China Studies

China’s 19th Party Congress, held in October 2017, drew significant anticipation and attention, not only among professional China watchers, for its domestic meaning and foreign policy signals, at a time when the PRC is staking out a new role on the world stage. In this episode, Boston University Professor Joseph Fewsmith, one of the leading experts on Chinese elite politics, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the politics surrounding this latest Congress, from specific personnel decisions to broad policy implications, with special attention to the position of Xi Jinping. The episode was recorded on November 30, 2017 at the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, in connection with the Center’s post-Congress policy roundtable featuring Prof. Fewsmith and other experts.

Joseph Fewsmith is Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, specializing in Comparative Politics, Chinese Domestic Politics, and Chinese Foreign Policy. He is the author or editor of eight books, including, most recently, The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China (Cambridge 2013). His articles have appeared in such journals as Asian Survey, Comparative Studies in Society and History, The China Journal, The China Quarterly, Current History, The Journal of Contemporary China, Problems of Communism, and Modern China. He is also one of the seven regular contributors to the China Leadership Monitor, a quarterly web publication sponsored by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com

Special thanks to Wendy Leutert and Nick Marziani

At least since China’s 1994 fiscal and tax reforms, land-backed development has served as the greatest source of revenue for Chinese local governments—potentially almost 1 trillion US dollars in total this year—as well as a powerful engine both for rapid industrialization and for social discontent. This circumstance reflects how the state allocation of land-use rights, in China, remains a vestige of the planned economy, and how fiscal pressures on local governments, combined with differential pricing of land for purposes of takings compensation versus resale to developers, incentivize what often looks to be predatory behavior. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses China’s property rights regime, especially pertaining to land in rural areas, and how it informs the influential theory that economic growth requires stable property rights, with University of Washington political scientist Susan Whiting, a prominent scholar of China’s political economy of development. The episode was recorded on March 16, 2018.

Susan Whiting is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, in Seattle, where she also holds appointments in the Jackson School of International Studies and the School of Law. Her first book, Power and Wealth in Rural China: The Political Economy of Institutional Change, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2001. She has published articles and chapters on authoritarianism, “rule of law,” property rights, fiscal reform, and rural development in volumes and journals such as Comparative Political Studies and The China Quarterly. She has contributed to studies of governance, fiscal reform, and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Ford Foundation, respectively. Her current research focuses upon property rights in land, the role of law in authoritarian regimes, as well as the politics of fiscal reform.

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com

Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Kaiser Kuo

Dramatic protests in Hong Kong this month, over a draft law that would permit extraditions to mainland China, underscore broader fears amongst Hong Kong residents that their city is losing its distinctive legal and political characteristics, that were supposedly to be preserved under Chinese rule, according to the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”. A critical juncture in Hong Kong’s fascinating history appears to be fast approaching, with ramifications extending far beyond the city itself. In this special two-part episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Hong Kong University law professor, and former dean, Johannes Chan the development of Hong Kong’s hybrid legal system, before and after the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, and the challenges now before it. The episode was recorded on April 6-7, 2019.

Johannes Chan is Professor of Law and former Dean (2002-2014) of the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. In his academic work, he specializes in human rights, constitutional law, and administrative law, and has published widely in these fields. His most recent book, Paths of Justice (Hong Kong University Press, 2018), illuminates how Hong Kong’s legal system works in practice by drawing on key cases and Professor Chan’s own legal practice. To this date, he remains the only Honorary Senior Counsel appointed (2003) by the Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeals in Hong Kong. Professor Chan also has served as a visiting professor at a number of universities in Europe, the United States, and Asia, including as the Bok Visiting International Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2014), and the Herbert Smith Freehills Visiting Professor at Cambridge University (2015).

Sound engineering: Shani Aviram and Neysun Mahboubi

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com

How do autocratic regimes secure political obedience, and implement unpopular policies, without always resorting to outright coercive tactics? In a provocative new book, Yale University political scientist Dan Mattingly argues that, in China, state power exercised through local governments relies on local civil society groups—like temple organizations or lineage associations—to quietly infiltrate, observe, and thereby control Chinese rural society. In this episode, he discusses his book and its core arguments about “soft” authoritarian repression with Neysun Mahboubi, in a conversation which extends to the basic nature of local governance in China and the various mechanisms by which it may (or may not) be held to account. The episode was recorded on April 12, 2018.

Dan Mattingly is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His research focuses on the political economy of development, authoritarian rule, and Chinese politics. His new book on “The Art of Political Control in China” is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, and his articles have previously appeared in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Development, and World Politics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and was later a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. You can follow him on Twitter @mattinglee.

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com

Special thanks to Nick Marziani and Kaiser Kuo

Over the past 16 years, there has emerged in China a community of self-identified "rights defense" (weiquan) lawyers, akin to "cause lawyers" in the United States, who select cases and frame legal advocacy with a goal of achieving wider societal impact. Once celebrated in official discourse, these lawyers have increasingly come under scrutiny and pressure by the Chinese Party-state, that has intensified despite official promotion of "rule of law" concepts since the CCP Central Committee’s Fourth Plenum in 2014. In this episode, scholar and activist Teng Biao, one of China’s earliest and most famous weiquan lawyers, discusses with Neysun Mahboubi the history and current predicament of "rights defense" lawyering in China, and charts possible future directions for this work. The episode was recorded on April 11, 2018.

Dr. Teng Biao is an academic lawyer and a human rights activist. He was formerly a Lecturer at the China University of Political Science and Law, in Beijing. Since first coming to wide public attention in connection with the Sun Zhigang incident in 2003, he has provided counsel in numerous human rights cases, including those of activists Chen Guangcheng and Hu Jia, religious freedom claims, and death penalty appeals. He has also co-founded two groups that have combined research with advocacy in human rights cases, the Open Constitution Initiative (Gongmeng) and China Against the Death Penalty. Most recently, he has visited at Harvard Law School, Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, and NYU’s US-Asia Law Institute. He maintains an active blog in Chinese and you can also follow him on Twitter @tengbiao.

Music credit: "Salt" by Poppy Ackroyd, follow her at http://poppyackroyd.com

Special thanks to Nick Marziani, Justin Melnick, and Kaiser Kuo