The talk will presents China’s ongoing rural revitalisation program through different cases. The speaker has been working on rural development programs in Yunnan, China since 2015. Faced with challenges of rural-urban disparity and rural decline, it is critical to explore new development approach by adopting rural-urban parallel rather than sequential transformation. Rural revitalisation program is not simply increasing investment but focusing on regenerating new rural economy appropriate for small-holder farmers’ development. The speaker argues that in the past two decades, the development process from poverty reduction to rural revitalisation in rural China has produced a new development narrative. But it has been largely ignored by the development community.

Speaker: Professor Xiaoyun Li (China Agricultural University)

Chair: Professor James Putzel (Department of International Development, LSE)

China and the World Seminar Series is monthly seminar series which brings together leading academics to discuss issues of public policy research across China and other countries. For more information: https://www.lse.ac.uk/school-of-public-policy/Research/LSE-Fudan/China-and-the-World-Seminar-Series

Hosted by the LSE-Fudan Global Public Policy Hub and the LSE School of Public Policy

New Thinking on Rural Development in China

President Trump has made his feelings about US competition with China plain; one of the early acts of his second presidential term has been to place tariffs on Chinese imports. China has since responded with its own tariffs on certain US goods and restrictions on the import of important minerals.

To talk about US-China relations with the return of Donald Trump, in February 2025 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Professor Minxin Pei, the Tom and Margot Pritzker '72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. They also spoke about China’s surveillance state and the concept of preventative repression, and how China might respond to US escalation on trade.

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Luke Digweed.

LSE: The Ballpark | US-China relations under the new Trump administration with Professor Minxin Pei

Listen to this public event with Guillermo Lasso Mendoza, former President of Ecuador (2021-2023).

This podcast is in Spanish, but you can watch the video on YouTube with auto-generated English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_N_kpfewKc


Former President Lasso Mendoza will share his experience of more than 50 years working to strengthen democracy in Ecuador, leading from the private to the public sector. He will be discussing the diverse security, social, and economic challenges that Latin American faces in this event chaired by Professor Andrés Velasco, Dean of the LSE School of Public Policy.

The event will be conducted in Spanish. However, live translation devices will be available for those who need them. For our online audience, translation options can be selected in the captions on the Zoom webinar.

More about out speakers and chair

Guillermo Lasso Mendoza is Former President of Ecuador. He has written three books: Letters to my children, Another Ecuador is possible and 900 Days: Democracy and Results, in which he recounts the stages of his life, his political ideals, and his government results, correspondingly. In 2011, he received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from the University of the Americas due to his career path and achievements. He founded Ecuador Libre, a think tank that promotes ideals of individual freedom, justice, free market, private property and the rule of law. With the purpose of serving Ecuadorians, he founded the party Creando Oportunidades (CREO).

Andrés Velasco (@AndresVelasco) is Professor of Public Policy and Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2017-19 he was a member of the G20 Eminent Persons Group. During 2015-16 he co-chaired the Global Panel on the Future of the Multilateral Lending Institutions. In 2013-16 he was a member of the Global Oceans Commission.

More about this event

The LSE School of Public Policy (@LSEPublicPolicy) equips you with the skills and ideas to transform people and societies. It is an international community where ideas and practice meet. Their approach creates professionals with the ability to analyse, understand and resolve the challenges of contemporary governance.

Populism and challenges for democracy in Latin America

With the cost-of-living crisis leading to the closure of community spaces around the UK, and the pressures on urban development projects, this episode of LSE iQ asks, are we in danger of losing our communities?  

Speakers: Professor Shani Orgad, Dr Divya Srivastava , Dr Julia King, Dr Olivia Theocharides-Feldman 

Research links: 

“Listening in times of crisis: The value and limits of radio phone-in shows” by Shani Orgad, Divya Srivastava, and Diana Olaleye 
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01634437241308729?af=R  

Making Space for Girls project, with Dr Julia King and Olivia Theocharides-Feldman 
https://www.lse.ac.uk/Cities/research/cities-space-and-society/Making-Space-For-Girls  

We’re keen to find out more about our audience so we can better tailor our content to suit your interests. With this in mind, we would be grateful if you could please take the time to fill out this short survey and share your feedback. 

Are we in danger of losing our communities?

In a volatile world of renewed Great Power Competition, what is the role and future of the United Nations? Can the organisation and its associated institutions be effective against the backdrop of U.S.-China competition, war in Ukraine, growing economic nationalism and tensions in the Middle-East and East Asia?  Is the future of the UN dependent on a single international order? Can it operate if consensus on the nature of that order frays? Is there scope for UN reform, and if so, what could that look like?

To hear more, come and join James Kariuki, Britain's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York and Natalie Samarasinghe, Advisor to the Global Challenges Foundation, to discuss the contemporary challenges and future direction of the UN. 

More about out speakers and chair

James Kariuki (@JamesKariuki_UN) is the UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, New York. His previous Foreign Office positions include Director Multilateral Policy, Deputy Director Europe, and Head of Policy Planning. He has also served at the British Embassies in Washington and Caracas, and with the UN in Baghdad.

Natalie Samarasinghe is Advisor to the Global Challenges Foundation. She previously served as CEO of the United Nations Association -- UK (the first woman appointed to the role), Speechwriter to the President of the UN General Assembly, Chief of Strategy in the UN Secretariat, and Global Director of Advocacy for the Open Society Foundations. She is a co-founder of the 1 for 8 Billion campaign to appoint the first woman UN Secretary-General.

Alexander Evans (@aiaevans) is Professor in Practice of Public Policy. He is a former adviser to the Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street and Director Cyber at the Foreign Office where he was the U.K.’s chief international cyber policy negotiator. He has also served as a senior adviser in the U.S. Department of State during the first Obama Administration, and led the U.N. Security Council expert group on Daesh, Al Qaida and the Taliban.

More about this event

The LSE School of Public Policy (@LSEPublicPolicy) equips you with the skills and ideas to transform people and societies. It is an international community where ideas and practice meet. Their approach creates professionals with the ability to analyse, understand and resolve the challenges of contemporary governance.

LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy. 

The UN at 80: does the world still need the UN?

Donald Trump’s links to the right, including the far right and the alt-right date back to least to his 2016 presidential campaign and continued through his first term and then into his 2024 election campaign where Trump faced accusations of being an authoritarian populist.  

To discuss Donald Trump’s links to the far right, in February 2025 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Dr Rachel Blum of the University of Oklahoma. They also discussed Dr Blum’s research on party factions and their impact on contemporary US politics, and the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, which limits the number of times someone can be elected as President of the United States to two terms. 

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Luke Digweed.


Further reading and resources 

 

How the Tea Party Captured the GOP: Insurgent Factions in American Politics by Rachel M. Blum (The University of Chicago Press, 2020) - https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo48408420.html 

Cooperating Factions: A Network Analysis of Party Divisions in U.S. Presidential Nominations by Rachel M. Blum and Hans C. Noel (Cambridge University Press, 2024) - https://www.cambridge.org/gb/universitypress/subjects/politics-international-relations/american-government-politics-and-policy/cooperating-factions-network-analysis-party-divisions-us-presidential-nominations?format=PB  

The MAGA Coup: Trump’s Takeover of the GOP (w/ Dr. Rachel Blum) – Deep Dive with Shawn C. Fettig - https://deepdivepodcast.buzzsprout.com/1983649/episodes/16215700-the-maga-coup-trump-s-takeover-of-the-gop-w-dr-rachel-blum

LSE: The Ballpark | Donald Trump and the far-right with Dr Rachel Blum

Join us for this panel event, discussing some of the key policy issues pertaining women and work: from sexual harassment in the workplace, to the “motherhood penalty”, to the way women in employment (and women “who quit”) are represented in the media and policy discourse. 

The event launches the publication of the new LSE Public Policy Review issue “Multidisciplinary approaches and policy innovation in Gender Research”, edited by Almudena Sevilla.  Find out more about the issue that explores more emerging challenges and the evolving landscape of gender research, including perspectives from law, communications, health and social policy, gender studies and economics.

You can read the new publication here: https://ppr.lse.ac.uk/14/volume/3/issue/4

More about out speakers and chair

Gabriel Leite-Mariante (@LeiteMariante) is a PhD candidate in Economics at LSE. His work focuses on social protection, labour markets and gender inequality in low- and middle-income countries.

Shani Orgad is Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. 

Margaux Suteau (@MargauxSuteau) is LSE Fellow in the Department of Social Policy.

Dame Maria Miller (@MariaMillerUK) was secretary of state for culture, media and sport and minister for women and equalities (2012–14). Previously, she was also a junior minister in the Department for Work and Pensions (2010–12). She chaired the Women and Equalities Committee from 2015 to 2019. 

Almudena Sevilla (@Sevilla_Almu) is a Professor of Economic and Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy at LSE and is currently the Founding Chair of the Royal Economic Society UK Women in Economics Network and the LSE Women in Social and Public Policy Research Hub.

More about this event

The LSE School of Public Policy (@LSEPublicPolicy) equips you with the skills and ideas to transform people and societies. It is an international community where ideas and practice meet. Their approach creates professionals with the ability to analyse, understand and resolve the challenges of contemporary governance.

Women and work

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has brought the spectre of potential nuclear conflict back into the public consciousness for the first time in decades. But what’s behind the potential for nuclear conflict and what issues are at stake for nuclear powers other than the US and Russia, like China?

To discuss these and other questions on the current state of global nuclear tensions and development, in March 2025 the Phelan US Centre spoke to Dr Nicola Leveringhaus of King's College London. 

This episode was produced by Chris Gilson and Luke Digweed.  
Further reading and resources
•	Under the Nuclear Shadow: China’s Information-Age Weapons in International Security by Fiona S. Cunningham (Princeton University Press, 2025) - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691261027/under-the-nuclear-shadow 
•	The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon by Ankit Panda (Wiley, 2025) - https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/The+New+Nuclear+Age%3A+At+the+Precipice+of+Armageddon-p-9781509557462 


LSE: The Ballpark | US-China strategic stability with Dr Nicola Leveringhaus

Join us for this public event with Robert Holzmann, Governor of the Austrian National Bank.

Governor Holzmann will discuss selected issues of unconventional monetary policy instruments (UMP): Assuming inflation is tamed, can we go back to conventional monetary policy before 2008, when short-term policy interest rates (and reserve requirements) dominated the monetary policy tool box? Or do we have to apply again UMP – with learnings from recent past and perhaps new unconventional instruments? This talk offers selected considerations about the intentions, effectiveness, and options of UMP in the Euro area and beyond.

Meet our speaker and chair 

Robert Holzmann is the Governor of the Austrian National Bank, and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (since 2019), and elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (since 2014). He holds honorary positions at the South-Western University in Economics and Finance, Chengdu, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and University of New South Wales, Sydney. Before his return to academia in 2011, he held various positions at the World Bank including for 12 years Sector Director and acting Senior Vice President. Before joining the World Bank in 1997 he was an academic in Austria and Germany, and senior economist at the IMF and OECD.

Daniela Gabor is Professor of Economics at SOAS. 

Donato Di Carlo is an assistant professor in political economy at the LSE European Institute.

More about this event

The European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe.

OMFIF (@OMFIF), the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, is an independent forum for central banking, economic policy and public investment.

Unconventional monetary policy – quo vadis?

Should the world fear China?

Join us for this public event with Benjamin Haddad, Minister Delegate for European Affairs attached to the French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, as he discusses how Europe can position itself in the face of today’s challenges.

“Our Europe is mortal”, French President Emmanuel Macron warned last spring, stressing the difficult and urgent choices that the continent is confronted with. Presenting his Report on the future of European competitiveness, former Italian prime Minister Mario Draghi argued that failing to cope with mounting challenges would entail the ‘slow agony’ of Europe. Following the return to power of President Trump, the transatlantic partnership faces potential disruption. The US has engaged in negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, sidelining Europeans and raising new questions on America’s commitment to European security. The threat of tariffs looms large over the future of the transatlantic economy and top US officials are meddling in Europe’s politics, such as at the recent Munich Security Conference. At the same time, a world of growing competition, rising authoritarianism and declining multilateralism tests Europe’s capacity to stand its ground and advance its interests and values.

Meet our speaker and chair 

Benjamin Haddad is Minister Delegate for Europe, attached to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of the French Republic. Graduated from Sciences Po Paris and HEC and a researcher in international relations, he taught international relations at Sciences Po and worked for seven years in think tanks in Washington, D.C., notably as Director of the Atlantic Council's Europe Center from 2019 to 2022. He is the author of “Paradis Perdu: l'Amérique de Trump et la fin des illusions européennes”, (Grasset, 2019), a plea for European sovereignty and strategic autonomy in the face of new geopolitical threats and American withdrawal. Elected Member of Parliament for Paris (14th constituency) in June 2022, he was member of the Foreign Affairs Commission and the European Affairs Commission and also spokesman coordinator for the National Assembly's Renaissance group. On July 7th 2024, after the snap legislative elections, he was re-elected MP for the 14th Paris constituency. On September 21st of the same year, he was appointed Minister Delegate for Europe.

Dr Spyros Economides is Associate Professor in International Relations and European Politics at the LSE European Institute and Deputy Director of the Hellenic Observatory.

More about this event

The European Institute (@LSEEI) is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe.

The Department of International Relations (@LSEIRDept) at LSE is now in its 97th year, and is one of the oldest as well as largest IR departments in the world, with a truly international reputation. The Department is ranked 2nd in the UK and 5th in the world in the QS World University Ranking by Subject 2024 tables for Politics and International Studies.

Europe's strategic crossroads

The LSE School of Public Policy is an international community where ideas and practice meet. Follow our podcast feed for the latest analysis and discussion on the challenges of contemporary governance, public policy and leadership.

New Thinking on Rural Development in China

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