China's Crisis of Success

Tuesday, April 17, 2018
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Bunche Hall 10383

Talk by by William H. Overholt

China's Crisis of Success provides new perspectives on China's rise to superpower status, showing that China has reached a threshold where success has eliminated the conditions that enabled miraculous growth. Continued success requires re-invention of its economy and politics. The old economic strategy based on exports and infrastructure now piles up debt without producing sustainable economic growth, and Chinese society now resists the disruptive change that enabled earlier reforms. While China's leadership has produced a strategy for successful economic transition, it is struggling to manage the politics of implementing that strategy. After analysing the economics of growth, William H. Overholt explores critical social issues of the transition, notably inequality, corruption, environmental degradation, and globalisation.

Dr. William H Overholt is a fellow at the Asia Global Institute and has been a Senior Fellow at Harvard since 2008. 

2018 Wilbur K. Woo Greater China Business Conference：A New Era of Economic Ties and Bilateral Investment for the U.S. and China

Friday, April 20, 2018
11:30 AM - 7:00 PM
UCLA Anderson School of Management

RSVP Required

The General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, presented his report to the 19th Party Congress to outline China’s mid and long-term development goals over the next three decades. Innovation, coordination, greenness, openness, and inclusiveness will be the five guiding principles to ensure the country’s goal of building a “moderately prosperous society” will be achieved by 2020. Meanwhile, the U.S. under President Donald Trump is reevaluating its approach to trade, especially with respect to China, but no major policy shifts appear imminent despite the recognition by the U.S. of the importance of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Threats of protectionism, trade walls, and increased tariffs have thus far failed to blunt the rising trade between the two Pacific powers. New cross-border partnerships are being formed and new opportunities are opening up for trade and investment in a number of key sectors from energy to finance.

The 2018 Wilbur K. Woo Greater China Business Conference will bring together successful U.S. and Chinese leaders, investors and influencers from a variety of industries and sectors who will discuss the importance of innovation, collaboration and new technology, as well as diversification and localization.

Spatial Mobility in the Chinese Bureaucracy：A Model and Empirical Evidence

Thursday, April 19, 2018
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Bunche Hall 10383

Talk by Xueguang Zhou, Stanford University

Spatial mobility among officials has been an important mechanism of political control in China’s governance. We propose a model of stratified mobility across administrative jurisdictions to explain patterns of spatial mobility in the Chinese bureaucracy, and develop related concepts, typologies, and measures for our empirical analyses. We illustrate our theoretical arguments using empirical findings of spatial mobility in a large bureaucracy—local governments in one province of China, from 1990 to 2008. This research contributes to the study of the Chinese bureaucracy by（1）providing baselines for the key empirical patterns of mobility among offices and across administrative levels;（2）developing a set of concepts, categories and related measurements for characterizing social network structures resulting from personnel flow across government offices.

Xueguang Zhou is a professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at Stanford University, where he is also the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Economic Development and a senior fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. 

Persian & Greek Participation in the Making of the First Empire in China

Sunday, April 22, 2018
2:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Fowler Museum at UCLA

Talk by Archaeologist Duan Qingbo, Professor, Northwest University School of Cultural Heritage, Xi'an

RSVP HERE

Terra-cotta warriors, high-profile buildings beneath tomb mounds, and bronze chariots, horses, and water fowl are among the iconic artifacts and images associated with China’s first imperial dynasty, the Qin（221–206 BCE）. Distinguished archaeologist Duan Qingbo, from Northwest University's School of Cultural Heritage in Xi’an, China, shares new research suggesting that the roots of Qin culture may not be solely indigenous Chinese. Evidence now suggests that influences from Persia’s Achaemenid Dynasty（550–330 BCE）and from the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors may have come to China along Central Asian trading networks and impacted the development of the Qin’s material culture and social governance.

The program will begin with a concert of Chinese and Persian music performed by UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology faculty Li Qi（Director, Music of China Ensemble）and Amir Pourjavady（Director, Music of Persia Ensemble）, with an introduction by Professor Helen Rees. Following the program, a hosted reception will be held on the museum’s Barbara and Joseph Goldenberg Terrace.

Reception to follow.