Stanford University

Integrating Nature into Policy & Finance for Transformation in China with Professor Ouyang Zhiyun

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Wednesday, March 9, 2022 | 4:00-5:15 pm Pacific Time

Integrating Nature into Policy & Finance for Transformation in China

In response to escalating ecosystem degradation, China has avowed to transform its development model and build an “ecological civilization” that “harmonizes humanity and nature”. I will discuss science-based policy innovation designed to achieve three key goals in support of this vision.  The first is to secure the vital benefits of nature to people – such as climate stability, water security, and food security – targeting key regions and sectors.  The second is to drive investments in protecting and revitalizing both natural capital and also human livelihoods and well-being.  The third is to evaluate and track progress, moving beyond gross domestic product (GDP) to include a new system of accounts and high-level metric called gross ecosystem product (GEP).  

About the Speaker

 

Dr. Ouyang Zhiyun is Professor and director, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.  His research interests include ecosystem assessment, ecosystem services, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation. In recent years, he has made his main efforts in mainstreaming ecosystem services in policy making for ecosystem conservation, restoration and land management in China, including national ecosystem survey and assessment of China, national framework of ecological redline planning, national key ecological functional area identification, national park network planning, giant panda protection, and national ecological transfer payment. Dr. Ouyang has played a key role in conservation policy innovation in China since 2000.

Seminar Series Moderators

Headshot of Dr. 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. 

hongbin li headshot

Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

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.

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Ouyang Zhiyun
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The Impacts of U.S.-China Tech Decoupling

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Once considered incapable of innovation, China’s contribution to technological advancement has become impossible to ignore as it continues its historic rise. Now home to such tech giants as Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei, China is competing in the global market. But what does this technological success mean in the context of China's internal and international politics, particularly its tense relationship with the United States? Will efforts to decouple help or hinder progress in tech? Can China’s educational system produce the next generation of innovators and propel them to the forefront of technology? What effects, if any, is the recent tightening on tech giants having on the sector at large? In this program, experts Denis Simon, Senior Adviser to the President for China Affairs at Duke, and Dan Wang, technology analyst for Gavekal Dragonomics, will be discussing the status and consequences of decoupling for the US and China and their technological sectors.  

 


Portrait of Denis Simon
Denis Fred Simon is Senior Adviser to the President for China Affairs at Duke and Professor of China Business and Technology at Duke's Fuqua School of Business.  He also serves as Executive Director of the Center for Innovation Policy at Duke.  Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Simon has more than four decades of experience studying business, competition, innovation and technology strategy in China. In 2006, he was awarded the China National Friendship Award by Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing.  Prior to returning to Duke, Dr. Simon served as Executive Vice Chancellor at Duke Kunshan University in China (2015-2020).  Simon’s career included spells as senior adviser on China and global affairs in the Office of the President at Arizona State University; vice-provost for international affairs at the University of Oregon; and professor of international affairs at Penn State University’s School of International Affairs. He also has had extensive leadership experience in management consulting having served as General Manager of Andersen Consulting in Beijing (now Accenture) and the Founding President of Monitor Group China.

Simon is the author of several books including Corporate Strategies Towards the Pacific Rim; Techno-Security in an Age of Globalization; and China’s Emerging Technological Edge: Assessing the Role of High-End Talent.

 

Portrait of Dan Wang
Dan Wang is the Shanghai-based technology analyst for Gavekal Dragonomics, the China economics research firm. He tracks the prospects for China's industrial policy, US regulatory measures and the activities of multinationals in China. He has given keynotes for a variety of organizations and his work is widely cited in the press. Dan previously worked in Silicon Valley and studied philosophy at the University of Rochester. Dan's essays have been published in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, and he is a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion

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This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, New Frontiers: Technology, Politics, and Society in the Asia-Pacific, sponsored by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

 


 

Chinese 100 yuan bills

This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.

 

Via Zoom Webinar. Register at: https://bit.ly/3IA7MdJ

Denis F. Simon Senior Adviser to the President for China Affairs, Duke University; Professor of China Business and Technology, Duke Fuqua School of Business
Dan Wang Technology Analyst, Gavekal Dragonomics
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COVID-19 Disproportionately Affected Marginalized and Rural Populations in Asia, New Study Shows

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Noa Ronkin
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As the COVID-19 pandemic remains a crucial global public health threat, pandemic control measures such as lockdowns and mobility restrictions continue to disrupt the provision of health services, leading to reduced healthcare use. Indeed, evidence shows the pandemic has emerged as a particular challenge for people with chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension. Yet there is limited data comparing the pandemic’s impact on access to care and the severity of chronic disease symptoms at the population level across Asia.

Now a new collaborative study, published by the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health, addresses this limitation. The study co-authors, including APARC’s Asia Health Policy Program Director and FSI Senior Fellow Karen Eggleston, offer the first report comparing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated mobility restrictions on people with chronic conditions at different stages of socio-demographic and economic transitions in five Asian regions — India, China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Vietnam.

The findings show that the pandemic has disproportionately disrupted healthcare access and worsened diabetes symptoms among marginalized and rural populations in Asia. Moreover, the pandemic’s broad social and economic impact has adversely affected population health well beyond those directly suffering from COVID-19, with the resulting delayed and foregone care leading to uncertain longer-term effects.

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Unintended Adverse Consequences

Routine screening, risk factor control, and continuity of care for non-communicable diseases are a global challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the challenge even further. Existing reports show the pandemic has particularly adverse impacts on essential prevention and treatment services for people with chronic conditions. These reductions in health services arose from pandemic-associated factors such as mobility restrictions, lack of public transport, and lack of health workforce.

Eggleston and a group of colleagues set out to provide evidence on how the pandemic has impacted chronic disease care in diverse settings across Asia during COVID-19-related lockdowns. Using standardized questionnaires, the researchers surveyed 5672 participants aged 55.9 to 69.3 years with chronic conditions in India, China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Vietnam. The researchers collected data on participants’ demographic and socio-economic status, comorbidities, access to healthcare, employment status, difficulty in accessing medicines due to financial and nonfinancial (COVID-19 related) reasons, treatment satisfaction, and severity of their chronic condition symptoms.

If no immediate actions are taken to mitigate pandemic impacts, the Asia-Pacific region will struggle to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal target 3.4 to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases […] and to promote mental health and wellbeing.
Karen Eggleston et al.

The results show that the pandemic’s broad social and economic impact has adversely affected population health well beyond those directly suffering from COVID-19. Study participants with chronic conditions faced significant challenges in managing their symptoms during the pandemic. They experienced a loss of income and difficulties in accessing healthcare or medications, with the resulting delayed and foregone care leading to uncertain longer-term effects. For a nontrivial portion of participants, these factors are associated with the worsening of diabetes symptoms. The threat is twofold among people living in rural populations with limited access, availability, and affordability of healthcare services.

A Global Health Priority

The unintended adverse consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic disease care may also further aggravate inequality in health outcomes. “If the trend continues and no immediate actions are taken to mitigate pandemic impacts,” Eggleston and her colleagues caution, then “the Asia-Pacific region will struggle to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.4 to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by a third relative to 2015 levels and to promote mental health and wellbeing.”

Addressing the pandemic’s unintended negative social and economic impacts on chronic disease care is a global health priority, determine the researchers. They propose several measures to help provide timely care for people with chronic conditions in resource-constrained settings. These include implementing innovations in healthcare delivery models to improve the adoption of healthy lifestyle changes and self-management of chronic disease and mild COVID-19 symptoms, increasing investment in interventions to provide social and economic support to disadvantaged populations, and strengthening primary healthcare infrastructure and support of healthcare providers.

The study was supported in part by funding from Shorenstein APARC’s faculty research award, Stanford King Center for Global Development, and a seed grant from the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education.

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Strengthening the Frontline: How Primary Health Care Improves Net Value in Chronic Disease Management

Empirical evidence by Karen Eggleston and colleagues suggests that better primary health care management of chronic disease in rural China can reduce spending while contributing to better health.
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A New Validated Tool Helps Predict Lifetime Health Outcomes for Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes in Chinese Populations

A research team including APARC's Karen Eggleston developed a new simulation model that supports the economic evaluation of policy guidelines and clinical treatment pathways to tackle diabetes and prediabetes among Chinese and East Asian populations, for whom existing models may not be applicable.
A New Validated Tool Helps Predict Lifetime Health Outcomes for Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes in Chinese Populations
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Bargaining Behind Closed Doors: Why China’s Local Government Debt Is Not a Local Problem

New research in 'The China Journal' by APARC’s Jean Oi and colleagues suggests that the roots of China’s massive local government debt problem lie in secretive financing institutions offered as quid pro quo to localities to sustain their incentive for local state-led growth after 1994
Bargaining Behind Closed Doors: Why China’s Local Government Debt Is Not a Local Problem
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A makeshift barricade is seen in front of a residential area to restrict movement and control COVID-19 spread in Hanoi, Vietnam.
A makeshift barricade is seen in front of a residential area to restrict movement and control COVID-19 spread, September 2021, Hanoi, Vietnam. | Linh Pham / Getty Images
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In the first report of its kind comparing the impacts of the pandemic on people with chronic conditions in five Asian regions, researchers including APARC’s Karen Eggleston document how the pandemic’s broad social and economic consequences negatively affected population health well beyond those directly suffering from COVID-19.

Xinmin Zhao

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Xinmin is a Program Manger at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions (SCCEI). Before join SCCEI, Xinmin was an administrator with the King Center on Global Development at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research since January 2018. She has previously worked as an associate director at the Academic Service Center for the Fudan Development Institute (FDDI) at Fudan University in China. She holds a master's degree in political science from Fudan University. She is the translator of three books published in China: "The Military Revolution and Political Change: Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe", "The Dolphin Way: A Parent's Guide to Raising Healthy, Happy, and Motivated Kids-Without Turning into a Tiger" and "Teenagers Learn What They Live: Parenting to Inspire Integrity & Independence".

Program Manager, Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
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Bargaining Behind Closed Doors: Why China’s Local Government Debt Is Not a Local Problem

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Michael Breger
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Over much of the last four decades, China's economy has ballooned, growing to become the world's second-largest economic power behind the United States, when measured by GDP. Yet alongside the rapid growth came mounting local government debt. While foreign observers have long recognized China’s local government debt as a risk, only recently did the Chinese Communist Party call out the problem as alarming. 

Why have central authorities allowed local government debt to grow with such little direct intervention? The answer to this question has much to do with a “grand bargain” between China's central government and localities during the 1994 fiscal recentralization reform, according to a new study, "China’s Local Government Debt: The Grand Bargain," published in the January issue of The China Journal.  The study’s co-authors are Stanford political scientist Jean Oi, a senior fellow at FSI and director of the China Program at APARC, Adam Liu, a former doctoral student of Oi, and Yi Zhang.

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The Origins of China's Massive Local Government Debt

The 1994 reform left localities with a tremendous fiscal gap. But then Beijing in fact gave localities enough autonomy to seek funding independently and the green light to create new backdoor financing institutions that counteracted the impact of fiscal decentralization, show Oi and her colleagues. They call this dynamic a “grand bargain.” The bargain’s purpose was to garner regional cooperation in fiscal and financial recentralization campaigns. The result, as the co-authors document, was far from the intended outcome. The policy resulted in greater decentralization, as local leaders used backdoor financing to meet expenditure responsibilities and bolster local development.

The study offers a fresh interpretation of the political economy surrounding the 1994 fiscal reform and a new understanding of the grand bargain, in which secretive financing was the quid pro quo offered to localities to sustain their incentive for local state-led growth after 1994. Oi and her colleagues draw upon municipal and county data as well as interviews and memoirs of key party leaders, architects of the 1994 fiscal reform, to support their assertions about the dynamics of China's economic rise and the local debt problem. Their findings highlight the "paradoxical political dynamics" of China’s political economy. As the 1994 fiscal reform recentralized tax revenues, "countervailing policies substantially promoted decentralization and fiscal empowerment of localities and decreased the transparency of local financial arrangements."

Granting localities the right to operate local state banks was a necessary but insufficient step for establishing the backdoor financing needed to sustain the grand bargain. Local governments needed a middleman to circumvent the bans on borrowing.
Liu, Oi, and Zhang

The grand bargain led to China's continued growth. The drawback, however, was that this economic growth has been accompanied by the accumulation of local government debt with little transparency and central control. When the global financial crisis impacted growth rates, local deficits and debts spiked. In response, Beijing began to shut down backdoor financing and opened front-door options that were transparent and under the control of national authorities — but with limited success.

Reining in Local Government Financing Vehicles

The researchers posit that "only beginning in 2017 did the Communist Party’s own Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs and various government-related media begin to label local government debt as a threat to the economy, raising the alarm bells by calling it a 'gray rhino,' a likely high-impact threat that was being ignored." Why, then, didn’t Beijing quickly put a stop to local government debt? Why did central authorities wait until 2015 to put measures in place, and wait even longer to identify local government debt as an economic threat?

Oi and her colleagues explain that studies of policy implementation and regulation in China tell us that the national government faces information asymmetry problems, where localities can subvert upper-level directives because the center has imperfect knowledge of what local agents are doing. Such subversion is most likely when local interests are not aligned with Beijing’s. Now, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question is whether the pendulum will swing back toward more tolerance of local debt for the sake of economic growth.

All indications, the authors agree, suggest that during COVID-19 and its aftermath, especially as China also has vowed to win and maintain the fruits of the battle against poverty “at all costs,” localities are going to need extra resources, borrowed or not. The center’s pendulum, at least for now, is swinging further away from fiscal discipline toward local incentives and growth.

[Xi's] anticorruption tactics and exerting tighter control to reduce local government debt have not solved the debt problem because the root causes are institutional.
Liu, Oi, and Zhang

Evading Institutional Reforms

Oi and her colleagues contend that the expansion of local government debt is a feature of China's developmental model, which aims to "circumvent rather than tackle difficult institutional reform, kicking the can down the road, opting for an easier fix to avoid the potentially high political costs.” 

The authors' primary takeaway is therefore that local government debt in China is not a local problem. Similar to other developing nations that depend upon local partners, China faces a dual-commitment problem: "growing the local economy without debt requires the central state to simultaneously commit to respecting its local agents’ access to and control over the fruits of local development (of which local fiscal resources are the most crucial part), while exercising credible fiscal discipline over precisely the same set of local agents that the center seeks to incentivize.”

For nearly three decades, Chinese central authorities have relied on the grand bargain to boost the nation's economic might. Oi and her colleagues reveal that the problem of local government debt reverberates to the highest echelons of the Chinese state decision makers and continues to present strategic challenges for the economic juggernaut.  

Read the article by Oi et al

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Dr. Adam Yao Liu, a former doctoral student of APARC China Program Director Jean Oi, has been awarded the 2020 BRICS Economic Research Award for his research on how banking systems in China are developing.
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New research in 'The China Journal' by APARC’s Jean Oi and colleagues suggests that the roots of China’s massive local government debt problem lie in secretive financing institutions offered as quid pro quo to localities to sustain their incentive for local state-led growth after 1994

The Crisis in Xinjiang: What’s happening now and what does it mean?

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Policies implemented by the CCP in Xinjiang since c. 2016 have become a central issue in PRC international relations, leading to international determinations that those policies constitute genocide; scrutiny of global supply chains for Xinjiang cotton, textiles and polysilicon; US sanctions on companies and individuals and Congressional inquiries directed at Airbnb and other multinationals operating in Xinjiang; and diplomatic boycotts of the Olympics. The assimilationist policies, if most extreme in Xinjiang, are related to the broader Zhonghua-izing campaign against religion and non-Mandarin language and perhaps even to intensified control over Hong Kong and efforts to intimidate Taiwan—an aggressive intolerance of cultural and political diversity that is emerging as a central feature of Xi Jinping’s tenure. This talk will review the Xinjiang crisis to date and suggest how we should understand these events and trends.



Portrait of James Millward
James Millward is Professor of Inter-societal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, teaching Chinese, Central Asian and world history. He joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as visiting scholar with the China Program for the 2022 winter quarter. He is also an affiliated professor in the Máster Oficial en Estudios de Asia Oriental at the University of Granada, Spain. His specialties include Qing empire; the silk road; Eurasian lutes and music in history; and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. He follows and comments on current issues regarding the Uyghurs and PRC ethnicity policy. Millward has served on the boards of the Association for Asian Studies (China and Inner Asia Council) and the Central Eurasian Studies Society, and was president of the Central Eurasian Studies Society in 2010. He edits the ''Silk Roads'' series for University of Chicago Press. His publications include The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013), Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (2007), New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (2004), and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity and Empire in Qing Central Asia (1998). His articles and op-eds on contemporary China appear in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Review of Books and other media.  

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James Millward Visiting Scholar, APARC, Stanford University; Professor of Inter-societal History, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
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Carbon Trading vs. Direct Allocation: Theory and Application to China’s Carbon Abatement with Professor Guojun He

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Tuesday, February 15, 2022 | 4:00-5:15 pm Pacific Time

Carbon Trading vs. Direct Allocation:  Theory and Application to China's Carbon Abatement

The Emission Trading System (ETS) and Direct Allocation Scheme (DAS) are two popular schemes to achieve a given target of carbon abatement. We compare their welfare implications under incomplete information and with local externalities of such abatement (e.g., changes in air pollution). We show that the ETS addresses incomplete information but not heterogeneous local externalities; the opposite is true for the DAS. Therefore, the policy choice depends on the relative significance of incomplete information and heterogeneous local externalities. We apply the theoretical results to the Chinese data and discuss why a national ETS can be undesirable.

About the Speaker

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Guojun He is an economist working on environmental, development, and governance issues. Currently, he is an associate professor in Economics and Management & Strategy at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He holds a concurrent appointment at the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago (EPIC) and serves as the research director of its China center (EPIC-China). He is a co-editor of Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and China Economic Review. 

His research tries to address some of the most challenging problems faced by developing countries and seeks to produce empirically-grounded estimates for optimal policy design. The majority of his work focuses on understanding the benefits and costs of environmental policies, while he also has a broader research interest in development and governance issues. His work has been published in leading economics journals (like QJE, AER: Insights, AEJ: Applied) and science journals (like PNAS, Nature: Sustainability, Nature Human Behavior, and The BMJ). 

He has won multiple academic awards, including the Best Paper Award from China Health Policy and Management Society, Masahiko Aoki Best Paper Award Nomination, and notably two Gregory Chow Best Paper Awards from the Chinese Economists Society. He was named a Young Scientist by the World Economic Forum.  

He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Agricultural and Resource Economics from U.C. Berkeley and received undergraduate education from School of Economics at Peking University. ​Before joining HKU, he worked at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Harvard University.​

Seminar Series Moderators:

Headshot of Dr. 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. 

hongbin li headshot

Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

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.

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Register once to receive the Zoom meeting link that will be used for all lectures in this series.

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Guojun He
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China’s Local Government Debt: The Grand Bargain

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China’s rapidly growing local government debt problem has long been recognized by foreign observers as a risk, but inside China, only recently was this problem called out as alarming.  Why has local government debt been allowed to grow with little direct intervention from central authorities?  Based on a forthcoming paper, Oi will show how a “grand bargain” the central authorities entered into with the localities allowed Beijing to take the lion’s share of tax revenues after 1994, but also allowed localities to gain new resources and power as a quid pro quo.  While the bargain provided an expedient and seemingly successful strategy that worked for more than a decade to fuel rapid local state-led growth, it had significant costs that are now becoming increasingly visible.  Because land finance was the core means by which localities raised revenue, Oi also will help explain why the problems with property developers like Evergrande are so important to China’s future economy.   



Dr. Jean C. Oi
Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University. Professor Oi has published extensively on China’s reforms. Recent books include Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Thomas Fingar (Stanford University Press, 2020); Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, co-edited with Steven Goldstein (Stanford University Press, 2018); and Challenges in the Process of China’s Urbanization, co-edited with Karen Eggleston and Yiming Wang (2017). Current research is on fiscal reform and local government debt, continuing SOE reforms, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

 

Chinese 100 yuan bills

This event is part of the 2022 Winter webinar series, The Future of China's Economy, sponsored by the APARC China Program.

 

Via Zoom Webinar. Register at: https://bit.ly/34mnOcc

Jean C. Oi Director of Shorenstein APARC China Program; William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics, Stanford University
Seminars

The Impacts of Pollution Levies on Chinese Firms with Professor Junjie Zhang

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Tuesday, February 1, 2022 | 4:00-5:15 pm Pacific Time

The Impacts of Pollution Levies on Chinese Firms

China's rollout of emission fee reform since 2007 provides a quasi-natural experiment to study the effectiveness of pollution levy on firm emissions and economic consequences. Using firm-level financial and pollution data, we find that doubling the levy rate leads to a 6.87% reduction in SO2 emissions. Firms achieve emission abatement through reducing output and coal consumption rather than end-of-the-pipe solutions. 

About the Speaker

Junjie Zhang

Junjie Zhang is Associate Professor of Environmental Economics in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Since 2016, he has founded the Environmental Research Center and International Master of Environmental Policy Program at Duke Kunshan University. During 2021-22, he serves as Volkswagen Visiting Chair in Sustainability in the Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University. Zhang is a co-chair for the Environmental Economics Committee in the Chinese Academy of Environmental Science, an advisory board member for the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, and a board member for the Professional Association for China's Environment. He has also served on the editorial board of several academic journals. Before his current position, he was an associate professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. Zhang's research centers on empirical policy issues in air pollution, energy transition, and climate change. He has received fundings from the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, China National Natural Science Foundation, China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment, China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, Energy Foundation, Packard Foundation, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank. He holds a B.S. from Renmin University of China, a B.S. and an M.S. from Tsinghua University, and a Ph.D. from Duke University.

 

Seminar Series Moderators:

Headshot of Dr. 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. 

hongbin li headshot

Hongbin Li is the Co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Hongbin obtained his Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 2001 and joined the economics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where he became full professor in 2007. He was also one of the two founding directors of the Institute of Economics and Finance at the CUHK. He taught at Tsinghua University in Beijing 2007-2016 and was C.V. Starr Chair Professor of Economics in the School of Economics and Management. He founded the Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) in 2009 and the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) in 2014.

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.

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This article was originally published by the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Click here to read the full article.

From regulating crypto to arresting the effects of climate change, an international panel of scholars and business leaders examined ways the United States and China can work together in a webinar hosted by Stanford University.

The 2021 China Economic Forum, conducted online on November 12, featured discussions on sustainability and finance, “to advance dialogue and collaboration between Stanford and our partners in China,” said Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne in remarks prior to the conference.

“The last year and a half has highlighted for everyone the increasing level of global interdependence, whether it is health, supply chains, finance, the need for cooperation — especially between the U.S. and China — as we contend with the effects of climate change and the need for new and sustainable sources of energy,” said Jonathan Levin, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business.

 

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Panel at Stanford China Economic Forum discusses climate change, financial technology as key areas of mutual interest.

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