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Most people attribute the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to Beijing’s imperialist ambitions. In her talk, Professor Min Ye will go beyond top-level rhetoric, however, and investigate BRI’s origins, its implementation, and its on-the-ground effects inside China. She will unpack different local governments' approaches to the BRI by discussing how subnational entities have leveraged Beijing’s grand strategy and how the implementation of projects and programs related to the BRI facilitate local economic agendas. China’s local developmentalism, which has undergirded not only the BRI but also other national-level strategies (like the Western Development Program and China Goes Global policy), has propelled the Chinese economy from a middle power in 1998 to a superpower in 2018. The talk will conclude with a discussion of COVID-19’s impact on China’s BRI as well as preliminary findings from Professor Ye’s current research into other state-mobilized development initiatives in China.
 

Min Ye is an Associate Professor at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. Her research lies in the nexus between domestic and global politics and economics and security, focusing on China, India, and regional relations. Her publications include The Belt, Road, and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China 1998 -- 2018 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Diasporas and Foreign Direct Investment in China and India (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and The Making of Northeast Asia (with Kent Calder, Stanford University Press, 2010). She has received a Smith Richardson Foundation grant (2016-2018), the East Asia Peace, Prosperity, and Governance Fellowship (2013), Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program post-doctoral fellowship (2009-2010), and Millennium Education Scholarship in Japan (2006). In 2014-2016, Min Ye was an NCUSCR Public Intellectual Program fellow. Ye is currently the 2020 Rosenberg Scholar of East Asian Studies at Suffolk University.

This event will take place on Zoom. Registration is required: http://bit.ly/Invisible_China

As the glittering skyline in Shanghai seemingly attests, China has quickly transformed itself from a place of stark poverty into a modern, urban, technologically savvy economic powerhouse. But as FSI Senior Fellow Scott Rozelle and Natalie Hell show in their new book Invisible China, the truth is much more complicated and might be a serious cause for concern.

Drawing on extensive surveys on the ground in China, Rozelle and Hell reveal that while China may be the second-largest economy in the world, its labor force has one of the lowest levels of education of any comparable country. The low levels of basic education of such a large share of workers may leave many unable to find work in the formal workplace as China’s economy changes and manufacturing jobs move elsewhere.

In this book talk event, Rozelle, who is also the director of FSI’s Rural Education Action Program, will be joined by Hongbin Li, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the book. A question and answer session with the audience will follow the discussion.

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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. 

 

Hongbin Li is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). 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.

 

Please register at www.eai-aparc-seminar.or.kr on the day of the event.

A panel of experts in international relations and commerce will discuss challenges facing South Korea and the country's strategy in light of the current tensions between the U.S. and China. This event is co-sponsored by East Asia Institute in Korea.

Panelists:

David Kang, Maria Crutcher Professor in International Relations; Professor of Business, and East Asia Languages and Cultures; Director of Korean Studies Institute, USC

Seungjoo Lee, Professor of Political Science and International Relations, Chung-Ang University, Korea

Charles Freeman, Senior Vice President for Asia, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Taeho Bark, President, Lee&Ko Global Commerce Institute; former Minister of Trade, Korea

Discussants:

Yong Suk Lee, Deputy Director of the Korea Program, Shorestein APARC; SK Center Fellow, FSI,  Stanford University

Seong-Ho Sheen, Professor of International Security, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University, Korea

Moderators:

Gi-Wook Shin, Director of APARC; Senior Fellow, FSI; William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea; Professor of Sociology, Stanford University

Yul Sohn, President, East Asia Institute; Professor, Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University, Korea

Watch the recorded event at https://youtu.be/Hoz0cXtQfR4.