSI and SIEPR, 
& Co-director, SCCEI,  
Stanford University		Mary Gallagher 
Professor, Democracy, Democratization, and Human Rights, University of Michigan
Mary E. Lovely 
Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute 
for International Economics; 
Professor Emeritus, Department 
of Economics, Syracuse University		Martin K. Whyte 
Professor Emeritus, International Studies and Sociology, Harvard University
Ilaria Mazzocco 
Fellow, Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics		 

 

EVENT PARTNERS
 

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Virtual Livestream 

Mary Gallagher
Mary Lovely
Ilaria Mazzocco
Scott Rozelle
Martin Whyte
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Academic Performance and the Link with Depressive Symptoms among Rural Han and Minority Chinese Adolescents

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The objectives of this paper were to examine the risk of depression and depressive symptoms among Han and minority children and adolescents in rural China, the links between academic performance and depressive symptoms, and the prevalence of these links among specific subgroups. A total of 8392 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students at 105 sample rural schools in eight low-income counties and districts in a prefectural-level city in Southwestern China were randomly selected using a three-step sampling strategy. A total of 51% of the sample were female (SD = 0.50), and the age range was 7 to 19 years (mean = 11.35 years; SD = 1.05). Using the Patient Health Questionnaire 8-item depression scale, the prevalence of depressive symptoms in the sample was assessed, while data on students’ academic performance (standardized math test) and demographic characteristics were also collected. Our results show that the rates of major depression were 19% for Han students, 18% for Tibetan students, and 22% for Yi students; the rates of severe depression were 2% for Han and Tibetan students, and 3% for Yi students. Yi students were at significantly higher risks for major and severe depression than Han students. We conducted multivariate regression and heterogeneous analyses. Academic performance was negatively and significantly correlated to depressive symptoms. Across the whole sample, students with lower math scores, minority students, boys, younger students, and students with migrant parents were most vulnerable to depressive symptoms. The heterogeneous analysis suggests that among poor-performing students, subgroups at higher risk for depression include boys, non-boarding students, and students whose mothers had graduated from high school or above. These findings indicate a need to improve mental health outcomes of rural Han and minority primary school students, targeting academic performance for possible intervention.

Journal Publisher
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Authors
Scott Rozelle

Scholars Gather for Roundtable to Analyze Causes, Prospects, and Challenges of China’s Common Prosperity Program

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 ROUNDTABLE SYNOPSIS     FULL REPORT 

 

The Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) is a “think-and-do” tank designed to incorporate the best ideas from global thought leaders into the work of policy makers who can integrate and put those ideas into practice. Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) is joining forces with ASPI to convene private roundtables comprised of social science experts who conduct data-intensive research into timely issues confronting China’s economy. Conducted in closed-door settings to ensure free-flow of ideas, the collaboration kicked off with a virtual roundtable on January 26, 2022, analyzing the contours and implications of President Xi Jinping’s common prosperity program -- its underlying motivators, prospects, and challenges.

First introduced in the beginning of 2021, Xi Jinping’s common prosperity campaign has become the Communist Party of China’s signature initiative, potentially signaling a fundamental shift in the party’s policy platform. Many aspects of this incipient program, however, remain under-defined. A small panel of academic scholars focused on China’s economy and politics met to discuss the initiative across multiple dimensions, including its deeper aims that lie alongside its more nominally distributive goals as well as their short- and long-term implications.

More specifically, among the questions posed to the roundtable participants were the following: What is the common prosperity program in practice? What are the drivers and motivators of the political campaign being waged in its name? Where is the initiative headed, and will it be able to accomplish its goals? 

The roundable synopsis and full report of the  discussion provide additional detail. 

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SCCEI Launches "Big Data China" in Collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

"Big Data China" aims to bridge the gap between cutting-edge quantitative academic research and the Washington policy community. On February 11, 2022, SCCEI and CSIS hosted their first Big Data China event, "A Liberal Silent Majority in China?" Curated highlights from the first feature of the collaboration are included below.
SCCEI Launches "Big Data China" in Collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Yasheng Huang joins SCCEI for an conversation on US-China relations in this spotlight speaker event.
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U.S.-China Relations in the Age of Uncertainty, a Conversation with Yasheng Huang

MIT professor Yasheng Huang joined SCCEI for a conversation on the fundamentals of U.S.-China relations and shared his thoughts on how the U.S. can disrupt current bilateral tension and advocated for more data-based, factual, and analytical discussions on China.
U.S.-China Relations in the Age of Uncertainty, a Conversation with Yasheng Huang
Jennifer Pan speaks on information flow between global and Chinese social media..
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Information Flow Between Global and Chinese Social Media with Professor Jennifer Pan

Stanford professor Jennifer Pan joined SCCEI for a conversation on her new research looking at information flow from the U.S. to China via social media during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Information Flow Between Global and Chinese Social Media with Professor Jennifer Pan
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SCCEI joins forces with the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) to convene private roundtables comprised of social science experts who conduct data-intensive research into timely issues confronting China’s economy.

U.S.-China Relations in the Age of Uncertainty, a Conversation with Yasheng Huang

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Heather Rahimi
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On April 22, 2022, Professor Yasheng Huang, Epoch Foundation Professor of International Management and Professor of Global Economics and Management in the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined Scott Rozelle, co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, for a lecture and discussion on current U.S.-China relations.

Watch the Recording:

Huang shared his thoughts across three major areas: the current fundamentals of U.S.-China relations, how we got where we are now, and what we might do to change the dynamics between the two countries.  

Opportunities for Collaboration and Complementarity Between the U.S. and China
Huang began by describing the fundamentals of U.S.-China relations and opportunities for collaboration and complementarity between the two countries. Huang noted, for instance, that “if we look at innovations vis-à-vis applications markets and product scaling, [although] China is catching up in terms of innovations [and] inventions, it is still the case that the U.S. is the powerhouse.” Even though the U.S. has the capability to scale technology, U.S. policies and regulations make it challenging to do so. For that reason, Huang asserts that “China is the ideal place to scale technology,” highlighting technology innovation and scaling as an opportunity for joint collaboration.

Huang also outlines other opportunities for collaboration within academia, both through government funding opportunities and through labor. He explains the complementarity between what he calls “Republic of Government,” where the government spends money proactively on furthering academic research and “Republic of Science,” an idea introduced by Michael Polanyi stating that academic research is driven by collaborations and academic freedom. While China’s academic ecosystem operates primarily under the “Republic of Government,” the United States’ operates primarily under the “Republic of Science.” Huang notes, “you can have all the collaborations you want [and] all the academic freedom you want, but science is extremely expensive – you need the government.” In contrast to the U.S., China’s government has directed ample R&D funding toward science over the last decade. Huang explained that this could be another area for joint collaboration: China could fund scientific research in areas of bilateral interest that U.S. academics may otherwise not have had the resources to pursue.  In addition to high costs, he notes that science is also labor intensive. Chinese visiting students and scholars are critical to achieving the scientific research agendas within U.S. academic institutions. 

So, What Went Wrong? 
After outlining numerous opportunities for the U.S. and China to collaborate and complement one another, he turned to explore how and why relations have declined over the last decade. In short, Huang argues that “bad and deteriorating political fundamentals” over the last 5 to 10 years and the failure to address these political fundamentals led to extreme tensions between the two countries.

[The U.S.] systematically ignored the small changes that cumulatively could lead to meaningful flexibilities in the Chinese system down the road.
Yasheng Huang

Looking only at U.S. policy toward China, Huang shares examples of such failures:

  • A disconnect between academics and politicians. While academics might talk about trade in economic terms, politicians talk about trade in political terms. This “language barrier” leads to politicians making decisions on economic engagements on political grounds rather than empirical, academic grounds.
  • The U.S.’s absence of an explicit political strategy toward China. The U.S. “believed that economics automatically would change China.”
  • The U.S.’s unrealistic and grandiose aspirations for China. The U.S. wanted democracy, human rights, and rule of law to be instilled in China, but didn’t develop a strategy to link the areas it was firmly able to influence, like trade and investment, to effectively achieve these idealistic aspirations. 
  • The U.S.’s failure to acknowledge gradual change. According to Huang, the U.S. “systematically ignored the small changes that cumulatively could lead to meaningful flexibilities in the Chinese system down the road.”


The Long-Neglected Principle of Symmetry
Huang continued by sharing examples of failures in U.S. policy toward China and offered suggestions on how the U.S. could pivot to foster more symmetrical bilateral relations. Regarding academia, for example, he notes that China’s students and scholars are welcome on U.S. campuses and that Confucius Institutes are free to operate in the U.S. In return, the U.S. should demand unfettered access by U.S. academics to China. Business operations also offer an opportunity for a more symmetrical relationship. Alibaba has two cloud computing centers in the U.S. and can operate free of equity and data restrictions. Huang believes that to achieve more symmetrical relations, the U.S. ought to demand the same treatment Alibaba has in the U.S. for Google or Amazon’s cloud computer operations in China. Rather than the U.S. demanding more than what they are giving China, Huang insists on the same treatment – a symmetrical relationship. 

How Can We Fix our Existing Relationship?
Huang suggests the U.S. adopts a bottom-up approach and advocates for 4 areas of change:

  1. Seek symmetry. Demand the U.S. receives the same treatment the U.S. gives to China from China.
  2. Pivot away from a China-specific approach. Enforce and make policies without singling out China.
  3. Start hard conversations with China but with humility and mutually acceptable grounds. The U.S. should not try to simply impose its values on China (e.g., human rights and democracy), but rather should find acceptable and agreed upon terms by both sides.
  4. Invest in a U.S. knowledge base of China. The U.S. needs to invest in empirical research that increases our knowledge on China. 
Our policy community needs to move beyond basing their decisions on typecasting and pre-conceived judgments, and instead turn to data-based, factual, and analytical discussions on China.

A Need for Data-Based, Factual, and Analytical Discussion on China
Huang concludes his discussion by suggesting that our policy community needs to move beyond basing their decisions on typecasting and pre-conceived judgments, and instead turn to data-based, factual, and analytical discussions on China. This is exactly what we, the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, advocate for through our mission and empirical research aiming to advance public understanding on China’s economy and its impact on the world. 
 

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Jennifer Pan speaks on information flow between global and Chinese social media..
News

Information Flow Between Global and Chinese Social Media with Professor Jennifer Pan

Stanford professor Jennifer Pan joined SCCEI for a conversation on her new research looking at information flow from the U.S. to China via social media during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Information Flow Between Global and Chinese Social Media with Professor Jennifer Pan
Big Data China logo in front of Shanghai cityscape
News

SCCEI Launches "Big Data China" in Collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

"Big Data China" aims to bridge the gap between cutting-edge quantitative academic research and the Washington policy community. On February 11, 2022, SCCEI and CSIS hosted their first Big Data China event, "A Liberal Silent Majority in China?" Curated highlights from the first feature of the collaboration are included below.
SCCEI Launches "Big Data China" in Collaboration with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
US & China Flags.
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Conference Highlights Need for US-China Collaboration

Panel at Stanford China Economic Forum discusses climate change, financial technology as key areas of mutual interest.
Conference Highlights Need for US-China Collaboration
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MIT professor Yasheng Huang joined SCCEI for a conversation on the fundamentals of U.S.-China relations and shared his thoughts on how the U.S. can disrupt current bilateral tension and advocated for more data-based, factual, and analytical discussions on China.

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Parental Self-Perception, Parental Investment, and Early Childhood Developmental Outcomes: Evidence From Rural China

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Using a three-wave longitudinal survey conducted in 815 households in rural Western China, this study aims to examine the association between parental self-perception and early childhood development and the mediation effect of parental investment on the association between parental self-perception and child development when the sample children are at different ages in the early childhood (18–30, 22–36, and 49–65 months). The results demonstrate that parental self-perception are positively and significantly associated with child social-emotional development in all three ages of childhood (from 18 to 65 months). Positive and significant association between parental self-perception and child cognitive development is found in the ages from 22 to 65 months. In addition, findings of this study show that parental investment plays a mediating role in the association between parental self-perception and child cognitive development. The study calls on policymakers to help to strengthen parental self-perception and parental investment related to early childhood development, which should result in better child development in rural China.

Journal Publisher
Frontiers in Public Health
Authors
Scott Rozelle

A Seminar on "AI-tocracy" and "Exporting the Surveillance State via Trade in AI" with Professor David Yang

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Prof. Yang discusses two current research projects:


AI-tocracy 
Can frontier innovation be sustained under autocracy? We argue that innovation and autocracy can be mutually reinforcing when: (i) the new technology bolsters the autocrat’s power; and (ii) the autocrat’s demand for the technology stimulates further innovation in applications beyond those benefiting it directly. We test for such a mutually reinforcing relationship in the context of facial recognition AI in China. To do so, we gather comprehensive data on AI firms and government procurement contracts, as well as on social unrest across China during the last decade. We first show that autocrats benefit from AI: local unrest leads to greater government procurement of facial recognition AI, and increased AI procurement suppresses subsequent unrest. We then show that AI innovation benefits from autocrats’ suppression of unrest: the contracted AI firms innovate more both for the government and commercial markets. Taken together, these results suggest the possibility of sustained AI innovation under the Chinese regime: AI innovation entrenches the regime, and the regime’s investment in AI for political control stimulates further frontier innovation.

Exporting the Surveillance State via Trade in AI 
What are the international ramifications of China’s emergent leadership in facial recog- nition AI? We collect global data on facial recognition AI trade deals and document two facts. First, we show that China has a comparative advantage in this technology. It exports substantially more facial recognition AI than other countries, and particularly so as compared to other frontier technologies. This comparative advantage may stem in part from the Chinese government’s larger demand for the technology for do- mestic surveillance and political control — a form of “home-market” effect — as well as Chinese firms’ access to large government datasets. Second, we find that there is a political bias in China’s facial recognition AI exports. It is more likely to export this technology to autocracies and weak democracies relative to other frontier technologies, in particular to those lacking domestic AI innovation or experiencing political unrest. No such bias is observed for the United States. To the extent that China may be exporting its surveillance state via trade in AI, this can enhance and beget more autocracies abroad. Policymakers should thus frame AI trade regulations around regulations on products with global externalities.

Watch the Recording:

About the Speaker

David Yang

David Y. Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, a Faculty Research Fellow at NBER and a Global Scholar at CIFAR. David’s research focuses on political economy, behavioral and experimental economics, economic history, and cultural economics. In particular, David studies the forces of stability and forces of changes in authoritarian regimes, drawing lessons from historical and contemporary China. David received a B.A. in Statistics and B.S. in Business Administration from University of California at Berkeley, and PhD in Economics from Stanford.

This event will be held in-person at Stanford University, however, the lecture will be recorded. If you are interested in viewing the recording, please contact Debbie Aube.

Questions? Contact Debbie Aube at debbie.aube@stanford.edu

 

Encina Hall, Stanford University

David Y. Yang
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Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms among Children and Adolescents in Rural China: A Large-Scale Epidemiological Study

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Although children living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) account for 90% of the global population of children, depression, and anxiety among children in LMICs have been understudied. This study examines the prevalence of depression and anxiety and their associations with biological and psychosocial factors among children across China, with a focus on rural areas. We conducted a large-scale epidemiological study of depression and anxiety among 53,421 elementary and junior high school-aged children across China. The results show that 20% are at risk for depression, 6% are at risk for generalized anxiety, and 68% are at risk for at least one type of anxiety. Girls and junior high school students show a higher risk for both depression and anxiety symptoms, while socioeconomic status has varying associations to depression and anxiety symptoms. Our results also show consistent correlations between depression and anxiety symptoms and standard math test scores. These findings underscore the importance of identification, prevention, and treatment of youth depression and anxiety in underdeveloped areas. As China constitutes 15% of the global population of children under age 18, this study offers valuable information to the field of global mental health.

Journal Publisher
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Authors
Xinshu She
Huan Wang
Matthew Boswell
Scott Rozelle
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