* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/JqN4Ga4DVss

 

About the Event: 

Much of the imagery and remote sensing analysis in the Open Source Community pertains to North Korea’s nuclear weapons pathway and military capability. However, many questions remain regarding economic and agricultural health in a nation known for denial of access to outside observation. But by applying emerging analytical and processing technology of satellite imagery and data, we can address the challenge of examining economic and environmental patterns in the North.

Machine Learning technology has been used to analyze rudimentary objects like roads or buildings on satellite imagery for years, but has yet to be successfully employed to better understand nuanced patterns of life. In our partnership with the analytics company Orbital Insight, we have undertaken a project of counting thousands of objects in satellite images taken over the past five years to uncover North Korea’s trade relationship with China.

This project includes counting number of trucks at each side of the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge as a measure of trade activity between North Korea and China. By applying artificial intelligence to more than 300 satellite images, we observed fluctuations of truck counts, which peak during the month of November. A significant drop in the truck counts during the year of 2020 is noticed as a result of restricted traffic from the global pandemic, although as much as 30 trucks were observed in the month of June on both sides of the border. The project demonstrates the utilities of machine learning in analyzing emerging datasets. Careful monitoring of trade between the two states can aid in better understanding the China-North Korea economic relationship and how it evolves over time.

CISAC is also partnering with international organizations and geospatial systems specialists to apply data derived from public space mapping systems to better understand macro-environmental, agricultural, and water security trends over the past twenty years in North Korea. For decades, scientists of every discipline have been analyzing remotely-sensed images and data sets to extract otherwise-imperceptible insight pertaining to broad aspects of environmental health including coastal erosion, deforestation, land subsidence, and global thermal changes. But because of a post-war technology vacuum and broadly-applied sanctions against space-derived information, North Korea has never had access to this data or the advanced software and data storage architecture necessary to support it. The potential for direct collaboration with the North on environmental analysis may enhance North Korea’s ability to mitigate its own agricultural risk and potentially facilitate informal international collaboration.

 

 

About the Speaker: Allison Puccioni has been an imagery analyst for over 25 years, working within the military, tech, media, and academic communities. After honorably serving in the US Army as an Imagery Analyst from 1991 - 1997, Allison continued the tradecraft as a civilian augmentee to US and NATO operations in the Kosovo airstrike campaign, and as a Senior Analyst and Mission Planner for Naval Special Warfare Group One. After earning her Master’s Degree in International Policy, Allison established the commercial satellite imagery analysis capability for the British publication company Jane's. In 2015, Allison joined Google to assist with the establishment of applications for its commercial small-satellites. Today, Allison is the Principal and Founder of Armillary Services, providing insight on commercial imaging satellites and associated analytics to the governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the commercial sector. Concurrently, Allison manages the multi-sensor imagery analysis team at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/TV8ye_OVdzY

 

About the Event: Proof that France had become the world’s fourth nuclear power exploded above the Algerian Sahara in February 1960, during the Algerian War for Independence (1954–62). Sixteen more blasts would take place before France abandoned its Saharan test sites in 1966, which had continued to host French explosions underground during the first years of Algerian Independence. Well before the first airborne detonation, and even after French testing went below ground, the likelihood that radioactive debris (known as fallout) would contaminate the desert environment and its human inhabitants animated an international controversy. Saharan fallout loomed at once as a new threat to Algerian and African sovereignty and to Cold War negotiations that promised to limit weapons testing, revealing historical intersections between African decolonization and the nuclear arms race.

 

About the Speaker: Austin Cooper is a Predoctoral Researcher at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and a PhD Candidate in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Please join us for our winter seminar series of four lectures given by multidisciplinary faculty who are leading experts on China's economy and institutions. These lectures will cover discussion topics ranging from rural livelihood and environmental sustainability in China to talent and firm creation in China and will be moderated by Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution co-directors Scott Rozelle and Hongbin Li.

 

Seminar 3: Tuesday, March 9, 2021 | 11:00 - 12:15 am Pacific Time

The Political Genesis of Local Government Debt in China with Professor Jean Oi, Stanford University

China’s rapidly growing local government debt (LGD) is now branded a “grey rhino,” a known threat that has received little attention.  Why did Beijing let LGD get so out of hand?  What are the sources of LGD?  Oi will argue that LGD stems from a grand bargain between the center and the localities that was made to secure support for the 1994 fiscals reforms.  This series of policy decisions institutionalized backdoor financing, creating a “win-win” solution that recentralized tax revenues to Beijing while countering the downsides of fiscal recentralization for the localities.  The cost, however, was that China’s economic growth model was increasingly undergirded by mounting LGD, with little transparency and control by the center.  

---

Image

About the Speaker

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University.  She also directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at FSI and is the founding Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.  Oi has published extensively on political economy and the process of reform in China.  Recent books include Fateful Decisions: Choices That Will Shape China's Future, co-edited with Thomas Fingar (2020); and Zouping Revisited: Adaptive Governance in a Chinese County, co-edited with Steven Goldstein (2018).  Recent articles include “China’s Challenges: Now it Gets Much Harder,” co-authored with Thomas Finger, The Washington Quarterly (Spring 2020); and “After COVID-19: Rebooting Business in China,” co-authored with Jennifer Choo, Christopher Thomas, and Xue (Xander) Wu, The Diplomat (July 2020).  Her current research continues to explore central-local relations, including local government debt.  She is also in the early stages of a project on China’s Belt and Road Initiative.   

---

Seminar Series Moderators:

Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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). In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). 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 is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). 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.

 

---

Register Here

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

Please join us for our winter seminar series of four lectures given by multidisciplinary faculty who are leading experts on China's economy and institutions. These lectures will cover discussion topics ranging from rural livelihood and environmental sustainability in China to talent and firm creation in China and will be moderated by Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution co-directors Scott Rozelle and Hongbin Li.

 

Seminar 3: Tuesday, February 23, 2021 | 11:00 - 12:15 am Pacific Time

Entrepreneurial Reluctance: Talent and Firm Creation in China with Professor Ruixue Jia, UC San Diego

An influential theoretical literature has long noted that talent can be used in both the entrepreneur and non-entrepreneur sectors and its allocation depends on the reward restructure. We test this insight by linking administrative college admissions data for 1.8 million individuals with information on firm registration records in China. I will open discussion on the findings of our study including who is more likely to create firms, which firms are more successful, and the overall association between entrepreneurial ability and college entrance exam scores.

---

Image

About the Speaker

Ruixue Jia is an associate professor of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego. Jia is interested in the interplay of economics, history and politics. One stream of her research focuses on understanding elite formation and elite influence, in both historical and modern contexts. A second focus of her work is the deep historical roots of economic development. More recently, she started following the ongoing transformation of the manufacturing sector in China and expanded her interest to labor and technology issues.

---

Seminar Series Moderators:

Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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). In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). 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 is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). 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.

 

---

Register Here

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

Please join us for our winter seminar series of four lectures given by multidisciplinary faculty who are leading experts on China's economy and institutions. These lectures will cover discussion topics ranging from rural livelihood and environmental sustainability in China to talent and firm creation in China and will be moderated by Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution co-directors Scott Rozelle and Hongbin Li.

 

Seminar 2: Tuesday, February 9, 2021 | 11:00 - 12:15 am Pacific Time

A Study of Confucius Institute Teachers Around the World with Professor Jennifer Pan, Stanford University

Confucius Institutes (CI) have been accused of extending Chinese government censorship and propaganda around the world, but there are few systematic studies of how these organizations operate. By combining survey and experimental methods with qualitative analyses, we study the behavior of CI teachers with a focus on how the Chinese government imposes control over teachers and its consequences. 

---

Image

About the Speaker

Jennifer Pan is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Stanford University. Her research focuses on political communication and authoritarian politics. Pan uses experimental and computational methods with large-scale datasets on political activity in China and other authoritarian regimes to answer questions about how autocrats perpetuate their rule. How political censorship, propaganda, and information manipulation work in the digital age. How preferences and behaviors are shaped as a result.

Her book, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers (Oxford, 2020) shows how China's pursuit of political order transformed the country’s main social assistance program, Dibao, for repressive purposes. Her work has appeared in peer reviewed publications such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and Science.

She graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government.

---

Seminar Series Moderators:

Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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). In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). 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 is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). 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.

 

---

Register Here

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

Watch the Recorded Seminar

Please join us for our winter seminar series. Moderated by SCCEI Directors Scott Rozelle and Hongbin Li, the four-part series features leading experts on China, speaking on topics ranging from China's aspirations to build an ecological civilization, to talent and firm creation in China.

 

Image

Seminar 1: Tuesday, February 2, 2021 | 11:00 - 12:15 am Pacific Time

China’s Dream: Science, Economics, and Policy for an Ecological Civilization with Professor Gretchen Daily, Stanford University

China’s efforts to build an “ecological civilization” constitute the most comprehensive strategy to achieve inclusive, sustainable development by any major economy. The aspiration is to weave the values of nature into the fabric of the economy and society.  How?  I will open discussion of the transformation being attempted and the arc of their development, both in China and globally, focusing on natural capital and economic dimensions.  These include (i) valuing nature’s contributions to people; (ii) determining where and how much nature to protect or restore, in cities and across the country; (iii) aligning livelihood security and investments in nature; and (iv) tracking progress through Gross Ecosystem Product.

---

Seminar Series Moderators:

Scott Rozelle holds the Helen Farnsworth Endowed Professorship at Stanford University and is Senior Fellow in the Food Security and Environment Program and the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) for International Studies. 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). In recent years Rozelle spends most of his time co-directing the Rural Education Action Project (REAP). 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 is the James Liang Director of the China Program at the Stanford King Center on Global Development, and a Senior Fellow of Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). 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.

This is a virtual event. Please click here to register and generate a link to the talk. 
The link will be unique to you; please save it and do not share with others.

The past decade has witnessed a great digital transformation in China. In 2006, China’s online retail sales were merely 3% of U.S. sales. China now hosts the world’s largest e-commerce retail market with a 40% share of global sales. Mobile pay has taken the country by storm so that even beggars are accepting alms through QR codes. What accounts for the leapfrog development in China’s e-commerce market? What are the larger implications of the rise of this 700-million-user online market? This talk will discuss the institutional foundation of China's giant e-commerce market, as well as its political and economic effects.

This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's winter webinar series "Asian Politics and Policy in a Time of Uncertainty."

Lizhi Liu is an Assistant Professor in the McDonough School of Business and a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government. Her research specializes in the politics of trade, technology and innovation, and the political economy of China. Her work has been published by American Economic Review: Insights and Minnesota Law Review, and has been funded by numerous institutions, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Weiss Family Program Fund, and the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies. She received the 2020 Ronald H. Coase Best Dissertation Award from the Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics (SIOE), and the 2019 Best Dissertation Award in the area of Information Technology and Politics by American Political Science Association (APSA). 

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/trpJJ0-nJzE

 

About the Event: In the middle of the twentieth century, geophysical science and new technologies pried open three of Earth's most remote and inhospitable regions: Antarctica, the ocean floor, and the exosphere—that is, outer space. As human activity in these frigid zones increased, so too did their status as “global commons,” domains belonging to all, and therefore none. This presentation examines how one issue in particular, nuclear weapons, galvanized the politics of the global commons from the 1950s to the 1970s and sheds light on how the United States navigated the new spaces as part of its Cold War foreign policy.

 

 

About the Speakers: 

Stephen Buono is a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. He earned his PhD in History from Indiana University. At Stanford, he is at work on his first book, The Province of All Mankind, a history of how outer space became a realm of American foreign policy and international law in 1950s and 1960s. Before arriving at CISAC, Stephen was an editor for the journal Diplomatic History and an Aerospace History Fellow with the American Historical Association and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration.

 

Ryan A. Musto is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC. He holds a PhD in history from The George Washington University and master’s degrees in international and world history from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. Prior to joining CISAC, Ryan served as a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MIT. His work has been published in Diplomatic History, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Polar Record, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Americas Quarterly, amongst other outlets. Ryan is currently writing a book manuscript on the international history of regional denuclearization.

About the Event:   In partnership with The Hoover Project on China's Global Sharp Power, Jonathan Hillman from the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Min Ye from Boston University, and Glenn Tiffert from Stanford's Hoover Institution discuss the current status of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which stands to be the largest bilateral infrastructure development program of the century. The event will discuss Hillman's new book, The Emperor's New Road: China and the Project of the Century and Ye’s new book, The Belt, Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China 1998-2018 and review the impacts of BRI on global trade and geopolitics.

About the Speakers:

Jonathan E. Hillman is a senior fellow with the CSIS Economics Program and director of the Reconnecting Asia Project, one of the most extensive open-source databases tracking China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Previously, Hillman served as a policy advisor and chief speechwriter at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. His first book is The Emperor's New Road: China and the Project of the Century.

 

Min Ye is the author of The Belt, Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China 1998-2018 (Cambridge University Press 2020), Diasporas and Foreign Direct Investment in China and India (Cambridge University Press 2014), and the Making of Northeast Asia (with Kent Calder, Stanford University Press, 2020). Her articles, “Fragmentation and Mobilization: Domestic Politics of China’s Belt and Road”, “Competing Cooperation in Asia Pacific: TPP, RCEP, and the New Silk Road”, and “Conditions and Utility of Diffusion by Diasporas” have appeared in Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Asian Security, and Journal of East Asian Studies.

 

 

 

Glenn Tiffert is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he manages its project on China’s Global Sharp Power. A historian of modern China, his research focuses on the PRC’s political and legal systems. He also works closely with government and civil society partners in the United States and elsewhere around the world to document and build resilience against authoritarian interference with democratic institutions. He currently serves on the executive committee of the Academic Security and Counter-Exploitation Program, an association of US universities established to help heighten security awareness in academia.  

 

 

 

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/zrDq0xRWnhk

 

About the Event: Determination and verification of the nuclear activities of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are critical to ongoing disarmament and nonproliferation efforts. This study assesses the complete nuclear fuel cycle of the DPRK, from its capacity to produce fissile material precursors at mining and milling facilities in Pyongsan, to activity at the main Nuclear Scientific Research Center in Yongbyon. An interdisciplinary approach is used to analyze the different stages of the DRPK’s nuclear fuel cycle. In investigating the uranium ore grade and ore production capacity at the mining and milling facilities, we combine analysis of archival geological maps, geological field survey reports, and first-hand collection and geochemical analysis of comparable rock samples from the Korean Peninsula. In analyzing the ongoing activities at fissile material production facilities, we integrate satellite imagery analysis with machine learning algorithms, allowing for automated analysis of large image sets.

 

About the Speaker: Sulgiye Park is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC, Stanford University, where she focuses primarily on investigating the front-end of uranium pathway in North Korea. She looks at the uranium mining and milling processes for disarmament and nonproliferation efforts. Prior to joining CISAC, Sulgiye was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford Geological Sciences and Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, where Sulgiye studied materials' behaviors at extreme environments.