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Heather Rahimi
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In conversation with SCCEI Co-director Scott Rozelle, Zhenan Bao, K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering and former department chair of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, spoke about her journey to becoming a renowned chemical engineer and innovator and her passion for mentoring the next generation of innovators. 

Throughout the conversation, Professor Bao stresses the need for diversity and collaboration in order to foster an environment of innovation and creativity. She highlights this by sharing her path of discovery to inventing skin-like electronics, stating that it would not have been possible without the exchange of diverse ideas and collaboration with others across disciplines. She also emphasizes how important it is to use the skills and knowledge she has gained throughout her journey to mentor the next generation of innovators. 

Professor Bao concluded the conversation with a message to all, she said, “continue to collaborate, continue to work together. There are so many problems that society and mankind are facing, these are big problems that require everyone from around the world to solve…We need to understand each other to be able to set policies that will be able to advance solving these problems - it requires everyone's collaboration and investment to achieve this.”  

Listen to the full conversation between Professor Zhenan Bao and Professor Scott Rozelle here: 
 

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In December 2022, Zhenan Bao, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, spoke about her journey to becoming a renowned chemical engineer and innovator and her passion for mentoring the next generation of innovators.

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Marc Tessier-Lavigne gives remarks at the 2023 Stanford Asia Economic Forum in Singapore.

Stanford Asia Economic Forum


Saturday, January 14, 2023 | Capella Hotel, Singapore

In a world characterized by significant challenges, unprecedented opportunities, and dynamic business and political environments, the Stanford Asia Economic Forum is dedicated to fostering meaningful dialogue and collaboration between change-makers in the United States and across Asia.

The inaugural Stanford Asia Economic Forum brings together scholars, business leaders, and other change-makers to explore timely questions and issues affecting regional and global economies. Participants explore the role the United States and Asian countries can play in fostering the creation of new ideas, promoting sustainable practices, and pursuing sound economic policies that spur growth and economic development around the world.



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Questions? Contact Tina Shi at shiying@stanford.edu

Capella Hotel, Singapore

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China Chats with Stanford Faculty event header by the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions

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

 

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Zhenan Bao

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.
 

 

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Scott Rozelle

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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Questions? Contact Tina Shi at shiying@stanford.edu

Scott Rozelle

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Zhenan Bao K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering Stanford University
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Evidence from developed countries shows that there is a significant gender gap in STEM occupations. Girls may begin to underperform in math early as primary school. One possible explanation is the negative stereotype threat towards girls. However, this has been understudied in rural China. In this paper, we describe the math performance gender gap in rural China, compare the gender gap between rural and urban China, and finally compare the Chinese situation with other countries. We further examine possible explanations for the math performance gender gap from comparative perspectives. Using first hand datasets of 3,789 primary students and 12,702 junior high students in northwest China, combing with OECD 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey data, we find that in both rural and urban China, boys outperform girls in math. As students grow older, the gap widens. The size of the gender gap in rural China is larger than that in urban China, and larger than in many other countries. We further find that both the gender gaps in math self-concept and math anxiety and discriminatory family investment towards girls are not sufficient to explain the wide math performance gaps. Our study suggests the inequality of education in rural China still merits concern and calls for further work to explain the observed gender gap in math performance. 
 
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Meichen Lu
Fang Chang
Scott Rozelle
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We examine the impact of the competitive “STEM track choice”—a defining institutional feature of a number of national education systems—on gender gaps in STEM majors and college access. Many national education systems require high school students to make a largely irreversible, competitive choice between STEM and non-STEM tracks. This choice determines whether students will compete with STEM or non-STEM track students for college entrance. Using two datasets from China, we show that differences in how girls and boys make this choice are important reasons that girls select out of STEM, independent of gender differences in preference or ability. Specifically, we find that girls are more likely to choose their track by comparing their own STEM and non-STEM abilities (their “comparative advantage”) whereas boys are more likely to base their decision on how their STEM ability compares to others (their “absolute advantage”). Because girls often score higher in non-STEM subjects, looking at comparative advantage leads girls who would be competitive in the STEM track to nevertheless choose the non-STEM track. We further show that choosing the non-STEM track decreases the chance that these girls access college and elite colleges. Thus, the STEM track choice not only leads to gender imbalance in the number of STEM graduates but also to gender inequality in college access.
 
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China's central government incrementally introduced various kinds of student financial aid since the late 1990s in response to public concerns about the rising burden of college prices. Despite the marked increase in financial assistance from governmental as well as non-governmental sources in recent years especially, little is known about how well aid is currently distributed across Chinese universities and whether it is successfully reaching needy students.

We use a unique randomly-sampled dataset of all local senior college students in one northwest province and a combination of non-parametric, semi-parametric and fixed effects methods to examine how various types of financial aid are currently distributed to students of different backgrounds across the university system. We also evaluate whether aid is reaching the main target population of low-income students. We primarily find that government-financed aid is allocated evenly across universities of varying selectivity and is reaching its target population of low-income students within universities. By contrast, university- and society-financed aid is not reaching low-income students. In addition, students in the most selective universities receive large implicit subsidies as they have high instructional costs, get more aid, and pay low tuition fees. Finally, a significant proportion of disadvantaged students do not seem to receive any type of aid.

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China Economic Review
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Prashant Loyalka
Prashant Loyalka
Yingquan Song
Jianguo Wei
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We estimate the effects of attending the first versus second-tier of higher education institutions on Chinese students’ at-college and expected post-college outcomes using various quasi-experimental methods such as regression discontinuity, genetic matching, and regression discontinuity controlling for covariates. Overall we find that just attending the first versus second-tier makes little difference in terms of students’ class ranking, net tuition, expected wages, or likelihood of applying for graduate school. The results do show, however, that just attending the first versus second tier makes it less likely that students will get their preferred major choice.

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Social Science Research
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Prashant Loyalka
Prashant Loyalka
Yingquan Song
Jianguo Wei

Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C-327
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Shorenstein APARC Fellow
Affiliated Scholar at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
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Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.

From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in political science). His most recent books are From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford University Press, 2021), Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford University Press, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020). His most recent article is, "The Role of Intelligence in Countering Illicit Nuclear-Related Procurement,” in Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, William C. Potter, and Leonard S Spector, eds., Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology (Cambridge, 2018)."

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Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-4560 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor
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Andrew G. Walder is the Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor at Stanford University, where he is also a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Sociology, Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and Head of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Walder has long specialized in the sources of conflict, stability, and change in communist regimes and their successor states. His publications on Mao-era China have ranged from the social and economic organization of that early period to the popular political mobilization of the late 1960s and the subsequent collapse and rebuilding of the Chinese party-state. His publications on post-Mao China have focused on the evolving pattern of stratification, social mobility, and inequality, with an emphasis on variation in the trajectories of post-state socialist systems. His current research is on the growth and evolution of China’s large modern corporations, both state and private, after the shift away from the Soviet-inspired command economy.

Walder joined the Stanford faculty in 1997. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1981 and taught at Columbia University before moving to Harvard in 1987. From 1995 to 1997, he headed the Division of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Walder has received fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His books and articles have won awards from the American Sociological Association, the Association for Asian Studies, and the Social Science History Association. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His recent and forthcoming books include  Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement  (Harvard University Press, 2009);  China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed  (Harvard University Press, 2015);  Agents of Disorder: Inside China’s Cultural Revolution  (Harvard University Press, 2019); and  A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Feng County  (Princeton University Press, 2021) (with Dong Guoqiang); and Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China’s Southern Periphery (Stanford University Press, 2023).  

His recent articles include “After State Socialism: Political Origins of Transitional Recessions.” American Sociological Review  80, 2 (April 2015) (with Andrew Isaacson and Qinglian Lu); “The Dynamics of Collapse in an Authoritarian Regime: China in 1967.”  American Journal of Sociology  122, 4 (January 2017) (with Qinglian Lu); “The Impact of Class Labels on Life Chances in China,”  American Journal of Sociology  124, 4 (January 2019) (with Donald J. Treiman); and “Generating a Violent Insurgency: China’s Factional Warfare of 1967-1968.” American Journal of Sociology 126, 1 (July 2020) (with James Chu).

Director Emeritus of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Director Emeritus of the Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies
Faculty Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University, July to November of 2013
Graduate Seminar Instructor at the Stanford Center at Peking University, August to September of 2017
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