In the ever-growing gulf between the U.S. and Chinese governments, what can often be lost are the citizens of the two superpowers. More difficult to sum up in a news article than the platform of a politician, public opinion is a nevertheless immensely important barometer of the U.S.-China relationship.

From an American perspective, gaining an understanding of what people in China really think can be a difficult task; with a completely different system of governance, a complex ideological history, and a social media and information ecosystem largely separate from that of the U.S., public opinion in China cannot necessarily be grafted neatly onto American perceptions of right and left.

Join the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) for a conversation on understanding the Chinese ideological spectrum with leading scholars in the field of contemporary Chinese politics and political communication, the first in a series of collaborations with Asia Society Southern California.

Joining us for the first feature, “Charting the Ideological Spectrum and Public Opinion in China,” is Jennifer Pan, Assistant Professor of Communication and, by courtesy, of Political Science and of Sociology, at Stanford University, and Rory Truex, Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Scott Kennedy will moderate.

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SPEAKERS

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Jennifer Pan is an Associate Professor of Communication at Stanford University. Her research focuses on political communication and authoritarian politics. Pan uses experimental and computational methods with large-scale datasets on political activity in China and other authoritarian regimes to answer questions about how autocrats perpetuate their rule; how political censorship, propaganda, and information manipulation work in the digital age; and how preferences and behaviors are shaped as a result.

Her book, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers (Oxford, 2020) shows how China's pursuit of political order transformed the country’s main social assistance program, Dibao, for repressive purposes. Her work has appeared in peer reviewed publications such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and Science.

She graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government.

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Rory Truex is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His research focuses on Chinese politics and authoritarian systems. His work has been published in the American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, and The China Quarterly, and featured in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. In 2021 he received the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, the highest teaching honor at Princeton. He currently resides in Philadelphia.

MODERATOR

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Scott Kennedy is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A leading authority on Chinese economic policy, Kennedy has been traveling to China for over 30 years. His specific areas of expertise include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, U.S.-China commercial relations, and global governance. He is the editor of China’s Uneven High-Tech Drive: Implications for the United States (CSIS, February 2020) and the author of The State and the State of the Art on Philanthropy in China (Voluntas, August 2019), China’s Risky Drive into New-Energy Vehicles (CSIS, November 2018), The Fat Tech Dragon: Benchmarking China’s Innovation Drive (CSIS, August 2017), and The Business of Lobbying in China (Harvard University Press, 2005). He has edited three books, including Global Governance and China: The Dragon’s Learning Curve (Routledge, 2018). His articles have appeared in a wide array of policy, popular, and academic venues, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and China Quarterly. He is currently writing a report tentatively titled, Beyond Decoupling: Winning the Hi-Tech Competition Against China.

From 2000 to 2014, Kennedy was a professor at Indiana University (IU), where he established the Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business and was the founding academic director of IU’s China Office. Kennedy received his Ph.D. in political science from George Washington University, his M.A. in China Studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and his B.A. from the University of Virginia.

IN PARTNERNSHIP WITH:

Asia Society Southern California

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Please join the CSIS Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics for the launch of the inaugural feature, “Public Opinion in China: A Liberal Silent Majority?” which highlights the work of Stanford professors Jennifer Pan and Yiqing Xu on recent trends in Chinese public opinion. CSIS Trustee Chair Scott Kennedy and SCCEI co-director Scott Rozelle will offer opening remarks and moderate the panel discussion. Jennifer Pan and Yiqing Xu will present the main findings of their research. Panelists include Carla Freeman of the U.S. Institute of Peace, Suisheng Zhao of University of Denver, Bruce Dickson of George Washington University, and Jessica Chen Weiss of Cornell University and the U.S. Department of State.

Watch the recorded event:

FEATURING

EVENT PARTNERS
 

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China Chats with Stanford Faculty 

Friday, March 4, 2022          5 - 6 PM Pacific Time 
Saturday, March 5, 2022    9 - 10 AM Beijing Time

Information Flow Between Global and Chinese Social Media

Despite the connectivity of social media, the Chinese government has been extremely successful in using controls such as firewalls and filtering to restrict the transnational flow of information into China. Does information from global social media flow into China? What types of information are transmitted and by whom? In this talk, Professor Jennifer Pan will share answers to these questions based on on-going research where she analyzed 14 million tweets to identify viral Twitter content pertaining to the COVID-19 outbreak and China during the first quarter of 2020. She developed a system that combines deep learning and human annotation to determine whether these viral tweets appear in a corpus of 8.3 million Weibo posts related to COVID-19 from the same period.

This Stanford alumni event features Stanford professor Jennifer Pan, Associate Professor of Communication, and Associate Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University. She is joined by professor Hongbin Li, co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy, and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), who moderated a discussion about the major themes of the research. A question and answer session with the audience follows the discussion.

About the Speakers
 

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Jennifer Pan is an Associate Professor of Communication, and an Associate Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University. Pan received her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and her A.B. from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs.

Her research resides at the intersection of political communication and comparative politics, showing how authoritarian governments try to control society in the digital age, how the public responds, and when and why each is successful. Her book, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers (Oxford, 2020) shows how China’s pursuit of political order transformed the country’s main social assistance program, Dibao, for repressive purposes. Her work has appeared in peer reviewed publications such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Science. 

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Hongbin Li is the Co-Director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI) and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He also founded and served as the Executive Associate Director of the China Social and Economic Data Center at Tsinghua University. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.

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

Watch the recording:

Wednesday, March 9, 2022 | 4:00-5:15 pm Pacific Time

Integrating Nature into Policy & Finance for Transformation in China

In response to escalating ecosystem degradation, China has avowed to transform its development model and build an “ecological civilization” that “harmonizes humanity and nature”. I will discuss science-based policy innovation designed to achieve three key goals in support of this vision.  The first is to secure the vital benefits of nature to people – such as climate stability, water security, and food security – targeting key regions and sectors.  The second is to drive investments in protecting and revitalizing both natural capital and also human livelihoods and well-being.  The third is to evaluate and track progress, moving beyond gross domestic product (GDP) to include a new system of accounts and high-level metric called gross ecosystem product (GEP).  

About the Speaker

Dr. Ouyang Zhiyun is Professor and director, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.  His research interests include ecosystem assessment, ecosystem services, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation. In recent years, he has made his main efforts in mainstreaming ecosystem services in policy making for ecosystem conservation, restoration and land management in China, including national ecosystem survey and assessment of China, national framework of ecological redline planning, national key ecological functional area identification, national park network planning, giant panda protection, and national ecological transfer payment. Dr. Ouyang has played a key role in conservation policy innovation in China since 2000.

Seminar Series Moderators

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Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University.  For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner. 

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Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

Hongbin’s research has been focused on the transition and development of the Chinese economy, and the evidence-based research results have been both widely covered by media outlets and well read by policy makers around the world. He is currently the co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Economics.

Register Here

Register once to receive the Zoom meeting link that will be used for all lectures in this series.