Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions is a joint effort of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.
They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.
FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.
FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.
Scott Rozelle and Dorien Emmer's research is featured in the Financial Times article, "China is suffering its own 'China Shock'"
This talk will be in Chinese (Mandarin).
In this talk, Professor Ge Zhaoguang (葛兆光) will take on fundamental questions on the evolution of “China” as a historical entity (“何谓中国”). His talk will problematize the concept of “China”, discuss issues related to Chinese identity and the “inner” and “outer” historical changes over time. These issues are examined in the context of China’s distinct transformation from a traditional dynasty into a modern state. Professor Ge will provide his reflections of understanding China from a comparative perspective.
This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.
Professor Ge Zhaoguang is a University Distinguished Professor of Fudan University in Shanghai, China. An eminent historian and public intellectual, he has published influential works in the areas of social thoughts, intellectual history, global history, and histography of China and Asia Studies. Many of His works are translated into English, including What Is China?: Territory, Ethnicity, Culture, and History (Harvard University Press, 2018); An Intellectual History of China (two volumes) (Brill, 2014, 2018). He is the recipient of many honors, including first “Princeton Global Scholar (2009), “Asia and Pacific Award” (2014) in Japan, “Paju Book Award” (2014) in South Korea, and HongKong Book Award (2015).
This talk is co-sponsored by Center for East Asian Studies (CEAS), the Department of East Asian Language and Civilization (EALC) and Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI).
Lathrop Library, 224
518 Memorial Way, Stanford, CA 94305
The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions and the Hoover History Lab are pleased to present a talk by Hoover Research Fellow Dian Zhong on her new publication, The Silent Withdrawal: China’s Declining Female Workforce Poses a National Challenge. Scott Rozelle, SCCEI Co-Director, will moderate the conversation.
In The Silent Withdrawal, Dian Zhong reveals a striking reversal in China’s once-celebrated gender equality, as women increasingly withdraw from the workforce despite higher education levels. Highlighting the policy missteps and the unintended consequences of pro-natalist measures, alongside the transformation of feminism from state collaboration to a force of resistance, Zhong calls for bold reforms to reconcile women’s economic empowerment with demographic challenges, steering China toward a more inclusive future.
Dian Zhong is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Hoover History Lab, focusing on the comparative histories of developing countries during the twentieth century. In addition to her Hoover appointment, Zhong also teaches the course 'Comparative Development of Latin America and East Asia' at Stanford University. Previously, Zhong was a lecturer in Portuguese at Beijing Foreign Studies University and a teaching and research assistant at the School of Government, Peking University.
Zhong is an experienced translator and interpreter proficient in Mandarin, Portuguese, and English, providing services for major international organizations such as the G20 and BRICS (the economic group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). She has published extensively on topics such as the political economy of development, comparative political institutions, regime change, geopolitics, and China’s foreign policies toward Latin America. Her current research explores how rising feminism in China impacts existing challenges such as demographic shrinkage, risks of brain drain, labor market imbalances, and the transition from a low-skill, labor-intensive economy to a knowledge-based economy.
Zhong received her PhD in political science from Peking University.
Please join us in-person in the Goldman Conference Room located within Encina Hall (616 Jane Stanford Way) on the 4th floor of the East wing. For more detailed information on venue location and parking instructions, please visit this webpage.
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall
The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution's (SCCEI) annual China Conference brings together leading voices from policy, business, and academia to examine key economic trends in China and their implications for the world.
This year's conference will examine China's role in a changing global economy. Panels of experts from Stanford and around the world will take a deep dive into China’s evolving economic ambitions and self-perception on the global stage, assess the roles of state and private enterprises in advancing China’s goals, and analyze the impacts on global trade, finance, and institutions.
We are finalizing an outstanding lineup of speakers from academia, industry, and policy communities. Updates will be posted here as confirmed.
Location:
Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford University
Hongbin Li
Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
The James Liang Endowed Chair; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University
Scott Rozelle
Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Helen F. Farnsworth Endowed Professorship; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University
Elizabeth Economy
Hargrove Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Session Panelists:
Gangsheng Bao
Professor of Political Science, Fudan University
Skyline Scholar, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions
Jonathan Czin
Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies, John L. Thornton China Center
Brookings Institute
Stephen Kotkin
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies;
Kleinheinz Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Session Panelists:
Nan Jia
Professor of Management and Organization
University of Southern California
Arthur Kroeber
Founding Partner and Head of Research
Gavekal Research
Shitong Qiao
Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar; Professor of Law
Duke University
Sean Stein
President, U.S.-China Business Council
Session Panelists:
Deborah Brautigam
Director of the China Africa Research Initiative; Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy Emerita
Johns Hopkins University
Kyle Chan
Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Sociology
Princeton University
Ramin Toloui
Distinguished Policy Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University
Gangsheng Bao, Professor of Political Science, Fudan University; Skyline Scholar, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions
Gangsheng Bao is a Professor of Political Science at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, and a Skyline Scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. He earned his Ph.D. from Peking University in 2012. His research interests include political theory, comparative politics, and political history, focusing on political modernization and democratization. He has published numerous journal articles and authored several books, including The Fate of Civilization States: From Political Crisis to Modernization (2024), Political Evolution: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century (2023), Crises and Solutions: Reflections on Political Thought in Early China (2023), The Logic of Democracy (2018), The Common Sense of Modern Politics (2015), and Politics of Democratic Breakdown (2014). His works have received multiple awards, including "Best Social Science Book of the Year" (2014).
Deborah Brautigam, Director of the China Africa Research Initiative; Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy Emerita, Johns Hopkins University
Deborah Brautigam is the Director of the China Africa Research Initiative and Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy Emerita at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Her recent books include The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2011) and Will Africa Feed China? (Oxford University Press, 2015). She has been a visiting scholar at the World Bank, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and advised more than a dozen governments on China-Africa relations. Her PhD is from the Fletcher School, Tufts University.
Kyle Chan, Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Sociology, Princeton University
Kyle Chan is a postdoctoral researcher in the Sociology Department at Princeton University and an adjunct researcher with the RAND Corporation. His work focuses on industrial policy, clean technology, and infrastructure development in China and India. Dr. Chan has testified as an expert for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and has been cited in international media, including the Financial Times, The New Yorker, Nikkei Asia, Times of India, and Le Monde. He writes a popular newsletter on these topics called High Capacity.
Jonathan Czin, Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institute
Jonathan A. Czin is the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He is a former member of the Senior Analytic Service at the CIA, where he was one of the intelligence community’s top China experts. Czin led analysis on Chinese politics and policymaking, briefing senior policymakers on President Xi Jinping and key issues. From 2021 to 2023, he was director for China at the National Security Council, advising on White House diplomacy with China. Czin previously served at the Department of Defense and a CIA field station in Southeast Asia. Czin holds a master’s from Yale University, graduated magna cum laude from Haverford College, and studied at Oxford University.
Elizabeth Economy, Hargrove Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Elizabeth Economy is the Hargrove Senior Fellow and co-chair of the Program on the U.S., China, and the World at the Hoover Institution. From 2021 to 2023, she served as senior advisor for China at the Department of Commerce. Previously, she was the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations for over a decade. An expert on Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Economy is the author of The World According to China (2022), The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (2018), and By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest Is Changing the World (2014). Her work has been widely recognized and translated into a dozen languages. Economy has published in top journals, appeared on national television and radio, and testified before Congress. She serves on the boards of several organizations, including the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and has taught at multiple prestigious universities.
Nan Jia, Professor of Management and Organization, University of Southern California
Nan Jia is Professor of Strategic Management. She holds a PhD in Strategic Management from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (Canada). Her research interests include corporate political strategy, business-governance relationships, and applications of Artificial Intelligence technologies in management. Nan’s research has been published in multiple top journals in strategic management. She currently serves as an associate editor for the Strategic Management Journal and on the editorial boards of multiple leading academic journals.
Stephen Kotkin, Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Kleinheinz Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Stephen Kotkin is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Asian Pacific Research Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, both at Stanford. He directs the Hoover History Lab, which uses history to address contemporary policy challenges. At Princeton, where he taught for 33 years, he directed the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, where he established the Wythes Center for Contemporary China and the Chadha Center on Global India, among other endeavors, and edited a book series on Northeast Asia. He is completing a multivolume biography of Joseph Stalin.
Arthur Kroeber, Founding Partner and Head of Research, Gavekal Research
Arthur co-founded the China-focused research service Dragonomics in Beijing in 2002 and was the editor of its flagship journal China Economic Quarterly through 2017. Since Dragonomics' 2011 merger with Gavekal he has been head of research for the combined operation. Before founding Dragonomics, he spent 15 years as a journalist specializing in Asian economic affairs, and reported from China, India, Pakistan and other Asian countries. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the NYU Stern School of Business, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and a senior non-resident fellow of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center in Beijing. His book, China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016, with a second edition in 2020, and is widely used in university classrooms.
Hongbin Li, The James Liang Endowed Chair; Faculty Co-director of Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University
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 and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Li obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 before joining the economics department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University from 2007 to 2016 in the School of Economics and Management and was the founder and Executive Associate Director of the China Social and Economic Data Center. Li’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.
Shitong Qiao, Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar; Professor of Law, Duke University
Shitong Qiao is Professor of Law and the Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar at Duke Law School. He is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong and a core faculty member of the Asia/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke University. Previously, he was a tenured professor at the University of Hong Kong, a Law and Public Affairs fellow at Princeton University, and the inaugural Jerome A. Cohen Visiting Professor of Law at NYU. Qiao employs mixed methods to explore the relationship between political power, law, and private ordering. His monographs include Chinese Small Property: The Co-Evolution of Law and Social Norms (2017) and The Authoritarian Commons: Neighborhood Democratization in Urban China (2025). Qiao has served as an expert witness on the Chinese property regime in China, Canada, and the U.S. He holds law degrees from Wuhan University, Peking University, and Yale University.
Scott Rozelle, Helen F. Farnsworth Endowed Professorship; Faculty Co-director of Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University
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. He received his B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Previously, Rozelle was a professor at the University of California, Davis and an assistant professor in Stanford’s Food Research Institute and department of economics. His research focuses almost exclusively on China and is concerned with agricultural policy, including the supply, demand, and trade in agricultural projects; the emergence and evolution of markets and other economic institutions in the transition process and their implications for equity and efficiency; and the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health, and nutrition.
Sean Stein, President, U.S.-China Business Council
Sean Stein is the president of the US-China Business Council. He previously served as the board chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and is the chair emeritus of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. He also co-chaired the China Public Policy Practice at Covington and Burling where he advised international businesses on political risk, public affairs, communications, and US and China government relations. Sean previously served for nearly three decades as a US diplomat, including as Consul General in Shenyang and Shanghai. He also served on the China desk at the State Department, at the former consulate general in Chengdu, and in other positions around the Indo-Pacific. Sean speaks Mandarin and Indonesian and is a graduate of Georgetown University.
Ramin Toloui, Distinguished Policy Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University
Ramin Toloui is a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, focusing on global economic and geopolitical competition, financial crises, and critical technologies. From 2022 to 2024, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, shaping U.S. economic strategy, strengthening global supply chains, and overseeing sanctions programs. From 2014 to 2017, he was Assistant Secretary for International Finance at the U.S. Treasury, managing global financial stability efforts. Toloui played a key role in shaping the U.S. government’s approaches to navigating Ukraine’s financial crisis, threats to Eurozone financial stability, Brexit, and China’s foreign exchange and market volatility. Before joining the U.S. Treasury, Toloui served as Global Co-Head of Emerging Markets Portfolio Management at PIMCO. Toloui holds degrees from Harvard University and Oxford University.
Parking meters are enforced Monday - Friday 8 AM to 4 PM, unless otherwise posted.
The event will take place in the Bechtel Conference Center located on the first floor of Encina Hall Central. The closest visitor parking to Encina Hall is:
Please visit the this website for more detailed parking options and directions to the venue.
Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford University
This event is by invitation only.
Encina Hall, East Wing, Room 413
Office Hours:
Select Wednesdays | 2:00-5:00 PM
Please schedule a meeting in advance
Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He is also a research fellow at the IZA (The Institute for the Study of Labor) in Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the Chinese economy in leading economic journals and been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam. With Thomas Rawski, he completed Policy, Regulation, and Innovation in China’s Electricity and Telecom Industries (Cambridge University Press, 2019), an interdisciplinary effort analyzing the effect of government policy on the power and telecom sectors in China. He was also co-editor and major contributor to China’s Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which provides an integrated analysis of China’s unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. Brandt was also one of the area editors for Oxford University Press’ five-volume Encyclopedia of Economic History (2003). His current research focuses on issues of entrepreneurship and firm dynamics, industrial policy and innovation and economic growth and structural change.
Why do authoritarian regimes charge political opponents with non-political crimes when they can levy charges directly related to opponents' political activism?
On October 3, 2024, Stanford Professor of Communication, Jennifer Pan, presented her recent research answering this question. Professor Pan and her research collaborators used experimental and observational data from China and found that, “disguising repression by charging opponents with non-political crimes undermines the moral authority of opponents, minimizing backlash and mobilization while increasing public support for repression.”
During the lecture, Pan detailed the survey she and her collaborators conducted in China and shared a case study using data from Weibo to illustrate how China uses select charges to manipulate the public's view of influential dissidents and induce self-censorship among other dissidents in an act of disguised repression.
SCCEI produced a China Brief based off of Professor Pan’s paper on disguised repression in China. Read the brief here for a synthesized recap of the paper.
Watch the recorded lecture to learn more about the research and her findings.
Why do authoritarian regimes charge political opponents with non-political crimes when they can levy charges directly related to opponents' political activism? Professor Pan presents her newest research during a Fall 2024 SCCEI event.
Kelly Reiling is a project manager at the Rural Education Action Program (REAP) at Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI). Kelly graduated from Colgate University in 2022 with a B.A. in International Relations and Chinese Language. Following graduation, she lived in Taitung, Taiwan on a Fulbright Fellowship, where she taught English and coached soccer to elementary school students. Her experiences at Colgate and in Taiwan instilled in her a deep interest in cross-cultural collaboration, early education, and Chinese language, which led her to join REAP in the summer of 2024. Kelly works on a variety of subjects at SCCEI, including early childhood development research and health, education, and public policy projects.
On November 15, 2023 Albert Park, Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), joined SIEPR, SCCEI, and the King Center for a timely discussion on China’s Economy and Asia’s Rise.
Dr. Park shared insights on the economic prospects for Asia and China, geopolitical fragmentation, and China’s regional importance. Beginning with Asia and China’s economic prospects, Dr. Park noted that Asia continues to be the most dynamic region in the world, however, within the region dynamism is shifting from China to other countries and China’s growth has dropped below the growth rate for the region at-large. He also highlighted how China’s weak property sector is contributing negatively to its growth, but despite the economic decline, the country is not close to a recession.
Dr. Park expanded on how Asia’s regional economic integration has continued to deepen and that there isn’t significant evidence of a shift away from China. Trade is fairly steady in Asia, and China’s role in global value chains has increased - making them even more important globally, despite talks of the U.S. decoupling from China. Dr. Park concluded his talk by emphasizing that forcing countries to decouple often hurts the less-powerful, poorer countries the most. He encouraged the U.S. and China to not force countries to choose sides, arguing that this will benefit the poorer countries and reduce global cost overall.
To hear Dr. Albert Park’s full talk, watch the recording here:
On November 15, 2023 Albert Park, Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), joined SIEPR, SCCEI, and the King Center on campus for a timely discussion on China’s economy and Asia’s rise.
On September 28, 2023 Yasheng Huang, International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business and Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, joined SCCEI and Stanford Libraries as the guest lecturer for the 2023 Dr. Sam-Chung Hsieh Memorial Lecture. After introductions from Julie Sweetkind-Singer, Associate University Librarian, and Jennifer Choo, Strategic Policy Advisor at SCCEI, Professor Huang began his lecture speaking on the rise and fall of technology in Chinese history.
Professor Huang shared insights from his empirical study on inventiveness in Chinese history and its implications for today’s China. Using data from the Chinese Historical Invention Dataset (CHID), Huang identified three eras of technological inventiveness in China:
His findings support the storyline that China was once the most technologically advanced civilization in the world. China led Europe in metallurgy, ship construction, navigation techniques, and many other fields, often by several centuries. But China’s technological development stalled, stagnated, and eventually collapsed and its early technological leadership did not set the country on a modernization path. Huang devoted the rest of the lecture to looking at the reason for the peak and major decline of inventiveness in China.
Huang highlights the correlation between the political ideology and economic development during each era and the coordinating degree of inventiveness. His overarching argument is that, “China had vibrant technological development when China was more free, when there was more competition – ideological competition and political competition.” He found that Chinese technological decline was correlated, and potentially causally linked with, the rise of empires, political unitariness, and ideological conformity. Huang suggests that from the sixth century to present day, China has continued down a path of political unitariness and ideological conformity, thus hindering technological advancements in present day China.
Huang concluded his talk with some lessons from history. He proclaimed that economic and technological successes require both scale and scope. Scale being uniformity, such as government support, and scope being diversity and heterogeneity, such as competition and ideological freedom. China in history and today is most successful when both conditions are present.
If you are interested in learning more from Professor Yasheng Huang and his study on technological achievements in China, read his book The Rise and Fall of the East and stay tuned for his forthcoming book focusing more specifically on technology in China.
MIT Professor Yasheng Huang joined SCCEI and Stanford Libraries to deliver a talk examining the factors behind the rise and the fall of Chinese historical technology and lessons for today’s China.
Speaker: Yuli Xu, Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at UC San Diego
China’s annual college enrollment has experienced a significant surge, increasing over nine fold from 1 million in 1998 to more than 9.6 million in 2020 due to a massive expansion initiated in 1999. This paper studies the impact of this expansion on US graduate programs by combining administrative data on Chinese college admission with the SEVIS database on foreign students. Our identification strategy leverages city-year-major variation driven by China's college expansion guided by a quota system, which allows us to control for city-year and major-year confounders. Our estimates imply that the college expansion in China can explain 30% of the rise in Chinese graduate student flow to the US during 2003-2015.
The SCCEI Young Researcher Workshops are a bi-weekly series of presentations from scholars around campus who are working on issues related to China’s economy and institutions. The aim of the series is to bring together young scholars by providing a platform to present new research, get feedback, exchange ideas, and make connections. Each session features a single presenter who may present a new research plan, share results from preliminary data analyses, or do a trial run of a job talk or conference presentation. The Workshop Series is an opportunity to give and receive feedback on existing research, get to know other researchers around campus who are working on or in China, and be a testing ground for new ideas, data, and presentations.
Workshops are held every other Tuesday from 2 - 3 pm. Afternoon refreshments will be provided!
Visit the Young Researcher Workshops webpage for more information on the content and format of the series and to learn how to sign up to present.
Goldman Room, Encina Hall, E409
