UPenn Center for the Study of Contemporary China

In recent years, and especially under the administration of Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has “securitized” all manner of relationships between its citizens and outsiders. An important marker of this trend, which continues to generate intense concern, was the 2016 passage of the Overseas NGO Law, a new legal framework for managing the domestic Chinese operations of nonprofit and educational institutions based abroad. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with Mark Sidel, one of the preeminent authorities on the nonprofit sector and philanthropy in China, why and how the Overseas NGO Law was drafted, and how to situate the law in the larger story of China’s engagement with foreign nonprofit and educational institutions from the late Maoist period onward. The episode was recorded on April 26, 2019.

Mark Sidel is the Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, he served as Professor of Law at the University of Iowa. He has published widely on the nonprofit sector and philanthropy (with a focus on Asia and the United States), and is a member of the editorial or editorial advisory boards of multiple journals in those fields. In addition to his academic work, he has extensive experience in international philanthropic and funding communities. He first served on the Ford Foundation team that established the Foundation's office in China, and as the Foundation's first program officer for law, legal reform, and nonprofit organizations based in China (Beijing), in the late 1980s. In the early and mid-1990s, he developed and managed the Ford Foundation's programs in Vietnam. Later he developed and managed the regional program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector for the Ford Foundation in South Asia (New Delhi). He now serves as consultant for Asia at the Washington-based International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, focusing on China, India and Vietnam.

Sound engineering: Neysun Mahboubi

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

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

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

Despite little foreshadowing before he took office, President Xi Jinping has emerged as perhaps the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. This was reinforced in March 2018 when China’s National People’s Congress voted overwhelmingly to abolish presidential term limits, as had been stipulated under the 1982 PRC Constitution, a feature which had been understood to be critical to the new political settlement after the Cultural Revolution. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses with UC San Diego political scientist Victor Shih the implications of Xi Jinping’s apparent longterm rule for Chinese governance—including for policymaking and bureaucratic incentives, for both domestic and foreign entrepreneurship, and ultimately for the very durability of Chinese Communist Party rule. The episode was recorded on April 26, 2018.

Victor Shih is an associate professor of political economy, and the Ho Miu Lam Chair in China and Pacific Relations, at the School of Global Policy & Strategy at UC San Diego. He has published widely on the politics of Chinese banking policies, fiscal policies and exchange rates, and he was the first analyst to identify the risk of massive local government debt in China. His book Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation (Cambridge University Press, 2012) draws on his training in elite politics, as well as detailed statistical analysis, in providing the classic account of how the Chinese banking sector really works. Professor Shih’s new edited book, Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability: Duration, Financial Condition, and Institutions, is in production at the University of Michigan Press. Prior to joining UC San Diego, he was a professor of political science at Northwestern University, and also served as a principal for The Carlyle Group. He is active on Twitter, where you can follow him @vshih2.

Sound engineering: Nirvan West and Neysun Mahboubi

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

As Chinese economic growth slows to its lowest rate in 30 years, there is rising concern (including among some Chinese scholars and officials) about the long-term viability of China's distinctive form of state-led capitalism, sometimes characterized in terms of a "China Model". Nevertheless, the Chinese government still appears committed to the approach marked by heavy state intervention in the economy that has driven China's growth since the 1990s, and especially since the global financial crisis of 2008 and then under President Xi Jinping. In this episode, Neysun Mahboubi discusses China's state-led capitalism, and the prospects for reform, with one of the foremost scholars of China's economic development, MIT political scientist Yasheng Huang, whose pathbreaking work has highlighted the contributions of private entrepreneurship to China's "economic miracle" in the 1980s, and the various costs levied by the shift away from that approach. The episode was recorded on April 27, 2018.

Yasheng Huang is Epoch Foundation Professor of International Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he also serves as faculty director of action learning, and runs both China Lab and India Lab, which have provided low-cost consulting services to over 360 small and medium enterprises in those countries. He has published widely in both English and Chinese, and his book Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (Cambridge University Press), based on detailed archival and quantitative evidence spanning three decades of Chinese economic reform, was selected by The Economist as a best book of 2008. His current research projects include a new book on "The Nature of the Chinese State", collaboration with researchers at Tsinghua University to create a complete database of technological innovation in China, and serving as co-PI for a Walmart Foundation supported study of food safety in China. He is or has been a fellow at the Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University; a research fellow at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics; a fellow at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan; and a World Economic Forum Fellow. He also has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the OECD, and on a number of advisory and corporate boards of non-profit and for-profit organizations.

Sound engineering: Shani Aviram and Neysun Mahboubi

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