2023 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture
Date & Time: Thursday, September 28, 2023     |    4:30 - 6:30 PM PT 
Location: Green Library, Bing Wing, 5th floor, Bender Room

Lessons of History: The Rise and Fall of Technology in Chinese History 

Stanford Libraries and the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions are pleased to present the 2023 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture featuring Professor Yasheng Huang who will be speaking on Lessons of History: The Rise and Fall of Technology in Chinese History.

China was once the most technologically advanced civilization in the world. Ancient Chinese achievements in technology are simply staggering. China led Europe in metallurgy, ship construction, navigation techniques, and many other fields, often by several centuries. The Chinese also invented gunpowder, paper, the water clock, the moveable printing press, and other consequential technologies way ahead of the West. For example, the Chinese invented the seismograph 1,700 years before the French.

But China’s technological development stalled, stagnated, and eventually collapsed and its early technological leadership did not set the country on a modernization path. This lecture examines the factors behind the rise and the fall of Chinese historical technology and draws lessons for today’s China.
 

Watch the Recorded Lecture

About the Speaker 
 

Image

Professor Yasheng Huang is the International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business and a professor of global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Huang founded and runs China Lab and India Lab, which aim to help entrepreneurs in these countries improve their management skills. He is an expert source on international business, political economy, and international management. In collaboration with other scholars, Dr. Huang is conducting research on human capital formation in China and India, entrepreneurship, and ethnic and labor-intensive foreign direct investment (FDI). Prior to MIT Sloan, he held faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School. Huang also served as a consultant to the World Bank.

The family of Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh donated his personal archive to the Stanford Libraries' Special Collections and endowed the Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture series to honor his legacy and to inspire future generations. Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh (1919-2004) was former Governor of the Central Bank in Taiwan. During his tenure, he was responsible for the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, and was widely recognized for achieving stability and economic growth. In his long and distinguished career as economist and development specialist, he held key positions in multilateral institutions including the Asian Development Bank, where as founding Director, he was instrumental in advancing the green revolution and in the transformation of rural Asia. Read more about Dr. Hsieh.

Request Disability Accommodations and Access Info

China Chats with Stanford Faculty 

Friday, December 16, 2022          5 - 6 PM Pacific Time 
Saturday, December 17, 2022    9 - 10 AM Beijing Time

From Picking Stones in Sand to Inventing Skin-like Electronics that will Change the Future of Electronics
A Conversation with Professor Zhenan Bao

What’s the secret to innovation? How do scientific findings transfer to the real world? Professor Zhenan Bao, K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and former department chair of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, sits down with Scott Rozelle, the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, to answer these questions and more. Born in China, Professor Bao moved to the U.S. during college and rose to become a leading scientist and professor of chemical engineering whose work pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in fundamental science. During the conversation, she will share how she became who she is today, her thoughts on Stanford’s culture of innovation, and her passion for mentoring the next generation of innovators. 

About the Speakers

Image

Zhenan Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Bao founded the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiate (eWEAR) in 2016 and serves as the faculty director.

Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995.  She has over 700 refereed publications and over 100 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index 190.
 

Bao has received notable recognition for her work in chemical engineering. Most recently, she was the inaugural recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2021, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Award 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, and the Gibbs Medal by the Chicago session of ACS in 2020. 

Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups. She serves as an advising Partner for Fusion Venture Capital.
 

Image

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.
 

Watch the Recording

Questions? Contact Tina Shi at shiying@stanford.edu

2022 Sam Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture
Date & Time: Wednesday, September 28, 2022     |    4:30 - 6:00 PM PT 
Location: Green Library, Bing Wing, 5th floor, Bender Room

Overreach and Overreaction: The Downward Spiral in the U.S.-China Relations 

Stanford Libraries and the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions are pleased to present the 2022 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture featuring Professor Susan Shirk who will be speaking on Overreach and Overreaction: The Downward Spiral in the U.S.-China Relations.  This is an in-person event.

Why did China abandon its successful foreign policy of restraint and shift toward confrontation and unchecked control over its own society? Surprisingly the shift began under Hu Jintao’s collective leadership (2002-12). Under the personalistic leadership of Xi Jinping the trend has intensified. Those who implement Xi's directives compete to outdo one another, provoking an even greater global backlash. To counter China’s overreach, the worst mistake the rest of the world, and the United States in particular, can make is to overreact. Understanding the domestic political drivers of foreign policy in both countries can help us stem the downward spiral in relations.

About the Speaker

Image

Susan Shirk is Chair of the 21st Century China Center and research professor at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy. Shirk’s book, China:  Fragile Superpower helped frame the policy debate on China in the U.S. and other countries. Her articles have appeared in leading academic publications in political science, international relations, and China studies. She previously served as deputy assistant secretary of state (1997-2000) responsible for U.S. policy toward China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia. She is director emeritus of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and founded the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue, an unofficial forum for discussion of security issues. Shirk is a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and received her PhD from M.I.T.

The family of Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh donated his personal archive to the Stanford Libraries' Special Collections and endowed the Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture series to honor his legacy and to inspire future generations. Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh (1919-2004) was former Governor of the Central Bank in Taiwan. During his tenure, he was responsible for the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, and was widely recognized for achieving stability and economic growth. In his long and distinguished career as economist and development specialist, he held key positions in multilateral institutions including the Asian Development Bank, where as founding Director, he was instrumental in advancing the green revolution and in the transformation of rural Asia. Read more about Dr. Hsieh.

Questions? Contact Sonia Lee from Stanford Libraries 

A SCCEI Spotlight Speaker Event

Friday, April 22, 2022          6 - 7 PM Pacific Time 
Saturday, April 23, 2022    9 - 10 AM Beijing Time

U.S.-China Relations in the Age of Uncertainty

The US-China relations are entering into an uncertain era. More than any other bilateral relations in the world, the US-China relations are characterized by complexities. The two countries compete in multiple arenas, but the competition takes place in a broad context of mutual dependency and collaborations. The Russian invasion of Ukraine may further unravel US-China relations. This talk will discuss and examine these issues.

This event features Yasheng Huang, Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is joined by 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 (FSI) and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the research. A question and answer session with the audience follows the discussion.

About the Speakers
 

Image

Image

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

Watch the recording:

China Chats with Stanford Faculty 

Friday, May 13, 2022          6 - 7 PM Pacific Time 
Saturday, May 14, 2022    9 - 10 AM Beijing Time

From Education to World Development

Ensuring that every child in the world achieves basic skills is a key development goal emphasized in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. But how far is the world away from reaching this goal? And what would achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 mean for world development?  This talk will outline the development of an achievement data base for all of the countries of the world along with estimation of the economic gains from educational improvement. 

This Stanford alumni event will feature Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He will be joined by Scott Rozelle, 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, who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the research. A question and answer session with the audience will follow the discussion.

About the Speakers
 

Image

Image

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

Watch the recording: 

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
 

Image

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. 

Image

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:

Stanford Libraries and the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions hosted the 2021 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture featuring Professor Barry Naughton speaking on The Summer of 2021: Consolidation of the New Chinese Economic Model.

Read the event recap and watch the recording on demand. 

During the summer of 2021, a “regulatory storm” shook markets in China.  While the crackdown had its most immediate effects on private education, internet business, and finance, the government has also rolled out new policies to shape manufacturing and infrastructure, and even household fertility and income distribution.  In this talk, Naughton interprets these actions as an extension of the ongoing Chinese government effort to exercise “grand steerage” of the economy.  The new policies of summer 2021 in fact represent the consolidation of a new model, in which the Chinese government decisively steers a predominantly market economy.

Watch the Recording

About the Speaker

Image

Naughton’s recent research focuses on regional economic growth in China and its relationship to foreign trade and investment. He has addressed economic reform in Chinese cities, trade and trade disputes between China and the United States and economic interactions among China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Naughton has written the authoritative textbook “The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth,” which has now been translated into Chinese. His groundbreaking book “Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978-1993” received the Ohira Memorial Prize, and he most recently translated, edited and annotated a collection of articles by the well-known Chinese economist Wu Jinglian. Naughton writes a quarterly analysis of the Chinese economy for China Leadership Monitor. 

Read more about Professor Naughton.

The family of Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh donated his personal archive to the Stanford Libraries' Special Collections and endowed the Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture series to honor his legacy and to inspire future generations. Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh (1919-2004) was former Governor of the Central Bank in Taiwan. During his tenure, he was responsible for the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, and was widely recognized for achieving stability and economic growth. In his long and distinguished career as economist and development specialist, he held key positions in multilateral institutions including the Asian Development Bank, where as founding Director, he was instrumental in advancing the green revolution and in the transformation of rural Asia.

Read more about Dr. Hsieh.

Event Sponsors:
Stanford Libraries
Stanford Center on China's Economy & Institutions