NCUSCR Events

The Fourth Plenum of the 18th Party Congress in October 2014 focused on the rule of law. On November 3, the National Committee convened a discussion with Carl Minzner, professor at the Fordham University School of Law. In an on-the-record teleconference moderated by NCUSCR President Steve Orlins, the two reflected on the Fourth Plenum and its implications for the development of China's legal system and governance. A question and answer session followed the speakers' remarks.

Carl Minzner is an expert in Chinese law and governance. He has written extensively on these topics in both academic journals and the popular press, including op-eds appearing in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor. Recent academic works include "China's Turn Against Law", in the American Journal of Comparative Law (2011) exploring Chinese authorities' shift against legal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, and "The Rise and Fall of Chinese Legal Education" in the Fordham International Law Journal, examining both the expansion of Chinese legal education since the late 1990s, and its impending retrenchment.

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

China’s Fourth Plenum, October 2014: Carl Minzner

China's transition to a market economy has propelled its remarkable economic growth since the late 1970s. In his book Markets Over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China Nicholas R. Lardy, one of the world's foremost experts on the Chinese economy, traces the increasing role of market forces and refutes the widely advanced argument that Chinese economic progress rests on the government's control of the economy's "commanding heights." Markets Over Mao offers powerfully persuasive evidence that the major sources of China's growth in the future will be market-rather than state-driven, with private firms providing the major source of economic growth, the sole source of job creation, and the major contributor to China's still growing role as a global trader.

Dr. Nicholas R. Lardy is the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He joined the Institute in March 2003 from the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow from 1995 until 2003.

Nicholas Lardy: Markets Over Mao

China's management of urbanization is an under-appreciated factor in the regime's longevity. The Chinese Communist Party fears the emergence of unequal megacities with their attendant slums and social unrest, as has occurred in many cities around the world, because such cities might threaten the survival of the regime. To combat the threat, many regimes, including China's, adopt policies that favor cities. Cities and Stability shows this "urban bias" to be a Faustian bargain: cities may be stabilized for a time, but the massive in-migration from the countryside that results can generate the conditions for political unrest.  Dr. Jeremy Wallace discussed his new book Cities and Stability at a National Committee public program on December 17, 2014. Dr. Wallace is an assistant professor of political science at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on authoritarian regime survival and how such regimes&mdash;particularly China&rsquo;s&mdash;grapple with threats.  The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading nonprofit nonpartisan organization that encourages understanding of China and the United States among citizens of both countries.

Cities and Stability: China’s Urbanization with Author Jeremy Wallace

When President Richard M. Nixon met with Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in February 1972, at his side was a young U.S. diplomat serving as his principal interpreter: Chas W. Freeman, Jr. had started studying Mandarin (and Taiwan's dialect, Minnan) in Taiwan three years earlier; and he spent much of his long diplomatic career specializing in China, including Taiwan. In Interesting Times, Ambassador Freeman brings a broad and well-informed historical perspective to his analysis of the issues that have confronted the world's two most powerful countries over the last four decades.

Ambassador Chas Freeman on His New Book "Interesting Times"

Four decades of non-stop economic growth has encouraged the view that China’s ruling elite comprises men of supernatural technocratic ability who can successfully navigate any political, social, or economic challenge. However, according to Professor Carl Minzner, China’s glossy façade obscures mounting social pressures and the increasing brittleness of the regime’s power. In a new book, End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining its Rise, Fordham University law professor and China expert Carl Minzner examines the historical origins and contemporary implications of Beijing’s turn to repression. From increasing debt to labor unrest, Professor Minzner details how today’s challenges to continued stability are rooted in a process of the slow jettisoning of reforms beginning in the 1990s. Professor Minzner joined us on March 14, 2018, for a discussion of his book and the future of reform in China. 

Carl Minzner is an expert in Chinese law and governance. He has written extensively on these topics in both academic journals and the popular press, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Christian Science Monitor. Professor Minzner’s academic works include “China After the Reform Era” (Journal of Democracy, 2015), “The Rise and Fall of Chinese Legal Education”(Fordham International Law Journal, 2013), and “China’s Turn Against Law” (American Journal of Comparative Law, 2011). Prior to joining Fordham in 2011, Professor Minzner was associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. He previously served as senior counsel for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Yale-China Association legal education fellow at the Northwest Institute of Politics and Law in Xi’an. He also worked as an associate at McCutchen & Doyle (Palo Alto, CA) and clerked for Judge Raymond Clevenger of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. 

For more information on the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ events, visit us at www.ncuscr.org/events.

Carl Minzner: The End of China's Reform Era

The recent proposal to remove presidential term limits in China has prompted questions about the country’s future development, and the historical legacy of China’s past authoritarian leaders seems relevant once again. How should we understand the current direction of China’s political culture? In a newly revised and updated book, modern China historians Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Maura Cunningham review the key historical trends that have shaped China’s development in the 21st century. From Confucian thought to U.S.-China relations under Trump and Xi, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, third edition, provides essential knowledge for understanding the world’s emerging superpower. Dr. Cunningham and Dr. Wasserstrom discussed their book and how to understand contemporary China in historical perspective with the National Committee on March 27, 2018.

Maura Elizabeth Cunningham is a writer and historian of modern China. She is a graduate of Saint Joseph’s University (B.A.), Yale University (M.A.), the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies (graduate certificate), and the University of California, Irvine (Ph.D.), as well as of Chinese language programs in Beijing and Hangzhou. Dr. Cunningham’s dissertation was a social and cultural history of child welfare in 20th-century Shanghai; she is currently working on a book about children’s cartoonist Zhang Leping. In 2016, she moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to become the digital media manager at the Association for Asian Studies. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he edits the Journal of Asian Studies; he also holds courtesy affiliations in the Law School and the Literary Journalism Program. Dr. Wasserstrom holds a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz, a master’s from Harvard, and a doctorate from Berkeley, and has written five books and edited or coedited several others. His most recent books as author and editor include, Eight Juxtapositions: China through Imperfect Analogies from Mark Twain to Manchukuo and the Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China. He was a co-founder of The China Beat blog (2008-2012) and is now an academic editor for the LARB’s China Channel.

Jeff Wasserstrom and Maura Cunningham: Has Xi Jinping Changed the Course of Modern Chinese History?

This episode explores China’s new-energy vehicle (NEV) market and draws from the November 2018 CSIS report entitled China’s Risky Drive into New-Energy Vehicles. We are joined by the author of the report, Dr. Scott Kennedy, who examines the strategic and economic motivations behind Beijing’s prioritization of NEVs. Dr. Kennedy discusses the positive results of China becoming the world’s largest NEV market, as well as issues the industry faces in China, such as overcapacity, environmental ramifications, and the challenges posed by international competitors. He also offers his assessment of how the industry will evolve and China’s role moving forward.

Dr. Scott Kennedy is senior adviser of the Freeman Chair in China Studies and director of Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at CSIS. Prior to joining CSIS, he was a professor at Indiana University (IU) for over 14 years. His work focuses on China’s economic policy and its global economic relations, including industrial policy, technology innovation, and US-China commercial relations.

China’s Emerging New-Energy Vehicle Industry: A Conversation with Scott Kennedy

I was recently invited to The Carter Center's commemoration of the 40th anniversary of U.S.-China relations in Atlanta, where I met Professor David Lampton - a foremost thinker on the two countries. In this podcast, he describes his early adventures as a student in the 1960s, the way he centers his work through people and their voices, and how he has built a career around two fascinating countries and the world they shape.

How to become a player in global affairs

My remix of "Empathy" by my brothers, @TheBrazenYouth

Check out The Brazen Youth on Spotify ~ https://open.spotify.com/artist/7tnIA4ww5dwoyENYz4GM5T?si=AlRoTpFMQ6ePGx2SXkE6iQ

Additional bass guitar performed by Stirling Rutty
Cover art by indojo ~ https://www.deviantart.com/indojo


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Empathy (Remix)

Speaker: Scott Kennedy, Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)

An American policy to economically decouple from China is a radical idea, and if adopted, would cause substantial damage to American interests. Policies based on “managed interdependence” would be more effective in protecting the economy, national security, values, and public health of the United States.

Scott Kennedy is senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A leading authority on Chinese economic policy, his specific areas of expertise include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, U.S.-China commercial relations, and global governance.  He is currently writing a book tentatively titled, The Power of Innovation:The Strategic Importance of China’s High-Tech Drive.

This event was recorded over Zoom.

Decoupling from China: A Radical and Dangerous Idea, with Scott Kennedy

Online Education During the Pandemic

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is the leading American nonprofit, nonpartisan organization devoted to promoting constructive engagement between the United States and Greater China.

Since 1966, the National Committee has served as a vital bridge between the two countries, responding to immediate crises and systemic shifts by providing a platform for frank and constructive dialogue, and by creating relevant, high-impact programs that address the changing nature of the bilateral relationship. Its ongoing exchanges, dialogues, conferences, and delegations bring together a wide range of policymakers, corporate leaders, academics, entrepreneurs, professionals, military personnel, and students from both sides of the Pacific. Through public outreach and educational events, the Committee stimulates public discussion and facilitates the exchange of ideas and viewpoints.

The National Committee’s programs draw strength from its members, who number more than 700 prominent Americans from all parts of the country, and nearly 60 corporations and professional firms. They represent many viewpoints, but share the belief that productive U.S.-China relations require ongoing public education, face-to-face contact, and the forthright exchange of ideas.

China’s Fourth Plenum, October 2014: Carl Minzner

National Committee on U.S.-China Relations

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