As China and Russia attack free governments and push strongman rule, the U.S. has gone silent—and a new tide of authoritarianism is gathering, writes Larry Diamond. Read here.
Does the current trade-talk stalemate between the U.S. and China portend a larger confrontation? Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow David Lampton says yes, and shared with VOA Asia reasons for why the two countries find themselves so much at odds. Listen below (first 8 minutes):
Our MIP student, Keunwang Nah, chose Stanford “because it is the birthplace of innovations that change the world, but it can also be the birthplace of sound policy that can manage the potentially negative impacts technology can have on society.” Find out more on our FSI blog. #MIPFeatureFriday
Tomorrow marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. The tracks of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. In a ceremony, Central Pacific Railroad President Leland Stanford drove the last spike, now usually referred to as the “Golden Spike,” at Promontory Summit. What has largely been left out of the narrative of the First Transcontinental Railroad is the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese laborers who worked on the Central Pacific Railroad. They were paid less than the white workers and as many as a thousand lost their lives, and they eventually made up 90 percent of the workforce that laid the 690 miles of track between Sacramento, California, and Promontory. In a recent Stanford News article, Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities Gordon Chang, one of the lead scholars of Stanford’s Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, noted that “Without the Chinese migrants, the Transcontinental Railroad would not have been possible. If it weren’t for their work, Leland Stanford could have been at best a footnote in history, and Stanford University may not even exist.”
Provost Persis Drell with SPICE Director Gary Mukai and SPICE Instructional Designer Jonas Edman
At the event, SPICE Curriculum Consultant Gregory Francis and I gave an overview of the curricular component of the Project, which helps to make the Project’s findings and materials accessible to teachers and students. The four free lesson plans that SPICE developed bring all of the Project’s “bells and whistles” to high school students and help them understand this often-overlooked part of U.S. history.
The Chinese Railroad Workers Project lessons touch upon many key issues in the high school U.S. history standards, including the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, immigration to the United States, challenges faced by immigrants like the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the growth of the American West. SPICE worked closely with Chang, Fishkin, and Dr. Roland Hsu, Director of Research at the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, to plan and write the free lesson plans, which are available for download from the SPICE website. Each lesson incorporates the Project’s scholarship and primary sources.
Lesson 1 focuses on the use of primary sources to understand and interpret the past. Students review resources and artifacts on the Project website, discuss whether each is a primary or secondary source, and postulate what questions the resource could help them answer. Students then read and discuss excerpts from Maxine Hong Kingston’s classic book China Men.
One of the political cartoons (Harper’s Weekly, April 1, 1882) that students examine in the lesson “Challenges to Chinese Immigration and Assimilation”
Lesson 2 focuses on racism and discrimination broadly and in the specific context of discrimination directed toward early Chinese immigrants in the United States. Students learn the history of Chinese Americans and attitudes toward them during various periods of immigration. They analyze U.S. political cartoons on Chinese immigrants from the 1870s and 1880s and read four short documents from different periods of time regarding issues of immigration, discrimination, and assimilation of Chinese Americans.
Lesson 3 uses photos to show students the physical and natural challenges to building the Transcontinental Railroad and asks them what they can infer from these photos about life building the railroad. Students then work in small groups to read oral histories of descendants of the Chinese railroad workers. They then write and perform a mock script for an interview between the Chinese railroad worker they read about and a group of reporters.
The final lesson explores the historical and cultural background of San Francisco’s Chinatown and its significance to the Chinese community in the United States over time. Students compare descriptions of Chinatown written by Chinese residents with those from non-Chinese visitors, view historical photos of Chinatown, and watch a lecture by Chang on the interdependence of Chinatown and the Chinese railroad workers. Finally, students encapsulate the legacy of the Chinese railroad workers by designing a memorial in their honor.
SPICE is currently publicizing the free lesson plans through our network of schools, and this summer we plan to offer teacher seminars on the East Coast and showcase the lessons at our summer institute for high school teachers at Stanford. In addition, SPICE will introduce the Project to students in the China Scholars Program, our national online course for U.S. high school students. Chang is a guest speaker for the course, and his book Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China is a required text.
The SPICE staff hopes that these lessons will serve as supplements to the coverage of the First Transcontinental Railroad in standard U.S. history textbooks—some of which includes Chinese railroad workers—and that the Chinese contributions to the American West will someday become a significant chapter in the study of U.S. history. A recent San Francisco Chronicle article noted that when the nation celebrated the 100th anniversary of the railroad in 1969, John Volpe, Transportation Secretary under President Richard Nixon, gave the keynote address. He said, “Who else but Americans could drill 10 tunnels in mountains 30 feet deep in snow? Who else but Americans could drill through miles of solid granite? Who else but Americans could have laid 10 miles of track in 12 hours?” One wonders if—by the occasion of the bicentennial of the First Transcontinental Railroad’s completion (2069)—such a “tunnel-vision” interpretation of U.S. history will be derailed in favor of a more inclusive historical narrative, and the once-silenced voices of the Chinese railroad workers will continue to be heard.
To access the free lesson plans on the Chinese railroad workers, click here. SPICE also offers several lesson plans related to this topic, including Angel Island: The Chinese American Experience, Chinese American Voices: Teaching with Primary Sources, Introduction to Diasporas in the United States, and Immigration to the United States: Activities for Elementary School Classrooms.
“We are now entering not just a post-American but post-Western era. In many ways the contours of the emerging world order are unclear. But one aspect of them is certain: China will play a larger and the U.S. a lesser role than before in global and regional governance.” - Ambassador Freeman
On May 3, the China Program’s colloquia series “A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations” closed with a seminar by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman. Ambassador Freeman discussed how President Trump’s trade war has impacted Sino-American relations on multiple levels, and how—for better or ill—Washington appears poised to dismantle China’s interdependence with the American economy, limit its role in global governance, counter its investments, and block its technological advances.
Audio from the event, as well as copy of the ambassador’s prepared remarks, is now available:
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. is a senior fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. He is the former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs (1993–1994), ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1989–1992), principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs (1986–1989), and chargé d'affaires at Bangkok (1984–1986) and Beijing (1981–1984). He served as vice chair of the Atlantic Council (1996-2008); co-chair of the United States China Policy Foundation (1996–2009); and president of the Middle East Policy Council (1997–2009). He was the principal American interpreter during President Nixon's path-breaking 1972 visit to Beijing, the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica article on diplomacy, and the author of America’s Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East; Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige; America’s Misadventures in the Middle East; The Diplomat’s Dictionary; and Arts of Power: Statecraft and Diplomacy. A compendium of his speeches is available at chasfreeman.net.
CLOSED WORKSHOP
Since 2012, the Governance Project at CDDRL has sought to develop better comparative measures of state quality. Existing measures like the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, TI’s Transparency Perceptions Index, or the state-quality measures in the Varieties of Democracy series are based on perception or expert surveys. They often produce aggregate measures for an entire country, without distinguishing between ministries, levels of government, or regions within countries. And almost none of them measure aspects of governance like bureaucratic autonomy that many observers feel are critical to state performance.
The Governance Project has developed a survey instrument that seeks to correct some of these deficiencies by surveying bureaucrats in different countries directly. While such a survey is obviously subject to its own problems like social acceptability bias, they at least try to reach into the insides of executive branches in ways that existing perception surveys do not. To date, the project has completed surveys in China, Brazil, Ukraine, and is undertaking one in India. The survey instrument is based on the Federal Viewpoint Survey (FedView), which has surveyed US bureaucrats over an extended length of time and can serve as a comparative baseline. These surveys are conducted in conjunction with local partners that perform the actual surveys and provide input and analysis into the survey instrument.
It is our hope to generate cross-national comparative data that will encompass an increasing number of countries, and in the long-run produce time-series data. Our model is the World Values Survey, which from the 1980s going forward has expanded the number of countries covered. We hope to make this data publicly available to academic researchers around the world.
The Governance Project has entered into a cooperative agreement with the World Bank and University College, London, to devise a common survey instrument, to standardize surveying practices, and to coordinate the choice of survey targets for future surveys.
This workshop is co-sponsored with Stanford University's Center on Global Poverty and Development.
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Koret-Taube Conference Center
366 Galvez St.
Stanford, CA 94305
By 1978, after the “epic impoverishment” borne of Mao’s non-market, ideologically-driven economy, China was almost like “a hot air balloon [that had been held] ten feet underwater” and suddenly let go, described Daniel Rosen, founding partner of the Rhodium Group, before an audience at a recent colloquium organized by Shorenstein APARC’s China Program.
Rosen—who leads the Rhodium Group’s work in China, India, and Asia—drew on his 26 years of professional experience analyzing China’s economy, commercial sector, and external interactions, to share his insights on the implications of China’s recent divergence from liberal market norms even as the U.S. and China are trying to reach an agreement that could end a protracted trade war.
With its explosive rise, increasing U.S.-China economic tensions, argued Rosen, were inevitable. By reverting to non-market principles under Xi Jinping, however, China’s divergence from advanced economic norms has triggered a hostile reaction from the United States. He acknowledged that China has “the sovereign right to choose the system it thinks best for itself,” including reverting to non-market principles. But, he noted, “as an old adage goes, paraphrased, China’s freedom to swing its fists stops where other noses begin.”
China, with its thirteen trillion-dollar economy is now the world’s second largest economy. China’s economic footprint, too—as trader, foreign investor, and lender, among others—is enormous around the world. Thus, Rosen pointed out, now when “China sneezes, the rest of the world can catch a cold or pneumonia.” By disavowing the primacy of market principles, furthermore, China’s decisions will now have spillover consequences for not only the way the rest of the global economy functions but also for economic prospects of the United States.
Rosen highlighted, in particular, three aspects of China’s divergence from market norms: its financial markets, competitive regimes; and IP protection rules. China’s capital markets give preferential treatment to its domestic state firms and discriminates against not only foreign firms but also its private firms. He also stressed China’s uneven competition policies—as most dramatically epitomized in its “Made in 2025” policy—that establish asymmetric market access for foreign firms in China versus Chinese firms abroad; China’s state and sub-state financial subsidies set up to advantage domestic firms; and China’s domestic control of intellectual property in large swathes of critical industries. China’s “Made in 2025” policy thereby, for example, distorts the innovation ecosystem of the world and the United States. As Rosen asserted, “We depend for our vitality on structural conditions that non-market policy choices by a systemically important national could disrupt.”
In Rosen’s assessment, President Xi Jinping had begun his tenure with a far-reaching set of economic reforms called the “60 Decisions” of the Third Plenum Resolution in 2013. But these market-centered initiatives, many of which Xi’s administration did push initially, led to “mini” (and “many”) crises, he stated. These reforms, therefore, have stalled. “The shadow over U.S.-China economic engagement comes not because China refused to reform in the Xi Jinping years,” Rosen asserted, “but because lately it has stumbled in attempting to do so.”
According to Rosen, hardening U.S. approach to Chinese trade policy and the current discussion of possible “disengagement” with China are the result of U.S. recognition that China had changed course away from convergence with the liberal international economic order. It, in fact, stems from the U.S.’s valid need to protect its economic welfare and the welfare of other market economies from the deleterious effects of China’s illiberal policies. In the same way, he claimed, that the U.S. is not as deeply engaged with Italy as it is with Germany, and that we are not as deeply engaged with Germany as we are with Great Britain, it is not “heresy” to say that nations that do not share the same basic economic framework cannot be as engaged together—or as interoperable—as nations that do.
But, Rosen predicted, China’s own turn away from market principles is bound to fail. Liberal market reforms delivered double-digit growth for China since Deng Xiaoping’s Opening and Reform. And “[u]nless everything we think we know about the relative efficiency and dynamism of free markets over politically controlled economies is wrong, the present Chinese policy turn will be, in the end, a dead-end,” Rosen remarked. According to his prediction, therefore, we will either see a weakened China that poses less of an economic and national security threat to the U.S. or a China that eventually returns to market norms (i.e., “a reversion back to what will work.”).
In the meantime, therefore, he suggested that the American response must be “provisional,” “partial,” and “peaceful.” American policy must be adaptable and readily reversible such that our ability to reengage to the maximum with China is carefully protected. Secondly, it must be “partial” rather than absolute. And, lastly, it must be “peaceful.” When Beijing’s non-market policies fail, as it will, Rosen averred, and China re-orients itself towards economic convergence with advanced economy norms once more, we must ensure a “foundation of good will” between the U.S. and China to which China can return.
Rosen also cautioned against the U.S. abandoning its own source of national strength—i.e., its openness. Arguing that economic protectionism has too often been confused with national security, Rosen argued that primary threats to U.S. national security now stem more from new causes like climate change, pandemics, migration pressures and access to weapons of mass destruction. “Economic protection will do little to nothing to address those risks,” Rosen pointed out.
Rosen spoke at Shorenstein APARC as part of the China Program’s Colloquia Series “A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations.” The series continues on May 3 with Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr.’s seminar “On Hostile Coexistence with China.”
Did you know MIP has a joint degree program with Stanford Law? Find out why our graduate student, Julia Neusner, decided to add on the MIP program to her studies on our FSI blog. #MIPFeatureFriday
On Thursday, the third Asia-Pacific Geo-Economic Strategy Forum (APGEO) saw discussion on issues of international strategic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific with a particular focus on the U.S.-Japan relationship. Speakers included experts on defense and foreign affairs, including former U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and former Japanese Ministers of Defense.
Organized by the Hoover Institution, Nikkei Inc. and the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies (FSI), the talks occurred within the context of the United State’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIP) and Japan’s Medium Term Defense Program, both recently updated to outline the U.S. and Japan’s respective regional commitments.
The forum’s speakers focused on the rise of China as a common theme underscoring the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Particularly, the speakers shared a general consensus that China’s attempts to increase its economic and political influence and its initiatives to drive progress on technological frontiers such as 5G networks and artificial intelligence pose a threat to the current international order...
Read the full article in The Stanford Daily
"Being at Stanford is a unique experience... Over time I just became interested in how cyberspace is very realistically connected to our everyday life, and on a larger scale, national security." Read more on our FSI blog on how our MIP student, Maho Sugihara, is focusing on cyber policy and its security implications. #MIPFeatureFriday
