USC U.S.-China Institute Speaker Series (Audio Only)

Worsening Sino-Japan relations centered on the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is more about domestic Chinese politics and international geo-politics than history. A powerful nationalistic China feels it deserves a China-centric Asia, but the US-Japan alliance constitutes a major obstacle. The islands dispute is provides China with leverage to re-orient Japan's security thinking toward the accommodation of Chinese power as well as to sow discord in the US-Japan alliance. David Arase has authored Buying power: the political economy of Japan's foreign aid (1995), edited three books, and published many articles and book chapters on East Asia focusing mainly on Japan. His last book (co-edited with T. Akaha) The US-Japan alliance: balancing soft and hard power in East Asia (Nissan Institute/Routledge, 2010), won the 2011 Ohira Memorial Foundation (in Tokyo, Japan) Special Prize for work advancing the idea of Pacific community. After teaching at Pomona College for 22 years, he took his present position at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center located at Nanjing University to pursue his interest in studying China and its ongoing rise.

"The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win" From the former Financial Times Beijing bureau chief, a balanced and far-seeing analysis of the emerging competition between China and the United States that will dominate twenty-first-century world affairs—an inside account of Beijing's quest for influence and an explanation of how America can come out on top. The structure of global politics is shifting rapidly. After decades of rising, China has entered a new and critical phase where it seeks to turn its economic heft into global power. In this deeply informed book, Geoff Dyer makes a lucid and convincing argument that China and the United States are now embarking on a great power--style competition that will dominate the century. This contest will take place in every arena: from control of the seas, where China's new navy is trying to ease the United States out of Asia and reassert its traditional leadership, to rewriting the rules of the global economy, with attempts to turn the renminbi into the predominant international currency, toppling the dominance of the U.S. dollar. And by investing billions to send its media groups overseas, Beijing hopes to shift the global debate about democracy and individual rights. Eyeing the high ground of international politics, China is taking the first steps in an ambitious global agenda. Yet Dyer explains how China will struggle to unseat the United States. China's new ambitions are provoking intense anxiety, especially in Asia, while America's global influence has deep roots. If Washington can adjust to a world in which it is no longer dominant but still immensely powerful, it can withstand China's challenge. With keen insight based on a deep local knowledge—offering the reader visions of coastal Chinese beauty pageants and secret submarine bases, lockstep Beijing military parades and the neon media screens of Xinhua exported to New York City's Times Square—The Contest of the Century is essential reading at a time of great uncertainty about America's future, a road map for retaining a central role in the world. Geoff Dyer Geoff Dyer has worked for the Financial Times for over a decade in China, Brazil, the UK and now the US. He was the FT's bureau chief in Beijing from 2008 to 2011, following three years working for the paper in Shanghai. He has also been the paper's Brazil bureau chief and covered the healthcare industry, where he wrote extensively about the Aids epidemic in Africa and Asia. He recently took up a position in the Washington DC bureau, writing about American foreign policy. He studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University and at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna and Washington DC, where he was supported by a Fulbright award.

We all know that the U.S. imports over $400 billion dollars of clothing, toys, computers and other manufactured goods from China every year. Less well known is that the U.S.'s biggest export to China is our trash and scrap. Though the distance between your household recycling bin and the Chinese countryside might seem vast, you would be surprised at how quickly your empty yogurt container made that trip last year. This will be an informal, picture guided tour of the Chinese scrap economy, aka a peak at globalization's backside. California's no. 2 export to China in 2012 was "waste & scrap." It was New York and Florida's top export to China. Joshua Goldstein teaches history at the University of Southern California. Among the courses he teaches is the popular general education course "China and the World." Goldstein is the author of Drama Kings: Players and Publics in the Recreation of Peking Opera (2007) and many articles on Beijing Opera as a modern construction. He is also the co-editor (with Madeline Yue Dong) of Everyday Modernity in China (2006). He is currently at work on a study of the history of recycling in China.

As China navigates the murky waters of a “third way” with liberal economic policies under a strict political regime, the surprising battleground for China’s future emerges in the country’s highest rated television network—China Central Television, or CCTV. With 16 internationally broadcast channels and over 1.2 billion viewers, CCTV is a powerhouse in conveying Chinese news and entertainment. The hybrid nature of the network has also transformed it into an unexpected site of discourse in a country that has little official space for negotiation. While CCTV programming is state sponsored—and censored—the popularity and profit of the station are determined by the people. And as the Chinese Communist Party seeks to exert its own voice on domestic and international affairs, the prospect of finding an amenable audience becomes increasingly paramount. Through a series of interviews with a fascinating cast of power players including a director of a special topic program that incited the 1989 student movement, current and past presidents of CCTV, and producers at the frontline of the network’s rapidly evolving role in Chinese culture, celebrated media analyst Ying Zhu unlocks a doorway to political power that has long been shrouded in mystery. About the Author Ying Zhu is a professor of media culture at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. The recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is the author or editor of seven other books, including Television in Post-Reform China and Chinese Cinema During the Era of Reform, and a co-producer of current affairs documentary films, including Google vs. China and China: From Cartier to Confucius. She resides in New York.

President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China held a major meeting in June at Sunnylands, the historic Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage, California. The meeting was hailed as "the most important meeting between an American president and a Chinese leader in 40 years, since Nixon and Mao." However, the meeting also drew widely disparate coverage in the domestic and international press and became the focus of attention in the popular culture in both nations.

Paul Gillis was a partner with Pricewaterhouse Coopers, one of the "big four" accounting firms, for twenty-eight years. He first went to China sixteen years ago to help the company build its business there and subsequently became a professor at Peking University, where he's taught for six years. Gillis edits the widely-read China Accounting Blog and is frequently consulted by the business press. His book on how the Big Four came to dominate the accounting business in China and the push back against that will be published in fall 2013. In this short interview, Gillis discusses the role accounting has played in China’s economic rise. First, China’s leaders in the 1990s, including Zhu Rongji, understood that socialist era accounting approaches borrowed from the Soviet Union didn’t allow those outside a company to understand what was happening inside a company. Accounting approaches from the West were better suited to evaluating efficient resource utilization and other issues. Second, for Chinese firms to be able to raise capital on foreign exchanges, they would need to be audited by recognized firms, the global Big Four. These were sometimes challenging undertakings. Gillis says that the audit of one major firm took millions of hours to complete. Gillis notes that the Big Four accounting firms (PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Deloitte, and KPMG) received licenses to operate in China in the early 1990s. They struggled to find able local hires. Initially, because of the importance of being able to conduct business in English, many of those hired came not from accounting background but from the hospitality industry and from foreign l language departments. Now, however, the English language skills of those in singing programs is such that most new hires have studied accounting or business. Gillis describes his own students as energetic, able, and committed. He notes, though, that experience makes a big difference in managing an audit and that it will take some time before current students and recent graduates have accumulated that experience. Even with strengthened auditing however, investors in many public Chinese firms have taken a beating. Gillis notes that some Chinese firms gained access to American capital via reverse mergers, essentially through the purchase of a defunct American company’s listing. Such companies were not subject to the usually scrutiny required of firms listing on American exchanges. A number of these firms were found to be misrepresenting their activities and finances and some were clearly fraudulent. The value of most Chinese firms listed in the US, as a result, have suffered. Gillis mentions a July 2013 McKinsey report that found the value of Chinese firms listed on US exchanges fell 72% in 2011-2012 and that one firm in five was delisted. Gillis argues that the problems associated with some listed firms has justifiably shaken investor confidence. He says that some audits were flawed due to fraud on the past of the companies, differences in business culture, and mistakes by the auditors. Because of its obligations to try to protect investors from fraud and to promote transparency and accountability, two U. S. Regulatory bodies, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) have sought access to audit records. The firms doing those audits, however, have been forbidden by the Chinese government to turn over those materials to the SEC or PCAOB. As Gillis puts it, the Chinese see foreign investigation of Chinese in China as an infringement on their sovereignty. The Chinese authorities, however, recognize that it is in China's interest to affirm the credibility of Chinese audit regulators and to be seen as cooperating with others in stamping out fraud. So, as Gillis notes, the Chinese have agreed to cooperate with U.S. investigators on a case

Through a series of absorbing portraits of iconic modern Chinese leaders and thinkers, two of today's foremost specialists on China provide a panoramic narrative of the nation's ascent from imperial doormat to global economic powerhouse in Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-First Century (Random House). Author Orville Schell, author of many books, studied Chinese history at Harvard and Berkeley and has written for many publications, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Time, Foreign Affairs,The New York Review of Books, Harper's, and The New York Times. Formerly dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, he is now the Arthur Ross Director of the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations in New York City. Schell is a member of the USC U.S.-China Institute's board of scholars. Discussants Geoffrey Cowan has long been an important force in education, communication, and public policy. Cowan became the first president of The Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands in 2010 and hosted the Xi Jinping/Barack Obama meeting there in June. Previously he was dean of the USC Annenberg School for a decade and headed the Voice of America during the Clinton administration. Cowan also heads the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. His co-authored play Top Secret has twice toured China. Clayton Dube has headed the USC U.S.-China Institute since it was established by USC President C.L. Nikias in 2006. Dube was trained as an economic historian, lived in China for five years and visited dozens of times. Dube's long been committed to informing public discussion about China and about the U.S.-China relationship. He oversees the institute's magazines and documentary efforts and writes the institute's Talking Points newsletter and earlier edited the academic journal Modern China.

Professor Tang has researched institutional analysis and design, common-pool resource governance, economic development, and environmental policy. He also has expertise in organizational commitment and microcredit. He is the author of Institutions and Collective Action: Self-Governance in Irrigation (ICS Press, 1992) and has been published in numerous journals, including Comparative Politics, Economic Development Quarterly, Environment and Planning A, Governance, Human Ecology, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Land Economics, Public Administration Review, The China Quarterly, and World Development. Professor Tang was an associate editor of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. He also serves on the editorial boards of International Public Administration Review and Journal of Public Affairs Education.

Mikkal E. Herberg is Research Director of NBR's Energy Security Program. He is also a senior lecturer on international and Asian energy at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. Previously, Mr. Herberg spent 20 years in the oil industry in Strategic Planning roles for ARCO, where from 1997 to 2000 was Director for Global Energy and Economics, responsible for worldwide energy, economic, and political analysis. He also headed country risk analysis, responsible for advising the executive management on risk conditions and investment strategies in countries and regions where ARCO had major investments. His previous positions with ARCO included Director of Portfolio Risk Management and Director for Emerging Markets. Mikkal Herberg writes and speaks extensively on Asian energy issues to the energy industry, governments, and major research institutions in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, including the U.S., China, and Japan. He is cited frequently in the media, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, South China Morning Post, Asahi Shimbun, Reuters, NIKKEI News, Caijing, and National Public Radio.

Highly renowned international documentary filmmaker, Bregtje van der Haak, of VPRO (Dutch Television), discusses her most recent documentary, "DNA Dreams." This film documents the undertaking of Chinese scientists who are attempting to analyze and potentially clone the DNA of 2,000 highly gifted children. China has been on the forefront of cloning research and technology, and the implications of their projects are far reaching. "DNA Dreams" poses the questions: What if we could identify the gene that contains information about human intelligence? Would a brave new world be waiting for us?

What is the writer's place in China today? What should it be? What responsibilities does a writer have to readers? To the state? To art? To moral principle? China's two recent Nobel Prize winners, Liu Xiaobo for peace, and Mo Yan for literature, offer some contrasting answers. About the Speaker Perry Link is among the top American scholars of Chinese culture. He previously taught at UCLA and Princeton and now holds the Chancellorial Chair for Teaching Across Disciplines at the University of California, Riverside. He publishes on Chinese language, literature, and cultural history, and also writes and speaks on human rights in China. His most recent books are Liu Xiaobo's Empty Chair: Chronicling the Reform Movement Beijing Fears Most (2011), An Anatomy of Chinese: Rhythm, Metaphor, Politics (2012), and the co-edited volume Restless China (2013). He's written, edited, and translated many other works and is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books.

A panel discussion with Janet Yang (producer of Joy Luck Club and Shanghai Calling), Daniel Hsia (writer and director of Shanghai Calling), Bennett Pozil (Executive VP of EastWest Bank), and Chris Fenton (President of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group) on the globalization of Hollywood. Panelists: Janet Yang, Producer Throughout her life, Yang has distinguished herself by serving as a cultural ambassador, whether by bringing the creative and business worlds together, or by bridging East and West. As a film producer, Yang has worked with some of the most formidable directors and actors in the world, as well as discovering unique, often unheard voices and stories, and bringing them into the mainstream. Janet Yang holds a B.A. from Brown University in Chinese sutdies and an M.B.A. from Columbia University. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Ms. Yang has been named one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Hollywood" by the Hollywood Reporter and is frequently named as one of the most prominent Asian-Americans. She has been featured in articles in the The New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Variety, and Harper's Bazaar. Daniel Hsia, Writer and Director Daniel Hsia is a filmmaker and comedy writer who has worked on the television comedies Psych, Andy Barker, P.I., and Four Kings, and has sold original pilot screenplays to Sony Pictures Television, ABC Network, and USA Network. Shanghai Calling is his first feature film. Daniel's interest in the expat world was sparked when a close friend, a young man who had never been abroad, moved to China and began relating to Daniel the hilarious experiences of Americans living there. Convinced there was a compelling story to be told, Daniel spent two months roaming around Shanghai, interviewing locals and foreigners about their lives and absorbing every detail the city had to offer. Midway through Daniel's trip, the story for Shanghai Calling was born. Daniel is an alumnus of Stanford University and USC's Graduate Program in Film Production. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Mary, and dog, Jetpack. Bennett Pozil, Executive Vice President, East West Bank. Mr. Pozil has been a Banker for over 20 years and currently serves as an Executive Vice President at East West Bank where he manages the Bank's International Banking Group, Large Corporate Leveraged Finance, Syndications and Specialized Lending. As part of his role, Mr. Pozil oversees the development of the Bank's Entertainment Lending sector in the United States as well as China. Prior to joining East West Bank, Mr. Pozil served for 11 years as the Managing Director of the Los Angeles office for Natixis, the French Banking Concern. At Natixis, Mr. Pozil structured the financing of over one hundred motion pictures including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. Mr. Pozil is active in the Los Angeles community, serving on the Boards of the Music Center of Los Angeles and the Asia Society's Southern California Chapter. Chris Fenton, President, DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group Chris Fenton is the President of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group and General Manager of DMG North America. He worked as a motion picture agent at the William Morris Agency from 1994 to 2002. Since then, he has been the chief architect in creating new business opportunities for DMG with North American based partners, and, most recently, has concentrated his efforts in forming partnerships with various Hollywood studios for the development, production, marketing, and distribution of various forms of international content in China.

Citizens of nations across the globe cannot help but notice the spectacular growth of the Chinese economy in recent years. This country, the famous "workshop of the world," appears on the front page of major newspapers on a daily basis. But, while many have focused on China's politics, economic development, and social changes, few have considered how much influence China has in regional and international affairs. Is China trying to establish itself a global power, a challenger to the United States as a global leader? In his book, CHINA GOES GLOBAL: The Partial Power (Oxford | February 14, 2013), David Shambaugh—a leading expert in Chinese studies with more than three decades of experience in China-watching—offers a comprehensive account of China's prominence in the global arena. Assessing China's activities all across the world and along six different dimensions—perceptual, diplomatic, global governance, economic, cultural, and strategic—Shambaugh argues that China lacks influence in most international domains and is not the kind of challenge to global order and the United States that many argue it is. Shambaugh traces China's development over the past thirty years, when its role in global affairs was relatively minor and mostly limited to East Asia. Drawing on his vast knowledge of the country, Shambaugh shows how China's growing economic power has given the nation access to other industries, ranging from mineral mines in Africa, to currency markets in the West, to oilfields in the Middle East, to agribusiness in Latin America, to the factories of East Asia. And, he demonstrates China's ambition by pointing to its growing military power and presence in diplomatic affairs, as well as its increasing cultural influence and the large role it plays in commercialism across the world. In spite of its astronomic growth, however, Shambaugh argues that China's influence is still more broad than deep and that it lacks the influence attributed to a major world power. Instead, it is a "partial power." Topics for discussion include: • China's role as a global diplomatic actor • China's behavior in the UN Security Council and other international organizations • China's contributions (or lack thereof) to global governance • China's energy consumption and environmental impact • China's military development • China's outbound direct investment and multinational corporations • China's attempts to accrue "soft power" • China's challenge to the United States in Asian and world affairs • China as a rising power

James Baker served as President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State from 1989 until 1992 - a period of tumultuous change around the world, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, the first Gulf War, and the Tiananmen Square crisis in China. In an interview with USCI's Mike Chinoy, Baker spoke about the current challenges facing the U.S.-China relationship.

As unprecedented waves of young, rural women journey to cities in China, not only to work, but also to "see the world"and gain some autonomy, they regularly face significant institutional obstacles as well as deep-seated anti-rural prejudices. Based on immersive fieldwork, Cara Wallis provides an intimate portrait of the social, cultural, and economic implications of mobile communication for a group of young women engaged in unskilled service work in Beijing, where they live and work for indefinite periods of time. While simultaneously situating her work within the fields of feminist studies, technology studies, and communication theory, Wallis explores the way in which the cell phone has been integrated into the transforming social structures and practices of contemporary China, and the ways in which mobile technology enables rural young women—a population that has been traditionally marginalized and deemed as "backward" and "other"—to participate in and create culture, allowing them to perform a modern, rural-urban identity. In this theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis,Wallis provides original insight into the co-construction of technology and subjectivity as well as the multiple forces that shape contemporary China. Cara Wallis studies new media technologies as these relate to myriad axes of identity, modes of sociality, and forms of individual and collective agency, particularly among marginalized youth and migrant populations. Her work is informed by critical/cultural studies, feminist theory, and theories of the social shaping of technology. She has expertise in China and conducts much of her research there. In addition to new media, she also studies popular culture in the U.S. and in China. She is currently working on a book manuscript based on her fieldwork that examined the use of new media, especially mobile phones, by young rural-to-urban migrant women working in the low-level service sector in Beijing.

Across the globe, China is more engaged than ever before. We see this in trade and investment, security and anti-piracy patrols, cultural and educational exchanges, participation in international organizations, and much more. For a discussion of China's foreign policy objectives and the current state of its relations with North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe USCI hosted three of the country's most experienced diplomats, Ambassadors Lu Fengding, Mei Ping, and Zhou Gang. Lu Fengding Ambassador Lu is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) as well as a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Foreign Ministry of China. He served as ambassador to Nigeria from 1995 to 1999 and as ambassador to Sweden from 2004 to 2008. 吕大使 1946年生于安徽省。1965年在北京外国语学院学习进修。1973年至1991年先后在外交部翻译室、驻冈比亚使馆、外交部美大司、驻澳大利亚使馆、 驻密克罗西亚使馆、驻澳大利亚使馆工作。1995年至1999年任驻尼日利亚大使。1999年至2004年任中央外事领导小组办公室副主任。2004年至 2007年任驻瑞典大使。现任第十一届全国政协委员。2008年10月任外交部外交政策咨询委员会委员。 Mei Ping Ambassador Mei serves as a member of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Foreign Ministry of China. He was appointed as the ambassador to Turkey in 1989 and served in the post until 1992. From 1993 to 1995, Ambassador Mei served as the Chinese Consul General in San Francisco and then in the same position in New York immediately after. In 1996, he became the Director General of the Department of American Affairs and stayed in that post for two years. More recently, Mei served as the Chinese Ambassador to Canada from 1998 to 2005. 梅大使 1943年生于上海市。1965年进 入外交部工作。1982年至1989年先后任外交学院英语系主任、第一副院长。1989年至1996年历任驻马耳他大使、驻旧金山总领事、驻纽约总领事。 1996年至1998年任外交部美大司司长。1998年至2005年任驻加拿大大使。2003年至2008年任全国政协外事委员会委员。现任中国太平洋经 济合作全国委员会会长。2008年10月任外交部外交政策咨询委员会委员. Zhou Gang Ambassador Zhou is a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Foreign Ministry of China. He served as the ambassador to Malaysia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and India, starting in 1988 through 2001. In addition, Ambassador Zhou was the Deputy Director General of the Department of Asian Affairs. 周大使 1937年生于江苏省。1961年毕 业于莫斯科国际关系学院，1962年进入外交部，先后在外交部亚洲司、驻印度使馆、孟加拉国使馆工作。1988年至2001年历任驻马来西亚、巴基斯坦、 印度尼西亚、印度大使。现任中国-印度名人论坛秘书长、中国国际问题研究基金会成员、中国国际战略学会高级顾问、中国国际问题研究所特约研究员、中国前外 交官联谊会理事、中国亚非发展交流协会顾问、中国-印度友好协会理事、中国人民外交学会理事、中国改革开放论坛理事。2008年10月任外交部外交政策咨 询委员会委员。

Born in Toronto, Canada, Ryan Pyle spent his early years close to home. After obtaining a degree in International Politics from the University of Toronto in 2001, Ryan realized a life long dream and traveled to China on an exploratory mission. In 2002 Ryan moved to China permanently and in 2003 began taking freelance newspaper and magazine assignments. In 2004 Ryan became a regular contributor to the New York Times. In 2009 Ryan was listed by PDN Magazine as one of the top 30 emerging photographers in the world. In 2010 Ryan, with his brother Colin, produced and directed a documentary film about their 65 day -- 18,000km - Guinness World Record breaking motorcycle journey around China, which will air in summer 2012. Ryan Pyle is an award winning photographer, television presenter, filmmaker and author. Ryan is based full time in Shanghai, China.

Covering an historic arc that reaches from the Cultural Revolution to the 2008 Olympic Games, Alison Friedman looks at how China is searching for a new globalized contemporary identity through music, dance and theater. Examples of artists navigating this search include world-famous classical musicians like Lang Lang and Tan Dun as well as less well-known underground 'Chinese indie' musicians such as Xiao He and the performing artist collective ZuHe Niao. Ms. Friedman also addresses how performing artists are combining traditional Chinese forms with new influences from the west -- or not! -- as well as the role of international partners in the field, including festivals, collaborators, funding bodies, and Embassies, and how the international community is affecting China's contemporary performing arts scene, for better or worse (in sickness and in health....) Alison M. Friedman is the founding director of Ping Pong Productions, a producing and consulting organization headquartered in Beijing with the mission of cultural diplomacy. Clients include TAO Dance Theater, Mark Morris Dance Group, the U.S Embassy in China, the British Council, Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, and Los Angeles Theatre Works. As director of Ping Pong Productions, Ms. Friedman works closely with Chinese and international governments and arts organizations to facilitate collaborations, tours, and lasting artistic relationships. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese and political negotiations, Ms. Friedman has worked in the performing arts in China for more than a decade. She served as international director of the Beijing Modern Dance Company, general manager of Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun's company Parnassus Productions, Inc., and as a producer and host on Chinese national radio and television programs. Ms. Friedman graduated Phi Beta Kappa/magna cum laude from Brown University with a degree in Chinese Literature/Literary Translation. She was a Fulbright fellow to China, an arts management fellow at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., and a fellow of the International Society for the Performing Arts. An expert in China's developing arts market, Ms. Friedman lectures internationally in both English and Mandarin Chinese, including keynotes at the National Committee on US-China Relations, Asia Society, Brown University, People's University of China, China International Performing Arts Fair Guangzhou, Fulbright Association 31st Annual Conference, and Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. She has contributed articles and chapters to journals and collections published in the United States, China, and Europe. Ms. Friedman has been cited as an expert on Chinese performing arts by the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and China Daily.

Shanghai Calling was screened at the USC Ray Stark Family Theatre on February 8, 2013, followed by a discussion with producer Janet Yang. Synopsis Shanghai Calling is a romantic comedy about modern-day American immigrants in an unfamiliar land. When an ambitious New York attorney is sent to Shanghai on assignment, he immediately stumbles into a legal mess that could spell the end of his career. But with help from a beautiful relocation specialist, a well-connected foreign businessman, a clever but unassuming journalist, and a street-smart assistant, Sam might just save his job, discover romance, and learn to appreciate the many wonders Shanghai has to offer. Janet Yang, Producer Janet Yang is a prodigious Hollywood producer who has a long, deep relationship with China. Yang began her career in Hollywood when she represented Universal, Paramount, and MGM/UA in brokering the first sale of American studio movies to China since 1949. Yang has been named one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Hollywood" by The Hollywood Reporter, and has been featured in articles in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Variety. She has appeared on numerous TV and Radio shows throughout the US and China, including CCTV and Beijing TV. Yang's previous productions include: Carl Franklin's High Crimes, a military courtroom thriller starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman (20th Century Fox); The Weight of Water, directed by Academy Award-winner Kathryn Bigelow and starring Academy Award-winner Sean Penn (Lion's Gate Films); and Zero Effect, a cult classic starring Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller. Yang executive produced and is a recipient of both the Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for Best Made for Television Movie for the HBO movie Indictment: The McMartin Trial. Yang was also executive producer of the groundbreaking film directed by Wayne Wang, The Joy Luck Club, based on the best-selling novel by Amy Tan and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. From 1989 to 1996, Yang served as president of Ixtlan, the company she formed with Academy Award-winning writer/director Oliver Stone. At Ixtlan, she produced The People vs. Larry Flynt, which won the 1996 Golden Globe Awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and garnered Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Actor. Janet Yang holds a B.A. from Brown University in Chinese studies and an M.B.A. from Columbia University. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a member of the Committee of 100, and an advisory board member of Asia Society Southern California.

China is one of the lenses WuDunn and Kristof use to highlight issues affecting women and girls in their book, Half the Sky. Issues that Chinese women face include a lack of investment in education in poor rural areas, gender imbalance due to forced or sex-selective abortions, and discrimination in the workplace. Yet the authors also use China to illustrate the vast improvements that have been made for women over time and their consequent effects. The knowledge that Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof gained about the status of women and girls during their time living in China as journalists helped to solidify the urgent need to change perceptions about gender globally. The authors write: "China has traditionally been one of the more repressive and smothering places for girls, and we could see hints of this in Sheryl's own family history." When Sheryl's grandfather's first wife could not bear sons, he married another wife who could, forgetting about the family who came before Sheryl's own. While Chinese women do still face discrimination and more traditional views about women overall, the authors acknowledge that China offers maternity benefits, Chinese men are beginning to do more household work, and Chinese women are often leading decision-making in the home. Even more importantly, the authors show that the "emancipation" of women has allowed for China's tremendous growth. In fact, according to the book, 80 percent of the workers in China's coastal factories are female. They also write about a young girl in rural China who could not afford her $13 school fee. After mobilizing donors from their news articles, the school could now offer scholarships to keep girls in school. The young girl was able to stay in school and now is an entrepreneur. By illuminating changes in China, WuDunn and Kristof are able to thread together their main argument that investing in and caring about women and girls worldwide, aside from a very credible moral case, has exponential benefits.

For many years, China's government organizations led the effort to bring about a "reverse brain drain." However, while 400,000 students have returned, the top 20% of its expatriate talent has remained abroad. To resolve this problem, in 2002-2003, the Organization Department of the CCP expanded its portfolio from "managing cadres" to managing "talent." Yet, these early efforts did not "bring back the best." However, since 2008, largely under the leadership of Li Yuanchao, director of the Organization Department, and through a new "1000 Talents Plan", the CCP has become far more active in mobilizing central ministries, local governments, and overseas efforts to bring back China's best. While these efforts have met with some success, the program has met with some difficulties leading most of the very talented to opt for short-term stays rather than make a full commitment to moving back to China. David Zweig, a member of the USCI board of scholars, is also Chair Professor of the Division of Social Science as well as the Director of the Center on Environment, Energy and Resource Policy and Associate Dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences. He is an Adjunct Professor, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan, and the former president of the Hong Kong Political Science Association. In 1984-85, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. His Ph.D. is from The University of Michigan (Political Science, 1983). He is the author of four books, including Internationalizing China: domestic interests and global linkages (Cornell Univ. Press, 2002), which will be out in a Chinese edition from Renmin University Press in April 2012. He has also edited five books in both English and Chinese and several special issues of academic journals. He is currently editing a book on US-China energy competition in third countries and writing books on Mainlanders who studied overseas and returned to China and on Hongkongers who lived in the Mainland.

During the early communist period of the 1950s, temple fairs in China were both suppressed and secularized. Temples were closed down by the secular regime and their activities classified as feudal superstition and this process only intensified during the Cultural Revolution when even the surviving secular fairs, devoted exclusively to trade with no religious content of any kind, were suppressed. However, once China embarked on its path of free market reform and openness, secular commodity exchange fairs were again authorized, and sometimes encouraged in the name of political economy as a means of stimulating rural commodity circulation and commerce. This book reveals how once these secular "temple-less temple fairs" were in place, they came to serve not only as venues for the proliferation of a great variety of popular cultural performance genres, but also as sites where a revival or recycling of popular religious symbols, already underway in many parts of China, found familiar and fertile ground in which to spread. Taking this shift in the Chinese state's attitudes and policy towards temple fairs as its starting point, The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China shows how state-led economic reforms in the early 1980s created a revival in secular commodity exchange fairs, which were granted both the geographic and metaphoric space to function. In turn, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the temple fair phenomenon, examining its economic, popular cultural, popular religious and political dimensions and demonstrates the multifaceted significance of the fairs which have played a crucial role in expanding the boundaries of contemporary acceptable popular discourse and expression. Eugene Cooper earned his Ph. D. in Anthropology and East Asian Studies at Columbia University in 1976. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh and Hong Kong University before arriving at USC in 1980. He has consulted with business, industry and the legal profession, on Chinese rural industrial production, the import/export sector, and Chinese habit and custom. He now teaches Anthropology at the USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

An artist paints landscapes of faraway places that she cannot identify in order to find her place in the global economy. A migrant worker sorts recyclables and thinks deeply about the soul of his country, while a Taoist mystic struggles to keep his traditions alive. An entrepreneur capitalizes on a growing car culture by trying to convince people not to buy cars. And a 90-year-old woman remembers how the oldest neighborhoods of her city used to be. These are the exciting and saddening, humorous and confusing stories of utterly ordinary people who are living through China's extraordinary transformations. The immense variety in the lives of these Chinese characters hints at China's great diversity. Chinese Characters is a collection of portraits by some of the top people working on China today. Contributors include a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a Macarthur Fellow, the China correspondent for a major Indian newspaper, and scholars. Their depth of understanding is matched only by the humanity with which they treat their subjects. Their stories together create a multi-faceted portrait of a country in motion. This volume contains some of the best writing on China today. Contributors include: Alec Ash, James Carter, Leslie T. Chang, Xujun Eberlein, Harriet Evans, Anna Greenspan, Peter Hessler, Ian Johnson, Ananth Krishnan, Christina Larson, Michelle Dammon Loyalka, James Millward, Evan Osnos, Jeffrey Prescott, Megan Shank, with cover photos by Howard French. -- Angilee Shah is a freelance journalist and editor in Los Angeles. She has reported from across Asia, including China, Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, and was a South Asian Journalists Association Reporting Fellow in 2007-8. She is a former editor of the online magazine AsiaMedia and a consulting editor to the Journal of Asian Studies. Her writing has appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Mother Jones Online, Pacific Standard, the LA Weekly, TimeOut Singapore, and Global Voices. She is the co-editor of Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land (UC Press, 2012). Jeffrey Wasserstrom is the author of four books on China and the editor or co-editor of several more, including most recently Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land, which contains chapters by both fellow academics and such acclaimed journalists as Peter Hessler, Leslie T. Chang, Evan Osnos, and Ian Johnson. Wasserstrom is a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine and the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. He is also the Asia editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, an Associate Fellow of the Asia Society, and a co-founder of the "China Beat" blog. James Carter is Professor of History at Saint Joseph's University. He has lived and traveled widely in China, is the author of a history of Harbin and of Heart of China, Heart of Buddha: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth Century Monk (Oxford 2010), and is the editor of the journal Twentieth-Century China. He is a past president of the Historical Society for 20th-Century China and a Public Intellectuals Program fellow of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs is the top Asia hand in the Obama administration. He is one of the architects of the "Pivot", the administration's effort to move the center of gravity of American foreign policy to the Asia-Pacific. He has been a key interlocutor with China at a time of increasingly strained relations between Washington and Beijing, and has also been deeply involved in efforts to address mounting regional tensions, most notably in the East China Sea and South China Sea, fueled by nationalistic passions in China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. He sat down with USC U.S.-China Institute Senior Fellow Mike Chinoy to discuss U.S. policy and the current situation in Asia.

Jiang Qing 江青 (1914-1991) worked as an actress, traveled to the communist base area in Yan'an, married Mao Zedong, suffered an odd isolation, but rose to prominence during China's cultural revolution. In 1976, Jiang was arrested by her husband's successors and, after a 1980 televised show trial, was sentenced to death -- with a two year reprieve. Her sentence was commuted to life and she was eventually placed under house arrest. Suffering from cancer, Jiang took her own life. Cecile Tang, considered one of the greatest Chinese language film directors of all time, began researching Jiang Qing's story in the 1970s. She ultimately decided that this remarkable story might best be told through a musical. She wrote the play, the lyrics, and recruited others to help with music and choreography. I, Ching opens in the Los Angeles area on September 14, 2012. On September 6, 2012, the USC U.S.-China Institute, hosted a panel discussion of I, CHING. Playwright Cecile Tang, composer Lowell Lo, and lead actress Marsha Yuan engaged the audience in a candid discussion of their experience creating the play and preparing it for its American premiere. Panelists: Cecile Tang (唐書璇), playwright, was born in China and graduated from USC. Among her films are The Arch (董夫人, 1970) and China Behind (再见中国，1974). Ms. Tang left filmmaking and emigrated to the United States in 1979, becoming a respected restaurateur in Los Angeles. Many critics, however, see her influence in the so-called Hong Kong New Wave of edgy, groundbreaking young filmmakers in the late '70s and early '80s. Lowell Lo is a songwriter, singer, music producer, actor and environmentalist. Born in Hong Kong, Lo was educated in the USA and has written over 800 songs and music for more than 100 movies. He's won numerous awards in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Marsha Yuan, actress, plays Jiang Ching (Jiang Qing 江青). Marsha studied musical theater at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy (AMDA) in New York City. Over the past 12 years she has established a career as an actress as well as a singer/dancer in Hong Kong.

Sidney Rittenberg arrived in China as a GI interpreter at the end of World War II. Discharged there, he joined the Chinese Communist Party, and was an active participant in the Chinese communist revolution and its aftermath. An intimate of the Party's leadership, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, he gained prominence at the Broadcast Administration, one of the most important agencies of government. But in the convulsions of a giant country constantly reinventing itself, he twice ran afoul of the leadership, and served a total of 16 years in solitary confinement. He returned to the United States in 1980. Rittenberg’s story would be just a footnote to history, except for his exceptional intellect, uncompromising honesty, and engaging personality. Over a five-year period, award-winning former-CBS journalist and China specialist, Irv Drasnin, interviewed Rittenberg to produce a compelling, complex and unique understanding of the 20th century's biggest revolution. From Sid first meeting Mao in the caves of Yan’an, to his becoming famous and powerful during the Cultural Revolution, to his battling insanity in solitary, his journey and his profound insight illuminate a much greater history—a history few Chinese are aware of, let alone many Americans, told by an American who was there.

China's economic rise is one of the most dramatic and complex stories of our time. Reporting on the rapid and sweeping changes underway in there and what those changes mean for the Chinese and everybody else is a great challenge. One reporter who does this consistently well is Marketplace's Rob Schmitz. He's helped us understand a wide range of stories from currency debates and stimulus spending to inflation worries and how families seek to prepare their children to compete in the global economy. In March he generated a lot of discussion by reporting that a widely heard and discussed report about conditions at FoxConn factories turning out Apple and other products had been fabricated. His report led to an unprecedented retraction of Mike Daisey's story by This American Life. Schmitz joined Marketplace in 2010. Prior to that, he was the Los Angeles bureau chief for KQED's The California Report. He's also reported for KPCC (89.3), and as a reporter for Minnespota Public Radio. Prior to his radio career, Schmitz lived and worked in China; first as a teacher in the Peace Corps, then as a freelance print and video journalist.

Housing reform has been at the core of China's market economy and its success. Large scale demolition and relocation in urban China has visibly improved the lives of millions but also left hidden human wreckage at its wake. Domicide, violence, corruption, and arbitrary compensation have led to heightened housing dispute and persistent residents protest throughout Chinese cities in the past three decades. Exploring what else was demolished along with old neighborhoods and what else, other than highrises, has risen at their ruins, this project examines urban protesters and their evolving identities. At once victimized and empowered by the struggle, these resident protesters have collected and produced an impressive body of material to document their own experience in resisting demolition and pursuing justice. Their activities have helped reshape the political landscape from ground up. Based largely on oral history and with images from years of field research in China, the presentation addresses some of the key issues in the field of contemporary China studies, such as whether today's protesters are "rights conscious" or "rule conscious."The study is part of Qin Shao's forthcoming book, Shanghai Gone: Demolition and Defiance in a Chinese Megacity. Qin Shao is professor of history at The College of New Jersey and a visiting scholar at USC and visiting faculty member at UCLA. She has published on ancient Chinese statecraft, China's early urbanization effort, and the post-Mao reform in international journals and is the author of Culturing Modernity: the Nantong Model, 1890-1930. Qin Shao's research has been awarded various fellowships, including those from the Humboldt University in Berlin, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has presented her work at the Harvard Law School and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, among other institutes.

China's unprecedented level of growth over the past three decades, combined with a financial crisis in the West, have led many to question whether free-market capitalism is the better system for generating sustainable economic growth. Not only have some of China's political leaders already declared victory, but many Western observers have begun to question whether the Chinese may not have discovered a magic formula for combining free markets with state control. Are the Chinese breaking the rules of capitalism, or are they re-writing them? G.E. Anderson's in-depth look at industrial development in China's auto industry reveals not only how China surpassed the U.S. to become the world's largest market for autos, but also political principles that have shaped China's approach to industrial planning in general. The picture that emerges is of a central government certain of what it wants, but willing to break its own rules to achieve higher level goals. It also reveals the inherent weaknesses in China's state-centric system that may prevent it from becoming the innovator and industrial power it aspires to become. -- Author and consultant, G.E. Anderson (Ph.D., UCLA, 2011) has been either living in or frequently traveling to China for nearly two decades. Through his consulting practice, Pacific Rim Advisors, he provides advice in political risk mitigation, business-government relations and business strategy. In his earlier career he held various positions in finance from commercial lending analyst to CFO, more recently serving as Finance Director for Charles Schwab's Tokyo-based joint venture. He also taught at university in Chengdu, Sichuan. Anderson's writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, HSBC's Week in China, Forbes China Tracker, and his blog, ChinaBizGov. His book, Designated Drivers: How China Plans to Dominate the Global Auto Industry will be published by Wiley & Sons in spring 2012.

Upon his election in 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou dispatched Jason Yuan to represent Taiwan in Washington, D.C. Ma has just been reelected and in many respects Taiwan's relations with both the United States and China are stable and healthy. But problems remain, including Taiwan's desire for more advanced weaponry and America's reluctance to provide it. China's leaders appear pleased with greatly expanded economic ties, but have not been willing to allow Taiwan to gain official or unofficial standing in most international bodies. At the same time, official delegations from China have resumed visits to Taiwan. These were stopped in the months leading up to the January election. Beijing Mayor Guo Jinlong's visit last week signals that economic and cultural discussions have resumed. Jason Yuan is one of Taiwan's most senior diplomats. Before becoming the chief representative at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, Yuan headed the North American Affairs Department at Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1991-1994), served as Taiwan's chief representative to Canada (1994-1996), as ambassador to Panama (1996-1998), and as director general of the Taipei Economi and Cultural Office (TECO) in Los Angeles (1998-2003). He also headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs NGO International Affairs Office from 2003 to 2008. Ambassador Yuan earned his undergraduate degree at the Chinese Naval Academy at Tsoying and later earned a master's degree at Southeastern University in the United States.

Bored with language study but fascinated by Chinese politics, in 1967 Richard Baum "borrows" a set of secret Chinese Communist Party documents that Taiwan intelligence had somehow brought to Taipei. These materials revealed the fierce struggle waged between 1962 and 1965 over the direction of the party-state's Socialist Education campaign. Through the documents, Baum shows how Mao Zedong was pushing for a focus on class struggle, while his opponents, namely Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, were trying to keep the movement focused on rooting out official corruption. Working with another graduate student, Frederick Teiwes, Baum documented the ideological purity/effective performance battle at the center of the CCP that had eventually caused Mao to launch the Cultural Revolution in 1966. This is just one of the stories that distinguished political scientist Baum shared in an engaging presentation at USC on April 1, 2010. Discussing his just published, China Watcher: Confessions of a Peking Tom, Baum also detailed a three-decade long rivalry with Michel Oksenberg which included a pointed limerick and a verbal brawl at the profession's annual conference. The scholar also sweated through a Marine inspection of his luggage and inadvertently leaked information about the president's 1989 plan to meet China's leading dissident.

Christina Chen examines how China's government has responded to workers' demands for higher wages and better working conditions. Increased tensions have caused the government to empower the previously feeble official trade union to become more active promoter of workers' interests. At the local level, the empowered labor unions act as fire-alarms by inducing labor bureaucracies to increase their enforcement efforts with respect to labor laws and regulation. This is one method by which the authoritarian government seeks to maintain power. Chen's work is informed by provincial-level data from the 1990s to today as well as interviews with officials in a number of locations.

Derek Liu examines what drives the provision of social welfare in China. He argues that the central authorities are able to use promotion as a mechanism to shape policy at the local level despite decentralization. Ambitious provincial officials—those who seek to advance their careers to the top levels—comply with central government mandates and increase social spending in order to impress Beijing and increase their chances for promotion. Officials who are more interested in provincial or municipal careers, however, prefer to spend money on economic projects tied to their business partners. Liu's presentation draws on novel data sources, including expenditures on "dining and entertaining," as well as more than one hundred interviews with officials. Liu's work is based on fourteen months in the field.

Ezra Vogel has published hugely influential books on both China and Japan. In his latest, he examines the key role played by Deng Xiaoping in moving China away from a thoroughly planned economy, a transition that required becoming much more open and engaged with the rest of the world. In his Nov. 9, 2011 presentation at the USC U.S.-China Institute, Vogel focused on how Deng's foreign policies were very much driven by his assessment of the desperate need China had for better trained personnel, foreign capital, and foreign technology. Distinguished Harvard sociologist Ezra Vogel offers his assessment of Deng's leadership. J. Stapleton Roy, former ambassador to China, wrote of Vogel's book, "Deng Xiaoping's skill, vision, and courage in overcoming seemingly insuperable obstacles and guiding China onto the path of sustained economic development rank him with the great leaders of history. And yet, too little is known about the life and career of this extraordinary man. In this superbly researched and highly readable biography, Vogel has definitively filled this void. This fascinating book provides a host of insights into the factors that enabled Deng to triumph over repeated setbacks and lay the basis for China to regain the wealth and power that has eluded it for two centuries." Ezra Vogel is professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard University where he taught 1964-2000. He is one of the most influential scholars of East Asia, contributing vital books on China and Japan. His China-focused titles include Canton Under Communism (1969) and One Step Ahead in China: Guangdong Under Reform (1989). His books on Japan include Japan's New Middle Class (1963), Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (1979), and Is Japan Still Number One? (2000). In addition to these seminal works, Vogel has edited a number of others, including Living with China : U.S./China Relations in the Twenty-First Century (1997). Professor Vogel is a member of the USC US-China Institute Board of Scholars. The event was co-sponsored by The Pacific Council on International Policy.

Is isolated and reclusive North Korea tinkering with Chinese-style economic reform? In the hope of reviving a shattered economy, Beijing has been pressing North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to do so for years. Now, there are some intriguing signs that Kim just might be listening. U.S.-China Institute Senior Fellow Mike Chinoy has just completed his fifteenth visit to North Korea. He began his talk by noting that conventional thinking of North Korea consists of the "five Ms": misery, malnutrition, missiles, mania, menace. During his recent visit, however, Chinoy observed "five new Ms": money, mobiles, markets, motorcars, middle class. For a quarter century, Chinoy reported from Asia for CNN. He's the author of China Live: People Power and the Television Revolution and Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis. At the USC U.S.-China Institute, he's worked on our documentaries, including the just released first segment of Assignment: China.

Shelley Rigger will discuss her new book Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011). Rigger explains how Taiwan exercises a role in the world far greater than its tiny size would indicate. The work highlights and political breakthroughs so impressive they have been called "miracles." Rigger links these accomplishments to Taiwan's determined society, vibrant culture, and unique history. Drawing on arts, economics, politics, and international relations, Rigger explores Taiwan's importance to China, the United States, and the world. Considering where Taiwan may be headed in its wary standoff with China, she traces how the focus of Taiwan's domestic politics has shifted to a Taiwan-centered strategy. Shelley Rigger is Brown Professor of Political Science at Davidson College in North Carolina. She's taught there since 1993. Rigger is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard and is one of the foremost experts on Taiwan. She's the author of Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy (1999) and From Opposition to Power: Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (2001), as well as monographs such as Taiwan's Rising Rationalism: Generations, Politics and 'Taiwanese Nationalism (2006) and many articles.

The rise of China presents a long-term challenge to the world not only economically, but also politically and culturally. Callahan will argue that we need to employ new Chinese sources and innovative analysis to see how Chinese people understand their new place in the world. The heart of Chinese foreign policy is not a security dilemma, but an identity dilemma where Chinese identity emerges through the interplay of positive and negative feelings: China thus is the pessoptimist nation. This positive/negative dynamic intertwines China's domestic and international politics because national security is closely linked to nationalist insecurities. This interactive view of China's pessoptimist identity politics means that academics and policy-makers need to rethink the role of the state and public opinion in Beijing's foreign policy-making. Callahan will also talk about his current research project that examines what China's popular futurologists think about the U.S. and the wider world, and what this means for U.S. policy toward China. William A. Callahan is Chair Professor of International Politics and China Studies at the University of Manchester, and Co-Director of the British Inter-University China Centre, Oxford University. His recent book, China: The Pessoptimist Nation (Oxford, 2010), examines the relation of identity and security in China's economic, political and cultural challenge to the world. In 2010/11 he holds a Leverhulme Research Fellowship to explore how Chinese opinion-makers and policy-makers talk about China's future and the world's future. More generally, Callahan's research explores the interplay between ideas and policy, and the dynamic relationship of culture and politics. His co-edited book, China Orders the World: Normative Soft Power and Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins), which includes chapters from Chinese and Western experts, is out this Autumn.

Yi Feng is provost and vice president for academic affairs at Claremont Graduate University. He teaches international political economy, world politics, and methodology. His research has focused on political and economic development. His China-focused publications address financial markets, labor markets, economic growth, foreign direct investment, and trade policy. His books include Democracy, Governance, and Economic Performance: Theory and Evidence and Social Security and Economic Development: Lessons For and From China.

For ten years, Robert Kapp was president of the U.S.-China Business Council, the preeminent organization of companies involved in U.S.-China investment and trade. Since 2004, he's been principal of Robert A. Kapp and Associates, a business consulting firm. Prior to assuming the Council presidency, Dr. Kapp taught Chinese history at Rice University and the University of Washington and served as editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. From 1979 to 1994, he headed two organizations, the Washington State China Relations Council and the Washington Council on International Trade. He's frequently testified before Congress and is the author of numerous newspaper and magazine articles.

Professor James T.H. Tang is Dean and Professor of Political Science, School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University (SMU). He is a specialist in international relations with special reference to China/Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region. Prior to joining SMU he was Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). A graduate of HKU, he obtained his M.Phil in International Relations at Cambridge University, and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Professor Tang began his academic career at the National University of Singapore in 1988 where he had his first full-time academic appointment. He joined HKU in 1991 and served as Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration (1999-2002), Dean of Social Sciences (2002-2006), and founding director of the Master of International and Public Affairs program. Professor Tang also held visiting appointments at leading universities in China, the UK, and the US and was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. (2005-06). Professor Tang has published extensively in his field and serves on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals including Asian Politics and Policy, Journal of East Asian Studies, Pacific Review, Political Science and International Affairs of the Asia-Pacific. He is currently working on a project about the implications of the rise of China for international relations theory and regional governance in East Asia.

Dr. Kevin P. Gallagher is an associate professor of international relations at Boston University, where he directs the Global Development Policy Program. He is also senior researcher at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University. Professor Gallagher is the author of The Dragon in the Room: China and the Future of Latin American Industrialization, with Roberto Porzecanski (Stanford University Press, 2010); The Enclave Economy: Foreign Investment and Sustainable Development in Mexico's Silicon Valley, with Lyuba Zarsky (MIT Press, 2007); Free Trade and the Environment: Mexico, NAFTA, and Beyond (Stanford University Press, 2004); and editor of Putting Development First: The Importance of Policy Space in the WTO and IFIs (Zed Books, 2005). He has served as visiting or adjunct professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government; El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico, and Tsinghua University in China. He currently serves on the investment subcommittee of the US Department of State's of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, and the US Environmental Protection Agency's National Advisory Committee for Mexico. Professor Gallagher writes regular columns on global economic and development policy for The Guardian, Financial Times, and POLITICO.

Enrique Dussel Peters, Director, Institute for China-Mexico Studies, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) Enrique received his B.A. and M.A. in Political Science at the Free University of Berlin (1989) and Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Notre Dame (1996). Since 1993 he works as a full time professor at the Graduate School of Economics at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He has taught more than 90 courses at the B.A, M.A. and Ph.D. level in Mexico and internationally, and participated in more than 260 national and international seminars and conferences. His research has concentrated on theory of industrial organization, economic development, political economy, as well as on the manufacturing sector, trade and regional specialization patterns in Latin America and Mexico. He has collaborated and coordinated projects with Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Economic Commission for Latin America and the Carribean (ECLAC), the International Labour Organization (ILO), Ford Foundation and the Interamerican Development Bank (IADB), among other institutions. He has received several research distinctions in 2000 and 2004.

The People's Republic of China appears intent on becoming a responsible great power. Beijing continues to insist—as it has for several decades—that "peace and development" are the key trends of the times. Beijing has taken great pains to stress that its growing power does not threaten any nation and the world is witnessing China's "peaceful rise" or "peaceful development." China is increasingly integrated into the global economy and embracing cooperation and multilateralism in unprecedented ways. Yet, at the same time, observers are alternately alarmed and perplexed by the recurring harsh, threatening rhetoric of senior Chinese military leaders and the intermittent but provocative acts by the People's Liberation Army. Is there a civil-military gap in China's peaceful rise? Public Service (with tenure) and Director of the China Certificate Program at Texas A&M University located in College Station, Texas. From 1999 until 2007, he was Associate Research Professor in the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Dickinson College both located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Scobell earned a doctorate in political science from Columbia University. He is author of China's Use of Military Force: Beyond the Great Wall and the Long March (Cambridge University Press, 2003), China's Search for Security (Columbia University Press, forthcoming, 2011) with Andrew J. Nathan, more than a dozen monographs and reports, as well as several dozen journal articles and book chapters. He has also edited or co-edited twelve volumes on various aspects of security in the Asia-Pacific region.

John Garnaut is the China correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age newspapers. He has written for other publications including Caijing magazine, Tempo (Indonesia), The Diplomat (Australia) and the International Herald Tribune. Recently his coverage has been recognised with a Walkley award for 'Scoop of the Year' for breaking the story that Rio Tinto's Stern Hu had been arrested; the Citigroup award for business journalism ; and a finalist for the Graham Perkins Australian journalist of the year. Before arriving in Beijing with his family in 2007 he was Economics Correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, based at Parliament House in Canberra. In an earlier life he was a commercial lawyer in Melbourne. As a child he spent stints in Papua New Guinea and China.

Tragedy in Crimson is award-winning journalist Tim Johnson's extraordinary account of the cat and mouse game embroiling China and the Tibetan exile community over Tibet. Johnson reports from the front lines, trekking to nomad resettlements to speak with the people who guard Tibet's slowly vanishing culture; and he travels alongside the Dalai Lama in the campaigns for Tibetan sovereignty. Johnson unpacks how China is using its economic power around the globe to assail the Free Tibet movement. By encouraging massive Chinese migration and restricting Tibetan civil rights, the Chinese are also working to dilute Tibetan culture within the country itself. He also takes a sympathetic but unsentimental look at the Dalai Llama, a trendy figure in the West who is regarded as a failure to his own people. Staggering in scope, vivid and audacious in its narrative, Tragedy in Crimson tells the story of the country at the precipice of the world, teetering on the brink of cultural annihilation. Award-winning journalist Tim Johnson has spent the last twenty years as a foreign correspondent for the Miami Herald and the McClatchy Company. He currently serves as McClatchy's Beijing bureau chief.

China and Russia share traits common to authoritarian regimes: Both subordinate the rule of law to the interests of the top leaders in staying in power; both violate human rights; both, corruption is ubiquitous; and in both there is a powerful nexus between business and the state. The two states differ, however, in that Russia under Presidents Putin and Medvedev is a "hybrid" authoritarian regime, because of the presence of democratic institutions, such as competitive parties and multiparty elections. These are, to be sure, greatly restricted, but they are also not a facade. They are important because they suggest that in principle norms of democracy are accepted, meaning that there is a possibility, however remote at this time, of movement towards fuller democracy. In contrast, China's authoritarian rulers disavow any intentions to move towards democracy as understood in the West, in Taiwan, Japan, or India. Their concept of democracy is essentially consultative. At the same time, China's authoritarian rule is "soft" in some ways and in others it is "hard." Another crucial difference is that, in contrast to Russia, China's rulers derive legitimacy from their highly successful developmental efforts, which, if anything, have strengthened Party rule. In Russia, large parts of the state bureaucracy and of business are oriented towards the extraction of resources rather than towards development. Thomas Bernstein earned his doctorate at Columbia University. He taught at Yale and Indiana universities before returning to Columbia in 1975. He taught there for the next three decades. He is a specialist on comparative politics, with a focus on China as well as on communist systems generally. Comparative studies include analysis of the collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union and China and of the two famines that each country experienced in the l930s and late l950s. Work on China includes Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages: The Transfer of Youth from Urban to Rural China (1977) as well as book chapters on the Mao era, on growth without liberalization, democratization, and on education. Most of his recent writings have focused on various aspects of state-peasant relations in China's reform period. Together with Professor Xiaobo Lu, he co-authoredTaxation without Representation in Contemporary Rural China (2003). He also wrote a case study for the PEW Intitiative in Diplomatic Training, "The Negotiations to Normalize US-China Relations" (1988). He recently co-edited (with Huayi Li) China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949-Present. He serves on the editorial boards of Comparative Politics, China Quarterly, and China: An International Journal.

As China's comprehensive power grows domestically and internationally, so too does its global cultural presence and government efforts to enhance its international image. Are China's efforts to expand and enhance its soft power producing positive results--or is China's image abroad tarnished? In this lecture, Professor Shambaugh will discuss findings from his research in China on different dimensions of China's global cultural footprint and soft power. Professor Shambaugh is recognized internationally as an authority on contemporary Chinese affairs and the international politics and security of the Asia-Pacific region. He is a widely published author of numerous books, articles, book chapters and newspaper editorials. He has previously authored six and edited sixteen volumes. His newest books are China's Communist Party: Atrophy & Adaptation; American and European Relations with China; and The International Relations of Asia (all published in 2008). Other recent books include Power Shift: China & Asia's New Dynamics (2005); China Watching: Perspectives from Europe, Japan, and the United States (2007); China-Europe Relations (2007); Modernizing China's Military (2003); The Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures (2005); and The Modern Chinese State (2000). Professor Shambaugh is a frequent commentator in international media, and has contributed to leading scholarly journals such as International Security, Foreign Affairs, The China Quarterly, and The China Journal. Before joining the faculty at George Washington, he taught at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly (the world's leading scholarly journal of contemporary Chinese studies). He also served as Director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1985-86), as an analyst in the Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1976-1977) and the National Security Council (1977-78), and has been a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution since 1998. He has received numerous research grants, awards, and fellowships -- including being appointed as an Honorary Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (2008- ), a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2002-2003), a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of World Economics & Politics (2009-2010), and a visiting scholar at institutions in China, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, and Taiwan. Professor Shambaugh has held a number of consultancies, including with various agencies of the U.S. Government, The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The RAND Corporation, The Library of Congress, and numerous private sector corporations. He serves on several editorial boards (including International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, Current History, The China Quarterly, China Perspectives) and is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, National Committee on U.S. China Relations, the World Economic Forum, The Council on Foreign Relations, Pacific Council on International Policy, Committee on Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), The Asia Society, Association for Asian Studies, and International Studies Association. Professor Shambaugh received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of International Studies (SAIS), and B.A. in East Asian Studies from The Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. He also studied at Nankai University, Fudan University, and Peking University in China.

Rowan Callick discussed his experience covering President Hu Jintao and Australia's relationship with China, but focused most of his attention on unsung heros, non-governmental organizations led by determined individuals who are addressing profoundly felt Chinese social needs. Callick, The Australian's Asia-Pacific editor, was the newspaper's Beijing-based China correspondent for three years until returning to Melbourne at the start of 2009. He grew up in England, graduating with a BA Honours from Exeter University. He worked for a daily newspaper in the north east before moving to Papua New Guinea, where he became general manager of a locally owned publishing, printing and retail group. In 1987 he came to Australia, working for almost 20 years for The Australian Financial Review, including as Hong Kong-based China correspondent. From 1990-1992 he was a senior writer with Time magazine. He was a member of the National Advisory Council on Aid Policy from 1994-96, a board member of the Australia Indonesia Institute from 2001-2006, and a member of the Foreign Minister`s Foreign Affairs Council from 2003-2006. His book "Comrades & Capitalists: Hong Kong Since the Handover" was published by the University of NSW Press in 1998. He won the Graham Perkin Award for Journalist of the Year for 1995, and two Walkley Awards, for Asia-Pacific coverage, for 1997 and 2007.

Yu Jie 余杰 is a remarkably prolific writer. Born in 1973, Yu graduated from Peking University in 1997 and took a master's degree in 2000. Even while still a student, he published a collection of his essays, Fire and Ice. Numerous books have followed, including a novel Fragrant Grass Mountain. He's not been able to publish his recent work in China, but has found an audience in Hong Kong and Taiwan. His newest book, China's Greatest Actor: Wen Jiabao, sold out almost immediately. Yu Jie says that press attention following efforts by Beijing police during the summer to discourage him from publishing the book did much to drive sales. Yu Jie spoke at USC on October 7 and returned to China a few days later. Press reports say that he and his wife Liu Min have been under virtual house arrest since October 18. These reports describe Yu's confinement as part of a larger effort by China's government to silence critics following the announcement on October 8 that Liu Xiaobo, a writer and democracy activist imprisoned since 2008, would receive the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Yu argues that the notion that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is reform-minded, someone who wants to open up China's governing system, is wrong. He suggests that as with previous Chinese Communist Party leaders, Wen plays a carefully defined role and that any perceived "space" between his ideas for China's present and future and those of Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao is an illusion. Yu believes that he has a duty to speak out. He draws inspiration from both Liu Xiaobo and Vaclav Havel. He says that a democratic China must be built by ordinary people and that it's pointless to wait for leaders to initiate democratization. He concludes by saying that he's chosen to live freely -- even if he doesn't live in a free society. Yu Jie was among the Chinese Christians meeting with US Pres. George W. Bush at the White House in May 2006.

Winston Lord has been at the center of U.S.-China relations for four decades. As a Special Assistant to the National Security Adviser, Lord accompanied Henry Kissinger on his secret trip to Beijing in 1971, which laid the groundwork for President Nixon's historic visit to China the following year. Lord attended Nixon's February 1972 meeting with Mao Zedong, and was involved in the negotiations which led to the signing of the Shanghai Communique. He later served as the U.S. ambassador to China under Presidents Reagan and Bush from 1985-89, and as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia during President Clinton's first term.

When a Billion Chinese Jump is a journey through an environment in crisis. Jonathan Watts travels from mountain paradises to industrial wastelands, via tiger farms, melting glaciers, cancer villages, science parks, coal mines and eco-cities to examine the responses of those at the top of society and the hopes of those below. Watts is consistently attentive to human detail, vividly portraying individual lives in a country all too often viewed from outside as a faceless state. Based on almost 300 interviews and close to 100,000 kilometres of journeys, this is a book that no reader - no consumer in the world - can be unaffected by. Jonathan Watts is Asia Environment Correspondent for The Guardian and a former president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China. His multimedia career includes seven years in China, seven years in Japan, five trips to North Korea, the 2004 tsunami, the 2008 Tibetan unrest, Sichuan earthquake and Beijing Olympics. He has worked for BBC, CNN, Mother Jones, Christian Science Monitor, South China Morning Post, Daily Yomiuri and Asahi Shimbun. Since taking his current post in 2009, he has covered the Copenhagen climate conference, renewable energy developments and more rubbish dumps than he cares to remember.