Abstract: Scholars increasingly interpret overseas investment as a form of economic soft power, swaying local public opinion to favor the investing firm’s home country. Conceptualizing soft power as a function of both influence and affinity, this study examines how citizens react when firms from major foreign powers – and from their prominent rival – invest locally. Using a unique dataset of over 750 geolocated Chinese and US FDI projects in 23 countries in Africa and connecting those projects to survey responses from over 37,000 citizens, we demonstrate that citizens assign greater influence ..read more

In 1952, John T. “Jack” Downey, a twenty-three-year-old CIA officer from Connecticut, was shot down over Manchuria during the Korean War. The pilots died in the crash, but Downey and his partner Richard “Dick” Fecteau were captured by the Chinese. For the next twenty years, they were harshly interrogated, put through show trials, held in solitary confinement, placed in reeducation camps, and toured around China as political pawns. Other prisoners of war came and went, but Downey and Fecteau’s release hinged on the United States acknowledging their status as CIA assets. Not until Nixon’s visit ..read more

What can we expect for the US-China relationship in the aftermath of key upcoming political milestones in the two countries — the Party Congress and the U.S. Midterms?  Is a Xi-Biden Summit likely to take place on the margins of the G20 and what will that likely produce ..read more

What is the relationship between internal development and integration into the global economy in developing countries? How and why do state–market relations differ? And do these differences matter in the post-cold war era of global conflict and cooperation? Drawing on research in China, India, and Russia and examining sectors from textiles to telecommunications, Micro-institutional Foundations of Capitalism introduces a new theory of sectoral pathways to globalization and development. Adopting a historical and comparative approach, the book’s Strategic Value Framework shows how state elites pe ..read more

Conceptualizing China’s increasingly active development outreach through the Belt and Road Initiative as the internationalization of China’s “developmental statecraft,” I argue that the central goal of this process is to induce alignment of state-directed development agendas in the partnering countries with China’s own, and to coordinate international collective actions toward the construction of a China-centered economic network. Such an economic grand strategy is informed by China’s own developmental state experience. Through a close examination of how the developmental state bureaucracy ope ..read more

Abstract: Why do Chinese-funded and constructed projects that are similar in nature develop into starkly different trajectories in different African states? This question sheds light on the varying state capacity of developing countries. Divergent from existing structural explanations that stress the external agency and institutional explanations that emphasise bureaucratic capacity, I propose a political championship theory to explain variances in developing states’ capacity to deliver functional infrastructure projects. I argue that perceived threats from competitive elections engineer leade ..read more

How can the U.S. best manage its relationship with China? The country is at once a sharp competitor to the U.S., a formidable challenger to U.S.’ regional and global leadership, and an important potential partner on a range of transnational challenges. Will it be possible for the United States to cooperate, compete, and confront China simultaneously, as some American officials have suggested? Is US-China conflict avoidable, including over Taiwan? Ryan Hass, author of Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence, will address these questions and more in o ..read more

Professor Yeling Tan discusses her book, Disaggregating China, Inc: State Strategies in the Liberal Economic Order. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 represented an historic opportunity to peacefully integrate a rising economic power into the international order based on market-liberal rules. Yet current trade tensions between the US and China indicate that this integration process has run into trouble. To what extent has the liberal internationalist promise of the WTO been fulfilled? To answer this question, this study breaks open the black box of the massive Chine ..read more

Abstract: Over the last year, the tempo of Chinese military operations around Taiwan has accelerated and foreign analysts have grown increasingly concerned about the prospects of China’s use of force. Yet the risks of such a conflict for the PRC would be enormous and the People’s Liberation Army continues to wrestle with key challenges. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s defense policy is gradually shifting, the U.S. military is experimenting with new operational concepts, and U.S.-Taiwan security cooperation is deepening. This talk will explore where the Taiwan issue fits within China’s larger military str ..read more

Abstract: As part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is increasingly investing abroad and has become an important country for development financing. Many commentators have expressed concern that the country is defying the Western path of sustainable development guided by the rule of law and good governance standards. Adopting the frame of 'adaptive governance,' the presentation looks at the attitude of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) toward corporate social responsibility (CRS) in Chinese-Financed BRI Railroad Megaprojects in East Africa. Through a comparative case study of C ..read more