NEWS

• June 2008
RCCPB Director Scott Kennedy was interviewed about business lobbying in China for New America Media's Upfront program. The interview, which aired on June 20, 2008, is available here . Posted with permission. "© Copyright New America Media, 2008."

• May 2008
RCCPB Director Scott Kennedy presented the paper, "The Myth of the Beijing Consensus" at a conference held at the University of Denver in late May. The Beijing Consensus concept suggests that China's development has proceeded according to a formula different from conventional economic principles and represents a challenge to institutions of global governance such as the WTO. Kennedy's paper argues that the Beijing Consensus mischaracterizes China's development experience and is rooted in a mistaken understanding of the Washington Consensus. For a copy of his paper, click here.

• May 2008
RCCPB Senior Associates Marjorie Lyles and Dan Li, both with IU's Kelley School of Business, have received support for their research project on Chinese outward foreign direct investment. With the center's facilitation, IU's Office of the Vice President for International Affairs provided a seed grant of $3,500 for field research this project as well as provided support for Professor Li to spend 1-2 months at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, China. Their project represents the launching of the RCCPB's Initiative in Chinese Entrepreneurship, which aims to examine the economic and political circumstances that shape business opportunities for Chinese entrepreneurs at home and abroad.

• May 2008
RCCPB Senior Associate Ho-fung Hung, an assistant professor in IU's Departments of Sociology and East Asian Languages & Cultures, has had his article, "Agricultural Revolution and Elite Reproduction in Qing China" accepted by the American Sociological Review. It will appear in the ASR's August 2008 issue. Hung is also currently revising an edited book manuscript, China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism.

• April 2008
RCCPB Senior Associate Ho-fung Hung and Director Scott Kennedy were interviewed by columnist Josh Peter of Yahoo! Sports about their views regarding calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics. For the text of the story, click here.

• March 2008
RCCPB Director Scott Kennedy was selected as a recipient of Fulbright Research Award. For the 2008-09 academic year, he plans to be based at Beijing University's School of International Studies, where he will conduct research for his project, "Mandarins Playing Capitalist Games: How China is Reshaping Global Governance." Rather than focus on the degree to which China complies with its international commitments, this project analyzes how well Chinese agencies and companies "play the game" of employing the existing rules of the global economy to their advantage and, when they do not like the rules, attempt to change them. Areas of focus include fair trade, setting technical standards, credit risk analysis, competition policy, commodity markets, and the Doha Round. Attention is paid to both how these regimes unfold within China and how Chinese participate in the regimes internationally.

• March 2008
The March 2008 issue of The China Quarterly carries articles by RCCPB Senior Associate Ethan Michelson and Director Scott Kennedy. Michelson's article, "Justice from Above or Below? Popular Strategies for Resolving Grievnances in Rural China," draws on a large-scale survey to show that Chinese individuals with grievances obtain more satisfactory outcomes to their problems through local resolution paths than by appealing to higher authorities. Kennedy's article, "China's Emerging Credit Rating Industry: The Official Foundations of Private Authority," documents the gradual reforms of China's bond market and the parallel rise of domestic credit rating agencies. It shows how the emergence of local rating companies, which is in part due to the efforts of the more market-friendly elements of the bureaucracy, is a good bellweather for the Chinese state's attitude toward private authority more generally. For the journal's table of contents, click here.

• February 2008
After interviewing at several schools in the United States and Asia, RCCPB Postdoctoral Fellow Junmin Wang has accepted a tenure-track position in the Department of Sociology at the University of Memphis.

• November 2007
RCCPB Senior Associate Ethan Michelson has given several lectures this fall around the country on his research. On October 13 he presented a paper on popular perceptions of the legal system at a conference on "Chinese Justice" at Harvard Universtity. On November 2 he presented a paper on conflict generated by China's family planning policies at a conference on China's "Growing Pains" at Stanford University. On November 16 he gave two lectures at Missouri Southern State University as part of its "China Semester." On November 26 he gave a talk on Chinese lawyers at the Yale Law School's China Law Center.

• November 2007
RCCPB Visiting Scholar Deng Guosheng (邓国胜) has just been recognized for his outstanding work by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs. His article, "Analysis of the Characteristics and Value of Non-Enterprise Organizations in China" (中国民办非企业单位特征与价值分析) won second place for the ministry's Civil Affairs Policy and Theory Research" award (民政政策与理论研究). This award is one of the highest achievements for those who conduct research on civil affairs in China.

• October 2007
RCCPB Director Scott Kennedy and University of Oregon Professor Richard P. Suttmeier are heading up a project organized by the Seattle-based National Bureau of Asian Research on the sources and implications of Chinese efforts to develop new technical standards for information technologies as part of the country's broader strategy to promote innovation. The most recent stage of the project was the conference, "Technical Standards and Innovation in China: Public Policy and the Role of Stakeholders," to be held in Beijing, on October 29, 2007. The meeting will bring together experts from academia, industry, government, and standards development organizations to discuss the rapid development of new standards within China and growing Chinese involvement in international standards bodies such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Following the conference, Kennedy, Suttmeier, and Tsinghua University Professor Su Jun will co-author an NBR policy report that will be presented to the business and policy communities in the United States, China, and elsewhere. Partnership organizations for the conference include Tsinghua University, the EU-China Trade Project, and the United States Information Technology Office (USITO). For more on NBR's project, see its website. For a draft agenda of the conference, click here.

• October 2007
Ho-fung Hung, RCCPB Senior Associate and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Sociology and East Asian Languages & Cultures, will deliver a lecture entitled, "Can China Survive Success? The Political Economy of a Development Miracle," on Friday, October 26, 12:00 noon - 1:30 pm in SPEA Room 278. The lecture summarizes the findings of Professor Hung's latest publication, "Rise of China and the Global Overaccumulation Crisis," which will appear in the May 2008 issue of Review of International Political Economy. By examining China's developmental miracle in comparative and historical perspectives, he argues the socio-political order that makes the miracle possible is also the origin of China's economic imbalances. Despite the strong fundamentals of the Chinese economy, its developmental miracle is hardly sustainable without a major restructuring of its socio-political order.

• September 27, 2007
RCCPB Director Scott Kennedy gave the keynote address to the the annual meeting of the Indiana Association of Family and Consumer Sciences on September 27, 2007, in Indianapolis. The title of his talk was, "Made in China: Is the American Consumer Safe?" He emphasized that the Chinese government and producers, multinational firms, and the United States government all share responsibility for the current situation. Product safety is worst in sectors with the smallest profit margins, and the Chinese government has been much more vigilent in development regulatory regimes that help companies than in fostering regimes that discipline industry. In addition, a global production chain has not been accompanied by an equally well developed transnational regulation and oversight, by either governments or companies, creating an "international governance deficit" for product standards and safety. Improving this situation will require extensive efforts in China and elsewhere.

• September 2007
RCCP Senior Associate Ethan Michelson just published an important article on the difficulties lawyers face in China in one of the country's most prestigious sociology journal: "Lawyers, Political Embeddedness, and Institutional Continuity in China's Transition from Socialism." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 113, No. 2 (September 2007), pp. 352-414. An assistant professor in IU's Department of Sociology, Michelson is also presenting the paper, "Dispute Processing in Urban and Rural China: Findings from Two Surveys," at the Conference on Dispute Resolution in China, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, on September 18, 2007. The goal of the conference is to examine law in operation, drawing on recent empirical work that explores the way conflicts are addressed across a range of public and private fora, and/or exploring the development of mechanisms that seek to address citizen complaints and concerns. In particular, participants seek to shed light on two main debates: the role of law more generally, and dispute resolution more particularly, with respect to economic development (efficiency) and social justice (equity).

• June 2007
RCCPB Director Scott Kennedy was interviewed in June by Warwick Commission Director Richard Higgott about China's integration in the global economy and participation in the WTO. The commission, based at Warwick University, is charged with "examining the global trading system and making recommendations about its future shape and direction." To watch the interview, click here.

• April 2007
Junmin Wang, who holds a doctorate in sociology from New York University, was appointed the 2007-08 Postdoctoral Fellow in Chinese Political Economy.