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Center News
As part of the China Research Center’s 2nd Annual Event, Dr. Susan Shirk addressed the evolution and current state of U.S.-China relations. Dr. Shirk presided over a roundtable discussion at Georgia Tech in the afternoon and made a presentation at the Carter Center in the evening. In total over 80 people participated.
In her presentation, she suggested that President Obama’s administration has begun the relationship on the basis of continuity with the Bush administration. Both administrations were faced with the rise of a new power in the global context, a situation which historically has been very difficult to manage well. U.S. leaders deserve credit for avoiding a new cold war despite the “threat” perceptions that often emerge from both countries.
The U.S. perception of China tends to mimic that of Japan’s economic competitive rise combined with the security threat of the Soviet Union—i.e., China creates both an economic and a security challenge, and therefore seems even more difficult. Shirk’s view is that the greatest danger to U.S. interests is, in fact, the weakness of the Chinese political leadership, or their perception of their own weakness. This creates a tendency to play to a domestic audience that wants to see China strong, at times tying the hands of the central leadership.
The Chinese perception, or rather misperception, is that the U.S wants to keep China contained in terms of power and wealth. Shirk argued that in contrast to the Chinese perception, the U.S. has in fact done everything it could to help China’s rise in terms of encouraging economic cooperation and China’s own opening, including working to have China accepted into the World Trade Organization. Nonetheless, the U.S. also plays to a domestic audience with respect to trade and currency issues in particular. These misperceptions mean that domestic politics matter a great deal to how the leaders of both countries react to conflicts and negotiations with the other.
One of the current optimistic aspects of the U.S.-China relationship is that the Taiwan relationship is much smoother than it has been. Taiwan and the mainland have made progress on direct links, and they are negotiating on numerous levels. This makes Taiwan much less important for the moment in the U.S.-China relationship. Despite this positive aspect, world events change quickly. President Obama will need to deal with China on a full plate of challenging issues over his time in office including the financial crisis, climate change, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Tibet.
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| Dr. Mary Bullock and Dr. Susan Shirk | The Audience raised questions for Dr. Shirk. |
Dr. Prime, Dr. Shirk and Dr. Bullock |
Jennifer Duckworth Joins the Center as an Intern
Jennifer Duckworth is a native of Birmingham, Alabama. She received a B.A. from Samford University in Spanish, with a minor in Chinese Language and Culture, and an M.A.E. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in English as a Second Language. She is currently in Atlanta pursuing a Masters of Divinity at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology. Jenny went to China for the first time in 2002 to teach at a summer English camp. She returned in 2004 for an intensive six-week language program at Yang Zhou University, followed by a semester at Hong Kong Baptist University. In 2009, she taught English as a part of the China Christian Council’s summer English program for Chinese pastors and church leaders. Jenny plans to return to China after graduation in 2010.
Dr. Baogang Guo, associate professor of political science at Dalton State College, published two books in November, 2010. Toward Better Governance in China: An Unconventional Pathway for Political Reform (coedited with Dennis Hickey), and Greater China in an Era of Globalization (coedited with Sujian Guo ). Both books are published by Lexington Books, a division of Roman & Littlefield Publisher. The first book deals with the administrative reform in China, and the second one examines the meaning of Chinese globalization and its implication for a greater China and the rest of the world. Both books are part of a book series on Challenges Facing Chinese Political Development.
The Association of Chinese Political Studies will hold an international symposium at Endicott College, located in the historical Boston metro area, between July 30 and August 1, 2010, with a check-in date on Friday, July 30, and checkout date on Sunday August 1. The conference is co-sponsored and hosted by Endicott College, and will be held in conjunction with ACPS’s 23rd annual meeting.
The conference’s theme is “China in search of Sustainable Development, Social Harmony, and Soft Power.” We invite research papers that address issues related to the conference theme as well as other important topics that are appropriate to this conference. Well-researched conference papers will have the opportunity: (1) to be published in Journal of Chinese Political Science (JCPS); (2) and/or to be published in edited books flowing from the conference. For more information or to submit your paper proposals, please contact: bguo@daltonstate.edu.
Professor Haizheng Li has received a grant for the project “Human Capital Measurement and China Human Capital Index Construction.” The funds for this project come from various sources, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China (a NSF counterpart in China).
The preliminary human capital index of China from this project was released in an international symposium held in Beijing, October 9-10, and has been very well received. In this conference, Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, and Professor Dale Jorgenson, both of whom pioneered human capital measurement, delivered keynote speeches. After the conference, OECD Statistics Directorate sent an official recommendation to the National Bureau of Statistics of China for Professor Haizheng Li’s research team to be China’s official participant to the OECD Human Capital Consortium.
The initial working paper from this project has appeared in NBER working paper series, http://papers.nber.org/papers/w15500
The goal of this project is to establish China’s first set of systematic and scientific measurement of human capital, and quantify its distribution and dynamics. It will lead to the construction of human capital indices at the national and provincial levels of the economy. This index system, once established, can be used to support empirical research to identify the role of human capital in economic growth and development, as well as support policy analysis.
This project will be carried on by an international research team, including Professor Barbara Fraumen, who proposed the main stream method in measuring human capital with Professor Dale Jorgenson (the J-F approach). This research represents part of the work from China to join the ongoing international efforts in measuring human capital. It aims for China’s human capital measures to become an important part of the nascent international human capital measurement system, and eventually to be incorporated into the China National Income Accounting system.
Center Director, Penelope Prime, was interviewed by Rob Hassett for Business to Business Magazine (BtoBmagazine.com). Listen to the podcast at here.
