Thirty years ago this week, I watched the news from Beijing and started shredding my bedding. It was the night before my college graduation, I had been studying Chinese politics, and news had broken that college students just like us had been gunned down in Tiananmen Square after weeks of peaceful and exhilarating democracy protests—carried on international TV. In the iconic square where Mao Zedong had proclaimed the People’s Republic decades before, bespectacled students from China’s best universities had camped out, putting up posters with slogans of freedom in Chinese and English. A “goddess of democracy” figure modeled after the Statue of Liberty embodied their hopes—and ours—for political liberation in China.
On my campus back then were just a handful of students majoring in East Asian studies. Learning of the brutal crackdown in Beijing, we somehow found one another, gathered our friends, and stayed up making hundreds of white armbands for classmates to wear at commencement the next day. Grappling with the cold realities of the “real world” we were about to enter, we didn’t know what else to do. So we tore sheets and cried for what might have been.
The June 4, 1989, massacre was a horrifying spectacle that the Chinese government has sought to erase from national memory ever since. But, 30 years later, contemplating what might have been is more important than ever. In hindsight, Tiananmen Square serves as a continuing reminder about just how much China has defied, and continues to defy, the odds and predictions of experts. The fact is that generations of American policy makers, political scientists, and economists have gotten China wrong more often than they’ve gotten China right. In domestic politics, economic development, and foreign policy, China has charted a surprising path that flies in the face of professional prognostications, general theories about anything, and the experience of other nations.
Karl Eikenberry, director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, spoke with "Bloomberg Markets: Asia" about the ongoing trade disputes between the U.S. and China. Video of his interview—conducted on the sidelines of the Morgan Stanley China Summit in Beijing—is posted below.
Early Childhood Development Takes Center Stage in China: Questions & Answer with Scott Rozelle and James Heckman
【编者按】2018年11月17日，詹姆斯·赫克曼(James J. Heckman)教授在西安召开的“2018年儿童早期发展国际论坛”上发表主旨演讲，出席会议的有来自世界各地和中国各地的政要和顶尖学者。赫克曼教授就儿童早期发展(ECD)质量对生活在贫困和富裕社区的婴幼儿的重要性进行了广泛和深入的概述。他在演讲中阐明儿童早期发展质量对一个人的童年及其终生的健康、经济和社会性结果都有重大影响。高质量的儿童早期发展项目对整个社会的影响也是巨大的。他特别强调了儿童早期发展的经济学意义，认为政府投资弱势儿童的早期发展，其社会回报率非常高。赫克曼教授借鉴了世界各地的研究成果，包括他自己以及美国和其他发达国家的其他学者的研究成果。
“But as I read what the communist party, what President Xi says, I don't see the same fervor to the ideological dimension of what China is doing around the world...[compared to what] the Soviets were doing.”
It was during the 2019 Oksenberg Conference that FSI Director Michael McFaul made the preceding assessment. Titled On the Brink: A New Cold War with China, the conference sought to explore the causes underlying today’s intensified conflict between the United States and China. McFaul was joined on stage by APARC's Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow David M. Lampton and China Program Director Jean Oi. Their panel followed an earlier fireside chat featuring keynote speaker Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
Rice, the 66th U.S. Secretary of State, opened the program with a wide-ranging conversation with Oi regarding our rapidly deteriorating trade relations with China. Among other topics, Secretary Rice drew contrasts between our current tensions with China and the Soviet-era Cold War; the potential sources of China’s increasing nationalism; and what the appropriate U.S. policy responses could be.
Condoleezza Rice (right) listens on as Jean Oi addresses the audience
Dr. Jean Oi (left) and Dr. Condoleezza Rice
Audio recordings and transcripts of the formal remarks by McFaul and Lampton are available below.
The annual Oksenberg Conference honors the legacy of Professor Michel Oksenberg. A renowned China scholar and senior fellow at Shorenstein APARC, Professor Oksenberg served as a key member of President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council, guiding the United States towards normalized relations with China and consistently urging that the U.S. engage with Asia in a more considered manner.
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Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow David M. Lampton (right) responds to an audience question, as China Program Director Jean Oi (left) and FSI Director Mike McFaul listen on.
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):
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OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - MAY 13: Trucks line up to enter a shipping berth at the Port of Oakland on May 13, 2019 in Oakland, California. China retaliated to U.S. President Donald Trump's 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods entering the United States with a 25 percent tariff on $60 billion of U.S. goods entering China. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged over 700 points on the news in morning trading.
Trucks line up to enter a shipping berth at the Port of Oakland
Trust but verify. That mantra from nuclear-weapons negotiation discourse during the Cold War is newly relevant today. Versions of the advice are circulating among governments in Southeast Asia and elsewhere as they weigh the security risks of partnering with this or that company to install the fifth-generation telecommunications technology known as 5G.
It is tempting to believe that a technical solution to the problem of unwanted risk exists — a clever digital tweak that will fully and permanently protect a 5G network’s users. It does not. The best one can hope for is a “good enough” balancing of faith and proof that is — arguably, not assuredly — reassuring and realistic. Characteristics of the network-offering company in its home country and of the network-purchasing government in its own country will shape the 5G seller-buyer bargain and its location. This will occur on an eventual spectrum of arrangements between the unwise and the unworkable: unverified trust at one extreme end, trust-eliminating verification at the other....
BARCELONA, SPAIN - FEBRUARY 26: A staff member works next to a 5G logo at the Xiaomi booth on day 2 of the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2019 on February 26, 2019 in Barcelona, Spain. The annual Mobile World Congress hosts some of the world's largest communications companies, with many unveiling their latest phones and wearables gadgets like foldable screens and the introduction of the 5G wireless networks.
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
On April 11, 2019, an event organized by the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project celebrated the labor of the Chinese workers and their role in U.S. history. Speakers included Stanford Provost Persis Drell, who underscored the significance of the Project and the momentous nature of the event, and Project co-directors Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities Gordon Chang and Joseph S. Atha Professor in Humanities Shelley Fisher Fishkin, who gave an overview of the Project and its findings. The Project’s findings are highlighted in two books, The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad (edited by Chang and Fishkin) and Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad (authored by Chang). These books give the Chinese workers a voice.
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.
Gordon Chang, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Hilton Obenzinger, and Roland Hsu at the April 11, 2019 event "150th Anniversary of the Golden Spike: Chinese Workers and the Transcontinental Railroad." Credit: Sue Fawn Chung.
“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.
The following item appears on VoxChina.org, an "independent, non-partisan and non-profit platform initiated by a group of experienced and accomplished economists."
Motivated by the realization that China’s economic growth model that relied on three major factors—cheap labor, capital deepening supported by high savings (depressed consumption), and technology, most of which came from advanced foreign countries—is about to become obsolete, the Chinese government has been trying to encourage innovations by Chinese firms through various subsidy programs (König et al., 2018). Using data from the China Employer Employee Survey (CEES), we study the allocation and impacts of the innovation subsidies in China in a recent NBER working paper (Cheng et al., 2019). We examine what type of firms are more likely to receive the innovation subsidies and if the subsidized firms are more likely to be innovative (measured by the number of patents and the likelihood of introducing new products), productive, and profitable....
Abstract: Before the CCP came to power, China lay broken. Today it is a force on the global stage, but its leaders remain haunted by the past. Sulmaan Khan will tell the story of the grand strategies pursued by China’s paramount leaders: the shrewd, dangerous Mao Zedong, who made the country whole and kept it so; the caustic, impatient Deng Xiaoping who dragged the country into the modern world; Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao who served as cautious custodians of Deng’s legacy; and Xi Jinping who combines assertiveness with insecurity. For all their considerable costs, China’s grand strategies have been largely successful. But whether or not they can meet the challenges of the twenty-first century remains to be seen.
Speaker's Biography:
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Sulmaan Wasif Khan teaches international history and Chinese foreign relations at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, where he also directs the Water and Oceans Program at the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy. He is the author of Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping (Harvard University Press: 2018), which was named a top book of 2018 by The American Interest, and Muslim, Trader, Nomad, Spy: China’s Cold War and the People of the Tibetan Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press: 2015). He has written for The Economist, Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, and YaleEnvironment360, among others, on topics ranging from Burmese Muslims to dolphin migration through the Bosphorus. He received his Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2012.
Sulmaan Khan
Assistant Professor of International History and Chinese Foreign Relations
Tufts University
Condoleezza Rice (right) listens on as Jean Oi addresses the audience
Provost Persis Drell with SPICE Director Gary Mukai and SPICE Instructional Designer Jonas Edman
One of the political cartoons (Harper’s Weekly, April 1, 1882) that students examine in the lesson “Challenges to Chinese Immigration and Assimilation”
