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2026 SCCEI China Conference will be held on May 7, 2026 and focus on Understanding “DeepSeek Moments” and China’s Innovation Ecosystem.

 

Governments, markets, and analysts in the United States and around the world frequently find themselves surprised by China’s capabilities in industries central to economic and national security—from artificial intelligence and robotics to pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, and strategic supply chains. Episodes widely described as “DeepSeek moments” reflect more than isolated breakthroughs; they reveal a systematic failure to understand how China builds technological capacity and scales it with speed. Yet these cutting-edge advances are emerging against the backdrop of a sustained economic slowdown, raising new questions about whether China’s push for technological supremacy is occurring at the expense of broader economic health. 

The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution's (SCCEI) annual China Conference convenes leading experts to examine why prevailing frameworks consistently underestimate China’s industrial performance and assess how its technology ecosystem, industrial policies, and trade strategies function and interact to push many critical sectors to the frontier.



We are finalizing an outstanding lineup of speakers from academia, industry, and policy communities. Updates will be posted here as confirmed. 

*Schedule is subject to change  

Location: 
Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford University

*Topics, speakers, and timing will be confirmed soon. 



10:30 AM - 11:00 AM  Registration & Light Breakfast

11:00 AM - 11:15 AM  Welcome & Opening Remarks


Scott Rozelle 
Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions;
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University


11:15 AM - 12:15 PM  Session 1 | What Distinguishes China's Innovation Ecosystem?


Session Panelists:
Barry Naughton
So Kwan Lok Chair of Chinese International Affairs
University of California, San Diego 

Philip Wong
Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
Chief Scientist Advisor, TSMC

Chenjian Li
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University

Moderator:
Joshua Rosenzweig
Senior Associate Director, Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, Stanford University
 

12:15 PM - 1:30 PM  Lunch
 
1:30 PM - 2:30 PM  Session 2 | Industrial Policy at the Tech Frontier

 

Session Panelists:
Heiwai Tang
Victor and William Fung Professor in Economics; Associate Vice President (Global); 
Associate Dean for External Relations, Business School
University of Hong Kong 

Scott Kennedy
Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics 
Center for Strategic and International Studies

Ruixue Jia
Professor of Economics, School of Global Policy and Strategy
University of California, San Diego

Moderator:
Shanjun Li
Professor of Environmental Social Sciences, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability; 
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University 
 

2:30 PM - 3:00 PM  Break
 
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM  Session 3 | Trade War Meets Tech War: Trade Technology in a Fragmented World


Session Panelists:
Jiajun Wu
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Stanford University

Graham Webster
Research Scholar, Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance;
Editor-in-Chief, DigiChina Project, Stanford University

Hong Ma
Professor and Chair, Department of Economics
Tsinghua University

Moderator:
Jennifer Pan
Professor of Communication
Stanford University

 

4:00 PM - 4:15 PM  Break

4:15 PM - 5:30 PM  Keynote Address


Rush Doshi
C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia Studies and Director of the China Strategy Initiative, Council on Foreign Relations
Assistant Professor of Security Studies, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University 

Moderator:
Scott Rozelle 
Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions;
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University



Questions? Contact scceichinaconference@stanford.edu 

 


Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford University

This event is by invitation only.

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The starkly different paths of economic development followed by China and the West leading to the Industrial Revolution is often being attributed to environmental factors. This column argues that institutions and culture played a key role in setting Europe and China on divergent paths well before the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but the role they played was mediated by a critical difference between the two civilizations: the nature of their prevalent social organizations. A key factor behind China’s remarkable economic resurgence has been its capacity to adapt traditional institutions and cultural practices to the needs of a modern economy.

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Avner Greif
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Motivation & Summary


Social, political, and religious polarization has steadily grown in many longstanding democracies. Some elected representatives and voters have come to view their opponents as illegitimate participants in politics who pose an existential threat to the nation-state; this justifies ignoring or violating democratic norms and procedures to prevent them from gaining power. As polarization increases, voters may prefer to support authoritarian parties that are viewed as better expressing their group identities, as opposed to democratic parties seen as hostile to those identities.

Trust lies at the root of these processes: polarized individuals tend to believe that those who differ from them will not act from a place of goodwill and will lack the incentive to promote their interests. Revitalizing democracy would thus seem to require revitalizing trust. Yet one’s sense of trust is often shaped by factors that are difficult to change, such as childhood socialization. How, then, can trust be increased?

In “Financial market exposure increases generalized trust,” Saumitra Jha, Moses Shayo, and Chagai M. Weiss provide evidence from an experiment conducted among Israelis in 2015. The authors find that individuals who participated in the stock market were more likely to agree with the statement that “most people can be trusted.”

Their argument builds on the intuition that stock markets are fundamentally about trust: investors take a risk by placing their assets in the hands of unfamiliar people who nonetheless have an incentive to promote their interests. As these assets grow, participants ought to become more trusting, not only of financial markets but also of people more generally. Surprisingly, the authors find that even those whose assets did not grow became more trusting. Another surprise is that the increases in trust were higher for Israelis on the political left and right. In other words, polarized voters — those who especially struggle to trust others — exhibited greater increases in trust than centrists.

Prior Research


Social scientists have analyzed trust as both a cause and a consequence. Much of this research concerns the economy, as transactions, contracts, and negotiations all require the belief that other parties will honor their commitments. Higher levels of trust may be a cause of higher economic growth. Conversely, consumers tend to distrust firms that are subject to scandals, leading the corresponding value of those stocks to decrease.

Apart from the economy, trust is also a central aspect of ‘social capital,’ which consists of the resources gained from one’s social networks. Trust can also promote good governance by enabling collective action and by providing legitimacy to political institutions. And as Americans and others learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, trust is central to public health compliance.

Survey research has identified a persistent trust deficit; less than a quarter of respondents to the World Values Survey agree with the statement that “most people can be trusted.” This deficit has many root causes. At the personal and psychological level, one’s sense of trust likely develops in childhood. Meanwhile, people who have experienced trauma or discrimination are less likely to trust others. Whether or not two people are from the same country or the same ethnic or religious group also affects their sense of trust. Those whose ancestors were victims of the African slave trade centuries ago exhibit lower levels of trust today. People in economically unequal societies are also less likely to trust each other. All of this suggests that improving trust is very difficult, especially in polarized societies.
 


 

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Fig. 1. Generalized trust around the world. (a) Geographic Distribution of Generalized Trust

Fig. 1. Generalized trust around the world. (a) Geographic Distribution of Generalized Trust. This figure reports cross-national patterns of generalized trust from the World Values Survey (Wave 7). For each country, we report the share of respondents who state that most people can be trusted. Since Israel is not included in the most recent wave of the World Value Survey, the figure shows generalized trust data from the 2004 World Value Survey.



The Experiment


Studying whether stock market participation affects trust is difficult because participation is itself correlated with pre-existing levels of trust, as well as with other relevant factors like gender or personality traits (such as excitability). The authors’ experimental methodology seeks to overcome this by randomly allocating a large number of participants (over 1300) into treatment and control groups. Prior to this allocation, the authors conducted a survey to establish participants’ baseline levels of trust.

Those in the treatment group participated in an additional survey that explained the study rules as well as how their asset values would be determined on the stock market, quizzing them on these topics afterwards. Participants were given either $50 or $100 (USD), which was between 64% and 128% of the average Israeli daily wage in 2015.

Stock market participants received weekly updates on the prices of their assigned assets, along with a description and valuation of their portfolio, when the markets closed at the end of each week. Individuals in the treatment group were given weekly opportunities to decide whether to buy up to 10% of their portfolio, sell up to 10% of it, or make no change. (If no decision was made, they lost the 10% that could have been traded.) Participants ultimately traded at high levels: around 70% did so at every opportunity, and 80% did so in six out of the seven weeks.

As stated above, participation increased the probability of expressing trust by around six percentage points. These effects were largest for polarized voters and for those whose stocks performed well; however, even those who suffered market losses exhibited increases in trust.
 


 

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Table 1. Trading Stock Increases Generalized Trust (Weighted) Outcome: Generalized Trust (0/1).

 



The authors carefully show how trust can be not only a cause but a consequence of stock market participation. Their approach is not paternalistic because it lets participants make independent financial decisions — as opposed to lecturing them — from which trusting attitudes then develop. In addition, the study can be replicated on a large scale because (a) it can be integrated within existing government cash aid programs and (b) participants would not need much special teaching or supervision. The authors’ approach should appeal to both those who seek solutions that promote equality and empowerment and to those who oppose top-down social programs but support market-driven solutions.

*Research-in-Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

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This paper examines the “Korea discount,” the chronic undervaluation of South Korean stocks compared to other developed markets. Despite Korea ranking 13th globally in market capitalization, its stock market has grown only 25% over the past decade, while the S&P 500 grew 186%. The author attributes this poor performance to weak corporate governance, particularly the dominance of family-controlled conglomerates (chaebols) that prioritize the interests of founding families over those of minority shareholders. An analysis of successful reforms in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States shows that the Korea discount could be successfully resolved by strengthening corporate disclosure requirements, resolving conflicts of interest among institutional investors, and making South Korea’s voluntary stewardship code more enforceable to encourage active shareholder engagement and improve market valuations. 

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Institutional Investor–Driven Governance Reform and the Resolution of the Korea Discount

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You Jung Lee
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We conduct an interactive online experiment framed as an employment contract. Subjects from the US, India, and Africa are matched within and across countries. Employers make a one-period offer to a worker who can either decline or choose a high or low effort. The offer is restricted to be from a variable set of possible contracts. High effort is always efficient. Some observed choices are well predicted by self-interest, but others are better explained by conditional reciprocity or intrinsic motivation. Subjects from India and Africa follow intrinsic motivation and provide high effort more often. US subjects are more likely to follow self-interest and reach a less efficient outcome on average, but workers earn slightly more. We find no evidence of stereotypes across countries. Individual characteristics and stated attitudes toward worker incentives do not predict the behavioral differences observed between countries, consistent with cultural differences in the response to labor incentives.

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Games and Economic Behavior
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Marcel Fafchamps
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December 2025, Pages 175-199
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While the Basel III framework has helped prevent a repeat of the 2008 global financial crisis, it has also made it harder for banks to finance critical infrastructure projects in developing economies. Addressing this requires updating regulatory models that treat such investments as riskier than they are.

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Project Syndicate
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Peter Blair Henry
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Many poor, ethnically divided societies are caught in an ‘ethnic growth trap’, where conflict, low public investment, and political economy dynamics reinforce each other, hindering development. Historical examples reveal that inter-ethnic economic cooperation and innovative financial mechanisms can realign incentives, reduce conflict, and promote sustained prosperity.

Editor's note: This article is part of series covering CEPR's Reducing Conflict and Improving Performance in the Economy (ReCIPE) programme. Saumitra Jha is the ReCIPE Theme Leader on Ethnic Diversity and Nation-Building. The author has prepared slides to accompany this research, which can be downloaded here.

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VoxDev
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Saumitra Jha
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Historically, external threats have tended to unite Israelis and impose a measure of national cohesion on its fractured politics. Yet two years after the worst external attack in the country's history, and in the face of multiple external challenges, Israel is internally divided as never before. Indeed, the country can now be said to be in the midst of a constitutional crisis centered on competing interpretations of democracy and Jewish identity. Few scholars are better placed to analyze this crisis than Dr. Masua Sagiv, a leading analyst of Israeli political culture and constitutional order. Join Amichai Magen in conversation with Masua Sagiv.

Dr. Masua Sagiv is Senior Faculty at the Shalom Hartman Institute and Senior Fellow at the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley School of Law. Masua’s scholarly work focuses on the development of contemporary Judaism in Israel, as a culture, religion, nationality, and as part of Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. Her research explores the role of law, state actors, and civil society organizations in promoting social change across diverse issues: shared society, religion and gender, religion and state, and Jewish peoplehood. Her recently published book Radical Conservatism (Carmel, 2024) examines the use of law in the Halachic Feminist struggle in Israel.

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Amichai Magen
Amichai Magen

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Masua Sagiv
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The 2023-25 Hamas-Israel war proved to be not only the longest war in Israel's history but, remarkably, given that Hamas is a non-state terrorist organization, a war with profound regional consequences. As multiple regional and global actors seek to influence the "day after" in Gaza for their own strategic interests, questions about the broader meaning and implications of the Gaza-centered conflict assume greater international importance. The war has catalyzed a series of regional and global shifts, exposing the limits of external actors, testing the resilience of long-standing alliances, and reshaping the strategic landscape of the Middle East. In this timely conversation, moderated by Or Rabinowitz, Oded Ailam, former head of the Mossad’s Counterterrorism Division, will offer an in-depth analysis of how the Hamas-Israel war continues to reverberate across the region and beyond.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Oded Ailam is a seasoned security and intelligence expert with a career spanning over two decades in Israel’s elite intelligence agency the Mossad. Among his many high-ranking roles, he was the director of the Mossad’s Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC). After retiring from the Mossad, Ailam transitioned into the private sector, offering security and strategic consulting services. Ailam is frequently invited to lecture at international conferences. His insights are regularly featured on FOX News, CNN, Newsmax, The Washington Post, Newsweek, as well as most of the major European media. Ailam writes regularly in Israel Hayom newspaper and other international outlets and appears regularly on prime-time television in Israel.  Ailam is a senior researcher in the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), and an advising analyst to FDD, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. Ailam is a graduate of Ben-Gurion University, where he earned a degree in Industrial Engineering and Management. He also founded a company specializing in industrial quality control solutions. He published his first short novel, a bestseller in Israel. He is a writer and contributor to scripts in Hollywood, France, and Israel, bringing his expertise in espionage and security to the world of storytelling.

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Or Rabinowitz

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Oded Ailam
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Wednesday, February 25, 10:00 am PT. Click to register.

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This paper analyzes interactions  between corporate governance and law enforcement practices, focusing on cases where deterrence is weak and harmful misconduct is profitable. We show how managerial compensation contracts, including stock-based compensation and insurance that shields managers from liability, systematically undermine enforcement efforts aimed both at the corporation and at managers. We also show that common enforcement policies such as discounting penalties when corporations voluntarily self-report or implement compliance programs can actually lead to more social harm by increasing the profitability of misconduct. Our results suggest that to be effective policies designed to deter corporate misconduct must account for interactions between external governance, such as laws and their enforcement, and internal governance mechanisms such as managerial compensation. The analysis offers insights into how to improve the deterrence of corporate misconduct.
 

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Stanford University Graduate School of Business Research Paper Forthcoming
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Anat R. Admati
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