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.

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About the Speaker

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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

Tuesday, May 25, 2021 | 11:00am-12:15 pm Pacific Time

Institutional Genes: Confucianism vs. Christianity

This talk was based on a chapter of my ongoing book project titled “Institutional Genes: A Comparative Analysis of Origins of China’s Institutions.” Confucianism / Imperial-Exam-System is one of three what I called institutional genes of China's institutions. As a comparison, Christianity is an institutional gene for other institutions, including constitutional democracy (in the West) on the one hand and totalitarianism (in the Soviet Union), which is implanted into China on the other hand.  In this talk, I’ll explain how Confucianism/  Imperial-Exam-System is created and evolved, and why it is an institutional gene that affects today’s institutions in China.   

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About the Speaker

Chenggang Xu is Visiting Professor at Finance Department, Imperial College London. He is one of the first recipients (joint with Yingyi Qian) of China Economics Prize for contributions in understanding government and enterprise incentive mechanisms for the transition economy of China. 

Dr Xu received his PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1991. He is currently a board member of the Ronald Coase Institute (RCI) and a research fellow of the CEPR. He has previously taught at the London School of Economics (1991-2009) as a Reader, at the University of Hong Kong (2009-2016) as Chung Hon-Dak Professor in Economic Development and as Quoin Professor in Economic Development (2008-2016), and as Special-Term Visiting Professor at Tshinghua University (2002-). He has also taught and worked at Harvard (1992-2002), the IMF (1997-1999) and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (1982-1992). He was the President of the Asian Law and Economics Association (2010-2012) and World-Class University Professor at Seoul National University (2009-2013). He won the Sun Yefang Economics Prize in 2013. In 2016, he was the joint winner of the China Economics Prize.

Seminar Series Moderators:

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Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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). In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). 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’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.

Tuesday, May 11, 2021 | 11:00am-12:15 pm Pacific Time

The Political Economy of Policy Experimentations in China

Policy learning, often involving experimentations, is an essential component of government's decision making. In this project, we aim to describe and understand China's policy experimentations, which are speculated by many to have played a vital role in fostering China's reform and growth. We collect comprehensive data on policy experimentations conducted in China over the past 4 decades by 139 ministries and commissions. In sum, our results suggest that policy experimentations take place under various political and bureaucratic constraints, which could limit the scope and bias the direction of policy learning.

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About the Speaker

David Yang is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard University, as well as a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Global Scholar at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). His 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.

Seminar Series Moderators:

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Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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). In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). 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’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.

China Chats with Stanford Faculty

USA vs China:  A New Cold War? Great Power Relations and Competition in the 21st Century

Thirty years ago, the Cold War ended. Today, great power competition is back – or so it seems – with many describing our present era as a “New Cold War” between the United States and China (and Russia). But is this label an illuminating or distorting analogy? More importantly, what should the U.S. do to meet the challengers of great power competition in the 21st century? 

In analyzing contemporary relations, we must trace the historical origins of the U.S.-China relationship, then assess the similarities and differences between the Cold War and U.S.-China relations today along dimensions such as power, ideology, and multilateralism, in order to effectively devise unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral policy prescriptions for U.S. policymakers.

This Stanford alumni event featured Stanford professor Michael McFaul, director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He was joined by professor Hongbin Li, co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy, who moderated a discussion about the major themes of the research. 

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About the Speakers:

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Dr. McFaul also is as an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (eds. with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations, and the relationship between democracy and development. Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.

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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.