Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

Dear students and colleagues,

We cordially invite you to lecture #3 of the BCCN/LMRG's monthly online series “China – The New Science Superpower?”:

Ascent of Chinese Universities in World Rankings—Global Ambitions, Local Governance?

Speaker: Liang Ma, Renmin University of China

Online via Zoom. Please register for the event here: https://zoom.us/j/95306568300?pwd=WE9kdVp0YUluOVFPdkR2eHlJV2NOUT09 

Chinese elite universities compete with world-class universities in dominant world rankings, and the past two decades have seen their ratings soar in these league tables. World rankings have been widely used in Chinese universities’ strategy formation, talent acquisition, and faculty recruitment, but the government aims to mitigate the consequences of rankings to university governance and develop top universities with Chinese characteristics. This talk will review the development of international and domestic university rankings and their enduring roles in shaping the autonomy of Chinese universities by using quantitative analyses and case studies.

Liang Ma is a Professor at the School of Public Administration and Policy and Research Fellow at the National Academy for Development and Strategy, Renmin University of China. He earned his doctorate from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. Before joining RUC, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Nanyang Centre for Public Administration, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the Co-Editor of the International Journal of Public Administration and an Associate Editor of the Chinese Public Administration Review. He is the Chair-Elect of the Section of Chinese Public Administration (SCPA), the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA).

Spread the word and register for more lectures in this series on our BCCN-website

Dear students and colleagues,

You are cordially invited to participate in lecture #2 of the BCCN/LMRG's monthly online series “China – The New Science Superpower?”:

State-Science-Society: Tangled Ties in China´s Plans to Become a Science Superpower

Speaker: Susan Greenhalgh, Harvard University

Online via Zoom. Please register at the following link: 
https://zoom.us/j/92852832398?pwd=ejUvMW5PRU5FbllMUk10RGxrUkpPdz09

China’s ambition to become a sci/tech superpower by mid-century has driven heavy investment in the nation’s scientific and technological infrastructure. While China may well reach superpower status by some metrics, the deep institutional entanglements of science with the party-state mean that China is following a distinctive trajectory with distinctive end points that demand attention. The historic entanglements of science with state and society are shaping such fundamental questions as who counts as a scientist, which bodies of knowledge register as science worth supporting, how science is made, and for what purpose. In this talk, I map out these distinctive features of China’s pathway to scientific prominence and why they matter to the world at large.

Spread the word and register for more lectures in this series on our BCCN-website

Dear students and colleagues,

We cordially invite you to join our BCCN Silk Road Talk #2

Between Big-push (quantity) and Bankability (quality); Geoeconomics of Infrastructure Financing in the Indo-Pacific 

Speaker: Prof. Saori Katada

Abstract

This project examines the infrastructure investment ‘competition’ between Japan and China in the context of privatization of development finance in the post-global financial crisis world. As geoeconomic challenge to China’s infrastructure ‘big push’ through its Belt-and-Road Imitative, Japan and the Quad powers responded by establishing Blue Dot Network to certify bankable infrastructure projects with the hope that such certification will invite institutional investors to infrastructure financing in the Indo-Pacific region.  By examining contrasting financing features and risk consideration of infrastructure financing between China and Japan, the project illustrates the foundation of quantity versus quality competition among the financial suppliers of infrastructure investment.

Saori N. Katada is Professor of International Relations at University of Southern California, and she is currently a Banque de France/Fondation France-Japon Fellow at L’École de Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociales (FFJ/EHESS) in Paris France.  Her book Japan’s New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific was published from Columbia University Press in 2020, and its Japanese version in 2022. She has co-authored two recent books: The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Taming Japan’s Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy (Cornell University Press, 2018).  She was the vice president of International Studies Association (ISA) from 2021 to 2022.  She has her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Political Science), and her B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).  Before joining USC, she served as a researcher at the World Bank in Washington D.C., and as International Program officer at the UNDP in Mexico City.

For more on this and other BCCN events, visit the BCCN homepage.

Dear students and colleagues,

We would like to invite you to our upcoming BCCN Talk:

Global Civil Society & China's Belt and Road Initiative

Speaker: Shawn Shieh, Ph.D.
(Social Innovations Advisory, Ltd.)

Location: Online via Zoom. Registration required:
https://hu-berlin.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5wuduqppz0qHNRvwr09cScRoQSaBFBoWk1j

Abstract

Chinese companies and investors have faced increasing pushback from communities and civil society organisations (CSOs) against their businesses in Belt and Road partner countries. In his talk, Shieh will discuss the diverse civil society responses at the international and local levels with examples drawn from the global South. He also discusses the recent statements and initiatives coming from Chinese policymakers, industry groups, and companies who are slowly beginning to pay attention to the grievances of local communities and CSOs, delving into the opportunities and risks for civil society when seeking to hold these stakeholders accountable.

Shawn Shieh, Ph.D., has 15 years of experience working to strengthen civil society and social movements in China and the Asia-Pacific. In 2018, he founded Social Innovations Advisory, Ltd., an international consultancy dedicated to building a resilient civil society in the global South. SIA partners with other organizations to design strategies and tools to sustain civil society and strengthen its capacity to hold government and corporate actors accountable. Shawn is also a Contributor to Rights CoLab (New York), a Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute (London), and a Research Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was previously Deputy Director of China Labour Bulletin in Hong Kong, and founder of the English-language operations for China Development Brief in Beijing.

Best regards

Daniel Fuchs & Andrea Fleschenberg

For more on this and other BCCN events, please visit the BCCN homepage.

Dear students and colleagues,

We cordially invite you to join our BCCN Silk Road Talk #1

Why the West’s Alternative to China’s International Infrastructure Financing is Failing

Speaker: Prof. Shahar Hameiri 

Abstract

As geopolitical rivalry intensifies, Western states have moved to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by increasing their own provision of infrastructure financing. However, the actual mobilization of funds remains paltry, suggesting that Western states cannot contest Chinese dominance in this domain. Why? Through a comparative political economy analysis of the United States and China, we show that serious competition cannot be willed into being by state managers thinking in geostrategic terms. States’ strength is ultimately rooted in structural political economy dynamics. Where state managers’ geopolitical ambitions jibe with, or express, the interests of powerful social forces and the capital and productive forces they command, a powerful impact results. This is true of China, whose BRI is a spatio-temporal fix for an overcapacity crisis in industry and infrastructure and the overaccumulation of capital. Conversely, where geopolitical ambitions are divorced from powerful groups’ interests and material realities, the results are likely to be disappointing. This is true of the US, which is characterized by infrastructural decay, industrial hollowing-out, and a dominant but disinterested financial sector. Reflecting its neoliberal underpinnings, the West’s financing model relies heavily on “escorting” private capital into infrastructure investment, but capital steadfastly declines to be escorted. 

Shahar Hameiri is Professor of International Politics and Director of Research in the School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland. His latest book, co-authored with Lee Jones, is Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China’s Rise (Cambridge, 2021). His earlier co-authored books include: Governing Borderless Threats: Non-Traditional Security and the Politics of State Transformation (Cambridge, 2015), and International Intervention and Local Politics (Cambridge, 2017). He is also the co-editor, with Toby Carroll and Lee Jones, of The Political Economy of Southeast Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). He tweets @ShaharHameiri.

For more on this and other BCCN events, visit the BCCN homepage.