Friday, March 5, 2021
9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
via Webex
The Institute for International Economic Policy was pleased to invite you to the 13th annual Conference on China’s Economic Development and U.S.-China Economic Relations. The conference took place as a virtual series. The conference was co-sponsored by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the GW Center for International Business Education and Research.
In this event, Professor Meg Rithmire discussed the nature of China’s outward investments. Deborah Brautigam (JHU-SAIS) and Stephen Kaplan (GWU) provided discussant remarks. IIEP Co-Director Jay Shambaugh moderated the discussion.
Global observers are increasingly focused on China’s “state capitalism” and its implications for trading partners and host countries. Disentangling the strategic and commercial motives for Chinese firms abroad is not straightforward, and some of Chinese companies’ global efforts subvert, rather than execute, the Chinese state’s strategic goals. In this talk, based on research on the changing role of the state in China’s economy and the internationalization of Chinese capital over the last decade, I characterize China’s approach to globalization as a series of campaigns and experiments with constant adjustments and focus on the reach and limits of the Chinese party-state.
Meet the Presenter:
Meg Rithmire is F. Warren MacFarlan associate professor in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. Professor Rithmire holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University, and her primary expertise is in the comparative political economy of development with a focus on China and Asia. Her first book, Land Bargains and Chinese Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines the role of land politics, urban governments, and local property rights regimes in the Chinese economic reforms. A new project, for which Meg conducted fieldwork in Asia 2016-2017, investigates the relationship between capital and the state and globalization in Asia. The project focuses on a comparison of China, Malaysia, and Indonesia from the early 1980s to the present. The research has two components; first, examining how governments attempt to discipline business and when those efforts succeed and, second, how business adapts to different methods of state control.
Meet the Discussants:
Stephen B. Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Kaplan’s research and teaching interests focus on the frontiers of international and comparative political economy, where he specializes in the political economy of global finance and development, the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin American politics.
A leading expert on China in Africa, Professor Brautigam is the author of Will Africa Feed China? (Oxford University Press, 2015), The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2010; Chinese version published by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press) and Chinese Aid and African Development: Exporting Green Revolution (St. Martin’s Press, 1998). She is also co-editor of Taxation and State-Building: Capacity and Consent(Cambridge University Press, 2008) as well as numerous articles published in academic journals and public affairs media. Professor Brautigam regularly advises international agencies and governments on China-Africa economic engagement.
Jay Shambaugh is a Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at the George Washington University. Professor Shambaugh’s area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. His work includes analysis of the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows, and trade flows as well as studies of international reserves holdings, country balance sheet exchange rate exposure, the cross-country impact of fiscal policy, the crisis in the euro area, and regional growth disparities.
He has had two stints in public service. He served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent 3 years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the NBER and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings.
Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Shambaugh taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the IMF. Shambaugh received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.
