We write to invite you to an international conference on “Regional Carbon Policies” that PESD is hosting at Stanford University on Thursday, December 5^th. With efforts to expand international carbon markets beyond Europe’s trading scheme seemingly stalled, various countries and subnational jurisdictions have taken unilateral action on climate policy. Switzerland, the Canadian provinces of Québec and British Columbia, California, the member states of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the northeastern United States, and New Zealand have all moved forward on carbon markets or taxes. Asian countries including Japan, India, South Korea, and China are also in the process of implementing carbon policies.
 
Linking regional efforts to create a single larger carbon market has the potential to increase the impact and reduce the cost of climate mitigation. With this in mind, our conference brings together academics, government policymakers, and market participants to share the best available academic and practical knowledge about how to make regional carbon policies work. We specifically seek to: 1) identify common implementation challenges facing regional climate policies around the world, 2) formulate a “best practice” market design that can serve as a starting point for a country or region contemplating a GHG emissions allowance market, and 3) identify the policy pathways most likely to foster rapid and successful integration of regional carbon efforts. An additional goal of the meeting is to identify key market rules and integration protocols that can be tested as part of a new research project at Stanford that uses structured “games” to simulate cap and trade markets.

We hope you will join us for this unique event.

Click here for the conference agenda and to register
                                                                                       
Frank A. Wolak                                       Mark C. Thurber
Director, PESD                                          Associate Director, PESD
wolak@stanford.edu                              mthurber@stanford.edu

 

An Interview with Scott Rozelle

“So, imagine, if you had unlimited resources to change two or three things about China’s education, what would they be?”

I asked this to Scott Rozelle, professor at Stanford University and co-director at the Rural Education Action Program (REAP) - an impact evaluation organization that makes evidence-based policy recommendations, seeking to close the education gap for China’s poor and marginalized students. Given that I had a limited time to interview Scott, who was to board a plane to Beijing in 30 minutes, I hoped this question could foster some interesting answers and reflect some of the deepest concerns this mandarin-speaking American professor has for China’s underdeveloped education system.

Without hesitation, Scott began to draft his blueprint for China’s education in bold and creative strokes. “These are several things I’d like to change,” he started passionately, proposing ambitious changes in a wide array of areas in China’s education sector…

Free High School Education

“If possible, I’d love to roll out a very aggressive plan to promote high school education in China.” Scott began by proposing the cancellation of high school fees for China’s disadvantaged students.

As Scott explained, due to unreasonably high tuition fees, a lot of rural and low-income families can’t afford to send their children to high schools. According to a research by REAP, only 40% of junior high graduates in China’s poor rural areas go to academic high schools, as compared with more than 80% high school enrollment rate among China’s urban students.

To Scott, this inequality in education attainment has directly translated into tremendous inequality in the Chinese society in general, which in turn spells detrimental consequences for China’s economic development in the future. “If you think about it, throughout modern history, no country has been able to progress from a middle-income country to a high-income country with such high inequality in society.”

“Never,” said Scott emphatically.

Equipping Students with the Right Skills

In addition to increasing access to high school education, the quality of education is another concern for Scott. “Nowadays, when you walk into any classroom in China’s rural high schools, what you see is a sea of students’ blank stares at the blackboards – students aren’t learning what they should be learning, nor what interest them.” Scott continued to point out that the problem exists in vocational schools too. “China’s zhigao (mandarin for vocational high schools) are all pianrende (mandarin for liars). In fact, half of the students drop out by grade 2 in vocational schools.” According to Scott, vocational schools in rural and low-income areas don’t even teach the basic skills students need to succeed in the job market. Knowing that the opportunity cost for attending vocational schools is too high, students naturally drop out of school to get low-paying jobs instead.

As Scott elaborated, while China shifts away from a labor-intensive economy to a more service-oriented, knowledge-intensive economy, it requires that workers be equipped with the proper 21st century skills and technical skills. His comment exactly echoed a recent McKinsey report on China’s skills mismatch, which predicted that if China didn’t close its current skilled labor gap, the country could be facing an opportunity cost of $250 billion, or 2.3% of the GDP in 2020.

A Teacher Incentivization Plan

“We also need to incentivize teachers. “ Scott added. “Right now, teachers in China buquegongzi (mandarin, meaning “don’t lack salaries”).” Instead, Scott commented, what they lack is the incentive to improve students’ academic performance. In the US, initiatives such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTP) have been promoting new assessment systems to hold teachers accountable for students’ performance. “Maybe the same needs to happen in China, too.” Interestingly, unlike in the United States where teachers unions have become an intractable force strongly opposing reforms that can hinder teachers’ interests, teachers unions are rather non-existent in China. It would be indeed intriguing to see what would happen if China proposed a similar teacher incentivization strategy to tie teacher pay with student performance. 

A Free AND Nutritious Meal Plan from Early On

“I’d also love to propose a health and nutrition plan for disadvantaged students from very early on,” said Scott. As a matter of fact, since October 2011, the Chinese government has already piloted a lunch subsidy plan in 680 rural counties, through which each student gets a subsidy of 3 yuan every day during the school year. “3 yuan buys you nothing these days. It’s a free meal, but not a nutritious one.” Scott laments.

“Schools need to cover at least 40% of the nutritional requirements for students,” Scott further elaborated on his plan. This needs to happen early, because if poor rural students suffer from malnutrition starting in kindergarten they will also suffer from significant cognitive underdevelopment, which then lingers until secondary school and even college -- further broadening the achievement gap between rich and poor students in the country.

Indeed, the reality revealed by REAP’s research is rather disheartening. By testing nearly 60,000 children across China for iron-deficiency anemia between 2008 and 2012, researchers at REAP estimated that 30 to 35 million school aged children nationwide were suffering from malnutrition. A series of similar studies further predicted that if the micronutrient deficiencies of Chinese infants/toddlers were not corrected before they reached 30 months old, it would mean 20 to 30 percent of China’s future population would be in danger of becoming permanently physically or mentally handicapped.

Overcoming Shortsightedness of the Government

In addition to the four proposals above, Scott also poignantly revealed the difficulty of overcoming political shortsightedness in committing long-term investment in education. According to Scott, “The local government could be looking at its progress in the upcoming years, but not what is to happen in 20 to 30 years.” Faced with this short-sightedness, Scott proposes that the central government should more aggressively allocate financial resources specifically for investment in education. “Unless the central government intervenes, it’s hard for local governments with limited fiscal revenue to initiate educational changes at the grassroots level,” Scott predicted.

In the absence of central government intervention, REAP’s approach already exemplifies some of the most effective ways to encourage local governments in spearheading education reforms. Starting from 2008, the organization has been working closely with various levels of the government to help rigorously design and evaluate potentially effective and scalable education interventions in rural China. Provided with research-backed data to demonstrate program effectiveness, the local government is then able to showcase their return on education investment to higher-level governments, which in turn are encouraged to roll out the program in a larger-scale.

“The Chinese government actually seems very receptive to changes, as long as it knows what kind of change actually works” commented Alexis Medina, a project manager at REAP that I interviewed about Contract for Dreams, a REAP program that supplies and assesses the impact of vouchers on increasing high school enrollment among rural students. As an example, she told me that informed by REAP’s longitudinal study from 2010 to 2013 - which showed poor junior high school students were 13% more likely to attend high school when given guaranteed financial aid - the Chinese State Council has since adopted a new national policy requiring that high schools inform junior high students of their financial aid status before their graduation, while also issuing bank cards to guarantee timely disbursement of the fund.

“Ok, I need to board the plane now,” Scott said hastily, as I heard him breaking up a bit while entering the plane. Off he went to the country he deeply cared about, and I knew he was to realize his blueprint bit by bit, by trudging through the remote villages in China, asking questions, testing answers.

 

R4D's Xuejiao Cheng is originally from Anhui province and has spent time in Hunan and Sichuan as a volunteer teacher for ethnic minority students. Xuejiao has a B.A. in English Literature from Peking University and an M.Ed. in International Education Policy from Vanderbilt University.

Link: http://www.educationinnovations.org/blog/chinese-education-reimagined

The U.S. Ambassador to China, Gary Locke, was surrounded by attendees at the China 2.0 conference.

Martin Lau, President of Tencent, opened the conference with a keynote discussing Tencent's business model, international partnership strategies, and the social impact of internet on Chinese society.

In the second keynote address by Gary Locke, the U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, he shared his insights into China's recent advances in the technology sector, the Chinese government’s approach to managing the internet, and the risks and opportunities U.S. companies should consider before entering the Chinese market.

Charles Chao, CEO and Chairman of the Board of SINA, closed the conference with a keynote on how Weibo, one of SINA's most popular services, has made an unprecedented impact on Chinese society.

Growth and Innovation in Firms

Tencent started out in 1998 when China had four million internet users. Since then the market has grown 150 times to today’s 600 million users. Tencent’s equity market capitalization recently surpassed the $100 billion mark, and the company generates significantly more revenues than its higher-valued peer Facebook. In his speech, Lau modestly described the company’s “secret sauce number one” as “luck.”

We support the companies to make them successful, and in that process, we try to benefit from the know-how, we try to benefit from the growth, and we also contribute our know-how to these companies.

Martin Lau
President, Tencent

Lau also elaborated how Tencent has created a supportive environment for startups to grow and develop. “…[O]ur approach is actually to back the founders, to say the founders will be the driving force of the company, so unlike Jack [Ma], who said ‘Yahoo is in my pocket,’ we don’t put any company in our pocket. We support the companies to make them successful, and in that process, we try to benefit from the know-how, we try to benefit from the growth, and we also contribute our know-how to these companies.”

In partnership with Innovation Works, Tencent invested another $1 million in August 2013 in a San Francisco startup Kamcord, which allows users to record and share mobile gameplays. While Tencent has been investing in startups in Silicon Valley, Chao gave an example of SINA Weibo’s recent experimental collaboration with a local home appliance manufacturer in China, Hisense. Weibo users can link their accounts to the Hisense air-conditioner, which can then be switched on and off remotely.

Charles Chao, CEO of SINA, talked to participants at the China 2.0 conference.

Charles predicted that internet companies will continue to disrupt other areas, including finance (with micro-loans) and commerce. SINA’s valuation was boosted earlier in 2013 by Alibaba’s acquisition of an 18% stake in SINA Weibo. Today SINA is valued at over $6 billion.

Social Impact of Internet

It [Weibo] basically serves as a check and balance in society and makes Chinese society much better.

Charles Chao
CEO, SINA

SINA Weibo, launched in 2009, has over 500 million registered users, and over 56 million unique daily active users. It continues to dominate the market as China’s leading micro-blogging platform. It would be no exaggeration to say that Weibo has transformed social interaction in China by bringing the public square to everyone’s smartphone. “[Weibo] allows every user in China to report, to publish, to share the content, the information directly, and also not only create content but also distribute content themselves through social relations and through the follower relationship… It basically serves as a check and balance in society and makes Chinese society much better,” Chao argued.

The message was echoed by Lau in his keynote. “...[A]ll these internet companies, a lot of them are making an impact on society in an incredible way, bringing people closer together, changing businesses, and also making society more transparent… I think together we are really making a lot of changes and impact on Chinese society and I think we are ready to make more,” Lau said.

Ambassador Locke also emphasized the importance of a free and open internet to China’s economy and society in his address. “Attempts to unleash the economic power of the internet while controlling the political and cultural content are ultimately counterproductive, and indeed at odds with each other,” commented Locke. “Restrictions on communications that limit the free flow of ideas, whether political, economic, or personal, will only serve to prevent countries from moving forward. Frankly speaking, the United States and China’s government have different views on these issues but we are constantly, consistently, and candidly discussing them.”

Sino-U.S. Links

During a recent meeting between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the White House, Biden said that he believed China’s development was not only in the interest of the United States, but for the rest of the world as well.

Ambassador Locke also highlighted the importance of how the two countries handle global issues. “Whether it’s finding a cure to some of the most dreaded diseases of the world, or ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons, whether in North Korea or Iran and elsewhere, China and the United States have to be involved together. Indeed, the world is looking for leadership from both the United States and China to solve some of the toughest challenges and problems facing the universe.”

Expecting the Chinese system to work on American terms is a recipe for failure.

Gary Locke
U.S. Ambassador to China

Despite finding agreement on some issues, China and United States still hold many differing views. The intellectual property (IP) challenge is one of them. "Expecting the Chinese system to work on American terms is a recipe for failure.” Locke added that some companies conclude that “the best way to avoid being ripped off in China it is to stay out of China—but besides missing a tremendous opportunity, companies that never set foot in China are not immune from having their IP infringed upon in China, and may later find infringing products making their way back to the United States or to third-world markets.”

Martin Lau, President of Tencent, and Marguerite Gong Hancock, director of China 2.0 at the China 2.0 conference.

The annual China 2.0 conference, now in its fourth year, attracted over 600 Stanford students and faculty along with current and rising leaders from China and Silicon Valley's tech, entrepreneur, and investor communities.

The panel and interactive discussions were focused on topics including Big Data, venture capital’s outlook on internet and digital media, China’s role in the global innovation network, cross-border venture finance, and Chinese mobile firms going global. These sessions brought together 20 founders, senior executives and leaders from: Asia Society, Baidu, Bertelsmann, DCM, Foursquare, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, FunPlus Game, GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, LinkedIn, Queen's Road Capital, Riverwood Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and WestSummit Capital.